Getting Started on Krkn

Basic Run

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Goal: Run a chaos scenario and observe what happens — no metrics, no scoring, no pipeline.

This is the best starting point if you are new to Krkn or want to explore a specific scenario quickly.

What you need

A running Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster
A kubeconfig with cluster access
krknctl (recommended) or krkn installed

Steps

Install krknctl — follow the installation guide.

Choose Your Path

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Whether you’re running your first chaos scenario or building a production resilience pipeline, there’s a path here for you. Pick the journey that matches your experience level and goals — each one builds on the previous, so you can start simple and add complexity when you’re ready.

New to Krkn? Start with Basic Run — no configuration files, no metrics, just run a scenario and see what happens.

Familiar with the basics? Add automatic pass/fail evaluation with Metrics Validation, then layer in a Resilience Score to get a percentage-based view of how your system held up.

Metrics Validation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Goal: Run chaos and automatically evaluate Prometheus metrics — getting a clear pass or fail without manual inspection.

This journey is well suited to CI/CD pipelines where you cannot watch the cluster in real time.

What you need

Everything from Basic Run
A Prometheus instance accessible from where Krkn runs (auto-detected on OpenShift; set via scenario flags on Kubernetes) — need to set one up? See installing Prometheus on a kind cluster
krknctl installed

Steps

Install krknctl — follow the installation guide.

Long-Term Storage

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Goal: Persist metrics from every chaos run into Elasticsearch so you can compare behavior across releases, dates, or cluster configurations.

This journey enables regression analysis — for example, detecting that API server latency during a node failure has increased between software versions.

What you need

Everything from Metrics Validation
An Elasticsearch instance (self-hosted or managed) — need to set one up? See installing Elasticsearch on a kind cluster
krknctl installed

Steps

Complete Metrics Validation first to confirm Prometheus evaluation is working.

Resilience Score

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Goal: Generate a numerical score (0–100%) that represents how well your environment held up during chaos — giving you more signal than a binary pass/fail.

A resilience score lets you track improvement over time, compare environments, and set score thresholds as release gates.

Beta Feature

Resiliency Scoring is currently in Beta. The configuration format and scoring behavior may change in future releases.

What you need

Everything from Metrics Validation
krknctl installed

How scoring works

After a chaos scenario completes, Krkn evaluates a set of SLOs (defined as PromQL expressions) over the chaos time window. Each SLO is weighted by severity:

Multi-Cluster Orchestration

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Goal: Run chaos scenarios across multiple clusters or cloud environments from a single control point — useful for validating a multi-region application or comparing cluster configurations.

The recommended approach for multi-cluster orchestration is krkn-operator: a Kubernetes operator that runs on a dedicated control plane cluster and dispatches chaos scenarios to any number of registered target clusters, without distributing credentials to individual users.

How krkn-operator works

A control plane cluster runs the operator and its web console
Target clusters are registered once by an administrator (via kubeconfig, service account token, or username/password)
Users select one or more targets through the web UI and launch scenarios — they never handle cluster credentials directly
Scenarios run in parallel across all selected targets

This design preserves the original Krkn architecture (chaos runs from outside the cluster) while adding a secure, centralized orchestration layer.