New from Upbound: Identity with Azure, Search in the Marketplace, and Expanding the Configuration Catalog

One of the most common requests we’ve received since launching Upbound is to expand support for Azure. With the latest batch of updates, we’ve brought feature parity for Azure in three ways, including expanding support to use provider identity via OIDC, along with a slew of other updates.

Let’s dive in!

Upbound as an identity source with Azure

You can now configure provider-azure to use Upbound as an identity source. This allows Azure users to set up a trust relationship between Upbound and Azure, so they don’t need to store cloud account credentials in your control plane.

ProviderConfig CRUD

Expanding on the feature announcement from last update, Azure users can now directly create, read, or update ProviderConfigs from the Upbound console. This is available for the Upbound Official Provider Azure Family, version v0.34.0+.

New Azure-based configuration starters

Finally, for new users who want an easy starting point to build an internal cloud platform on Azure with Upbound, you can now select the new control plane configuration starter from our gallery. This starter demonstrates an API for doing AKS-as-a-service. Once installed on a control plane, you can use this API to create and manage AKS clusters.

Skippable First Run Experience

Are you an advanced Crossplane user? You can now choose to skip the “Get Started with Upbound” first run experience when you first access your Upbound trial environment. As a new user of Upbound, you are presented with a guided experience to set up your first control plane and git-synced configuration. While this flow is great for those who are newer to Crossplane concepts, it slows down advanced users from trying out configurations that they’ve already built. With our new release, you can choose to exit the first run experience at any step along the process. This means, for example, that you can “start from scratch” with your own custom configuration or complete all onboarding steps except for setting up OIDC authentication with your cloud service provider.

Global CRD searching in the Upbound Marketplace

We’ve rolled out the ability to search for a CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) across providers in the marketplace by simply using the search bar. Now you can search for a specific kind or group and the Marketplace will show package results that match your query.

Improvements and Fixes

• We upgraded the version of Crossplane used by control planes in Upbound to UXP v1.12.2–up.1
• We fixed a bug impacted ability to rename ProviderConfigs in the console. 

Go give the new features a try and get started using Upbound to build platforms in Azure! If you have feedback, a feature you’d like to see, or want to chat with the Product team, you can find us in the #Upbound channel of the Crossplane community slack.

On behalf of the Upbound team,
Craig D Wilhite