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Scenario #35
Cluster Management
K8s v1.24, Rancher

ClusterConfigMap Deleted by Accident Bringing Down Addons

A user accidentally deleted the kube-root-ca.crt ConfigMap, which many workloads relied on.

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What Happened

Pods mounting the kube-root-ca.crt ConfigMap failed to start after deletion. DNS, metrics-server, and other system components failed.

Diagnosis Steps
  • 1Pod events showed missing ConfigMap errors.
  • 2Attempted to remount volumes manually.
Root Cause

System-critical ConfigMap was deleted without RBAC protections.

Fix/Workaround
• Recreated ConfigMap from backup.
• Re-deployed affected system workloads.
Lessons Learned

Some ConfigMaps are essential and must be protected.

How to Avoid
  • 1Add RBAC restrictions to system namespaces.
  • 2Use OPA/Gatekeeper to prevent deletions of protected resources.