Crossplane v2 Migration & Application Composition Training

Upgrade your Crossplane skills to v2 with this focused 2-day training on the new namespace-first architecture and application composition model. Learn how v2 makes application composition a first-class use case, migrate existing v1 resources with full backward compatibility, and adopt the new Operations type for declarative day-2 workflows.

Training Details

Duration	2 days (16 hours)
Level	Intermediate
Delivery	In-person, Live online, Hybrid
Certification	N/A

Who Is This For?

• Crossplane v1 users planning their upgrade to v2
• Platform engineers adopting the v2 namespace-first model
• DevOps engineers managing application and infrastructure composition together
• Teams looking to simplify multi-tenancy with namespaced resources

Learning Outcomes

After completing this training, participants will be able to:

• Understand the architectural changes in Crossplane v2 and their impact
• Migrate existing v1 Compositions and XRDs to v2 with zero downtime
• Build application compositions that combine app and infrastructure resources
• Use the Operations type for declarative upgrades, backups, and maintenance
• Leverage namespace-first architecture for multi-tenancy
• Implement function response caching for improved performance

Detailed Agenda

Day 1: v2 Architecture & Migration

Module 1: Crossplane v2 Architecture Overview

• What changed in v2 — namespace-first design philosophy
• Application composition as a first-class use case
• Any Kubernetes resource in Compositions — Deployments, ConfigMaps, Services
• Comparing v1 cluster-scoped model vs v2 namespace-scoped model
• Hands-on: Install Crossplane v2 and explore the new API surface

Module 2: Namespace-First Resource Model

• Namespaced Managed Resources and their lifecycle
• Namespace isolation for teams and environments
• RBAC patterns simplified with namespace boundaries
• Provider configuration scoped to namespaces
• Hands-on: Provision namespace-scoped cloud resources across multiple teams

Module 3: Migrating from v1 to v2

• Backward compatibility guarantees and v1 API support
• Incremental adoption strategy — running v1 and v2 side by side
• Migration tooling and CLI commands for resource conversion
• Handling breaking changes in XRD schemas and Compositions
• Hands-on: Migrate a complete v1 infrastructure platform to v2

Module 4: Composition Functions in v2

• Patch-and-transform replacement with composition functions
• Built-in function improvements in v2
• Function pipelines as the default composition mechanism
• Converting v1 patch-based Compositions to v2 function pipelines
• Hands-on: Refactor v1 Compositions to use v2 function pipelines

Day 2: Application Composition & Operations

Module 5: Application Composition Patterns

• Composing Kubernetes workloads alongside cloud infrastructure
• Including Deployments, Services, and Ingress in Compositions
• Connection detail propagation between app and infra resources
• Environment-aware Compositions — dev, staging, production variants
• Hands-on: Build an application Composition that deploys a web app with its database and networking

Module 6: The Operations Type

• Declarative day-2 operations — upgrades, backups, maintenance windows
• Operations resource schema and lifecycle
• Scheduled operations with cron expressions
• Event-driven operations triggered by resource state changes
• Hands-on: Create Operations for database backup and provider upgrades

Module 7: Multi-Tenancy with Namespaced Resources

• Tenant isolation with namespace-scoped XRDs and Claims
• Quota enforcement per namespace
• Cross-namespace resource references and shared services
• Network policies for tenant resource isolation
• Hands-on: Build a multi-tenant platform with namespace isolation and shared infrastructure

Module 8: Performance and Production Readiness

• Function response caching — TTL configuration and cache invalidation
• Resource reconciliation optimization in v2
• Monitoring v2-specific metrics and health checks
• Rollback strategies when migration encounters issues
• Hands-on: Configure function caching, set up monitoring dashboards, and perform a controlled rollback exercise

Prerequisites

• Crossplane Fundamentals or equivalent v1 experience
• Kubernetes knowledge (Namespaces, RBAC, CRDs, controllers)
• Experience managing Crossplane Compositions and XRDs
• Familiarity with at least one cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP)

Delivery Formats

Format	Description
In-Person	On-site at your company's location, hands-on with direct interaction
Live Online	Interactive virtual sessions with screen sharing and real-time labs
Hybrid	Combination of on-site and remote sessions, flexible scheduling

All formats include hands-on labs, course materials, and post-training support.