What's the difference between Role and ClusterRole, and when would you use each?

Role is namespace-scoped and grants permissions within a specific namespace, while ClusterRole is cluster-scoped and can grant permissions across the entire cluster or to cluster-level resources.

Use Role when:

• Granting access to resources within a specific namespace
• Following the principle of least privilege
• Managing team-specific permissions

Use ClusterRole when:

• Granting access to cluster-scoped resources (nodes, persistent volumes)
• Creating permissions that span multiple namespaces
• Defining admin-level access
• Working with custom resource definitions (CRDs)

Example ClusterRole:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: node-reader
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["nodes"]
  verbs: ["get", "list"]