Cluster and Project Roles

Cluster and project roles define user authorization inside a cluster or project.

To manage these roles,

  1. Click ☰ > Users & Authentication.

  2. In the left navigation bar, click Role Templates and go to the Cluster or Project/Namespaces tab.

Membership and Role Assignment

The projects and clusters accessible to non-administrative users is determined by membership. Membership is a list of users who have access to a specific cluster or project based on the roles they were assigned in that cluster or project. Each cluster and project includes a tab that a user with the appropriate permissions can use to manage membership.

When you create a cluster or project, Rancher automatically assigns you as the Owner for it. Users assigned the Owner role can assign other users roles in the cluster or project.

Non-administrative users cannot access any existing projects/clusters by default. A user with appropriate permissions (typically the owner) must explicitly assign the project and cluster membership.

Cluster Roles

Cluster roles are roles that you can assign to users, granting them access to a cluster. There are two primary cluster roles: Owner and Member.

  • Cluster Owner:

    These users have full control over the cluster and all resources in it.

  • Cluster Member:

    These users can view most cluster level resources and create new projects.

Custom Cluster Roles

Rancher lets you assign custom cluster roles to a standard user instead of the typical Owner or Member roles. These roles can be either a built-in custom cluster role or one defined by a Rancher administrator. They are convenient for defining narrow or specialized access for a standard user within a cluster. See the table below for a list of built-in custom cluster roles.

Cluster Role Reference

The following table lists each built-in custom cluster role available and whether that level of access is included in the default cluster-level permissions, Cluster Owner and Cluster Member.

Built-in Cluster Role Owner Member

Create Projects

✓

✓

Manage Cluster Backups

✓

Manage Cluster Catalogs

✓

Manage Cluster Members

✓

Manage Nodes (see table below)

✓

Manage Storage

✓

View All Projects

✓

View Cluster Catalogs

✓

✓

View Cluster Members

✓

✓

View Nodes

✓

✓

Manage Nodes Permissions

The following table lists the permissions available for the Manage Nodes role in RKE and RKE2.

Manage Nodes Permissions RKE RKE2

SSH Access

✓

✓

Delete Nodes

✓

✓

Scale Clusters Up and Down

✓

*

In RKE2, you must have permission to edit a cluster to be able to scale clusters up and down.

For details on how each cluster role can access Kubernetes resources, you can look them up in the Rancher UI:

  1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Users & Authentication.

  2. In the left navigation bar, click Role Templates.

  3. Click the Cluster tab.

  4. Click the name of an individual role. The table shows all of the operations and resources that are permitted by the role.

When viewing the resources associated with default roles created by Rancher, if there are multiple Kubernetes API resources on one line item, the resource will have (Custom) appended to it. These are not custom resources but just an indication that there are multiple Kubernetes API resources as one resource.

Giving a Custom Cluster Role to a Cluster Member

After an administrator sets up a custom cluster role, cluster owners and admins can then assign those roles to cluster members.

To assign a custom role to a new cluster member, you can use the Rancher UI. To modify the permissions of an existing member, you will need to use the Rancher API view.

To assign the role to a new cluster member,

  1. Click ☰ > Cluster Management.

  2. Go to the cluster where you want to assign a role to a member and click Explore.

  3. Click menu:Cluster[Cluster Members].

  4. Click Add.

  5. In the Cluster Permissions section, choose the custom cluster role that should be assigned to the member.

  6. Click Create.

Result: The member has the assigned role.

To assign any custom role to an existing cluster member,

  1. Click ☰ > Users & Authentication.

  2. Go to the member you want to give the role to. Click the ⋮ > Edit Config.

  3. If you have added custom roles, they will show in the Custom section. Choose the role you want to assign to the member.

  4. Click Save.

Result: The member has the assigned role.

Project Roles

Project roles are roles that can be used to grant users access to a project. There are three primary project roles: Owner, Member, and Read Only.

  • Project Owner:

    These users have full control over the project and all resources in it.

  • Project Member:

    These users can manage project-scoped resources like namespaces and workloads, but cannot manage other project members.

By default, the Rancher role of project-member inherits from the Kubernetes-edit role, and the project-owner role inherits from the Kubernetes-admin role. As such, both project-member and project-owner roles will allow for namespace management, including the ability to create and delete namespaces.

  • Read Only:

    These users can view everything in the project but cannot create, update, or delete anything.

Users assigned the Owner or Member role for a project automatically inherit the namespace creation role. However, this role is a Kubernetes ClusterRole, meaning its scope extends to all projects in the cluster. Therefore, users explicitly assigned the owner or member role for a project can create namespaces in other projects they’re assigned to, even with only the Read Only role assigned.

Custom Project Roles

Rancher lets you assign custom project roles to a standard user instead of the typical Owner, Member, or Read Only roles. These roles can be either a built-in custom project role or one defined by a Rancher administrator. They are convenient for defining narrow or specialized access for a standard user within a project. See the table below for a list of built-in custom project roles.

Project Role Reference

The following table lists each built-in custom project role available in Rancher and whether it is also granted by the Owner, Member, or Read Only role.

Built-in Project Role Owner Member Read Only

Manage Project Members

✓

Create Namespaces

✓

✓

Manage Config Maps

✓

✓

Manage Ingress

✓

✓

Manage Project Catalogs

✓

Manage Secrets

✓

✓

Manage Service Accounts

✓

✓

Manage Services

✓

✓

Manage Volumes

✓

✓

Manage Workloads

✓

✓

View Secrets

✓

✓

View Config Maps

✓

✓

✓

View Ingress

✓

✓

✓

View Project Members

✓

✓

✓

View Project Catalogs

✓

✓

✓

View Service Accounts

✓

✓

✓

View Services

✓

✓

✓

View Volumes

✓

✓

✓

View Workloads

✓

✓

✓
Notes:

  • Each project role listed above, including Owner, Member, and Read Only, is comprised of multiple rules granting access to various resources. You can view the roles and their rules on the Global > Security > Roles page.

  • When viewing the resources associated with default roles created by Rancher, if there are multiple Kubernetes API resources on one line item, the resource will have (Custom) appended to it. These are not custom resources but just an indication that there are multiple Kubernetes API resources as one resource.

  • The Manage Project Members role allows the project owner to manage any members of the project and grant them any project scoped role regardless of their access to the project resources. Be cautious when assigning this role out individually.

Defining Custom Roles

As previously mentioned, custom roles can be defined for use at the cluster or project level. The context field defines whether the role will appear on the cluster member page, project member page, or both.

When defining a custom role, you can grant access to specific resources or specify roles from which the custom role should inherit. A custom role can be made up of a combination of specific grants and inherited roles. All grants are additive. This means that defining a narrower grant for a specific resource will not override a broader grant defined in a role that the custom role is inheriting from.

Default Cluster and Project Roles

By default, when a standard user creates a new cluster or project, they are automatically assigned an ownership role: either cluster owner or project owner. However, in some organizations, these roles may overextend administrative access. In this use case, you can change the default role to something more restrictive, such as a set of individual roles or a custom role.

There are two methods for changing default cluster/project roles:

  • Assign Custom Roles: Create a custom role for either your cluster or project, and then set the custom role as default.

  • Assign Individual Roles: Configure multiple cluster/project roles as default for assignment to the creating user.

    For example, instead of assigning a role that inherits other roles (such as cluster owner), you can choose a mix of individual roles (such as manage nodes and manage storage).

  • Although you can lock a default role, the system still assigns the role to users who create a cluster/project.

  • Only users that create clusters/projects inherit their roles. Users added to the cluster/project membership afterward must be explicitly assigned their roles.

Configuring Default Roles for Cluster and Project Creators

You can change the cluster or project role(s) that are automatically assigned to the creating user.

  1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Users & Authentication.

  2. In the left navigation bar, click Role Templates.

  3. Click the Cluster or Project/Namespaces tab.

  4. Find the custom or individual role that you want to use as default. Then edit the role by selecting ⋮ > Edit Config.

  5. In the Cluster Creator Default or Project Creator Default section, enable the role as the default.

  6. Click Save.

Result: The default roles are configured based on your changes. Roles assigned to cluster/project creators display a check in the Cluster/Project Creator Default column.

If you want to remove a default role, edit the permission and select No from the default roles option.

Cluster Membership Revocation Behavior

When you revoke the cluster membership for a standard user that’s explicitly assigned membership to both the cluster and a project within the cluster, that standard user loses their cluster roles but retains their project roles. In other words, although you have revoked the user’s permissions to access the cluster and its nodes, the standard user can still:

If you want to completely revoke a user’s access within a cluster, revoke both their cluster and project memberships.

External RoleTemplate Behavior

In Rancher v2.9.0 and later, external RoleTemplate objects can only be created if the backing ClusterRole exists in the local cluster or the ExternalRules is set in your configuration.

For context, the backing ClusterRole holds cluster rules and privileges, and shares the same metadata.name used in the RoleTemplate in your respective cluster referenced by the ClusterRoleTemplateBinding/ProjectRoleTemplateBinding. Additionally, note that escalate permissions on RoleTemplates are required to create external RoleTemplates with ExternalRules.