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Deploying the SpiceDB Operator

The SpiceDB Operator is the recommended approach for production SpiceDB deployments. This guide walks through deploying it to a Kubernetes cluster and validating functionality through a basic SpiceDB setup.

Steps

Create or Configure a Kubernetes Cluster

You need kubectl configured for an available Kubernetes cluster. For production deployments, use managed services such as EKS, GKE, or AKS. For local development, options include kind, OrbStack, Docker Desktop, or minikube.

Apply the Operator Manifests

Verify your current cluster context:

kubectl config current-context

Deploy the operator:

kubectl apply --server-side -k github.com/authzed/spicedb-operator/config

All resources deploy to the spicedb-operator namespace.

Confirm deployment status:

kubectl -n spicedb-operator get pods

Create a SpiceDBCluster

WARNING

The following configuration is basic and not production-secure. Do not use these values in production.

Apply the cluster and secret:

kubectl apply --server-side -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: authzed.com/v1alpha1
kind: SpiceDBCluster
metadata:
  name: dev
spec:
  config:
    datastoreEngine: memory
    secretName: dev-spicedb-config
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: dev-spicedb-config
stringData:
  preshared_key: "averysecretpresharedkey"
EOF

Connect & Verify

Forward the port:

kubectl port-forward deployment/dev-spicedb 50051:50051

Install the Zed CLI if needed, then create a local context:

zed context set local localhost:50051 "averysecretpresharedkey" --insecure

Test the deployment:

zed schema read

Expected error output (indicating a successful connection):

code = NotFound
desc = No schema has been defined; please call WriteSchema to start

Taking Things to Production

This guide creates a single-node, in-memory deployment without persistence. Production deployment requires configuration adjustments for:

• TLS support
• Persistent datastore backends
• Ingress configuration

Refer to the SpiceDB Operator documentation or the community examples repository for comprehensive production examples.