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Concept and usage

The kubeconfig file configures access to Kubernetes clusters by specifying cluster, user, and context information. Without it, you must supply authentication details on every kubectl command: 
kubectl get pods \
  --server=https://<cluster-ip>:<port> \
  --client-certificate=<path-to-client-certificate> \
  --client-key=<path-to-client-key> \
  --certificate-authority=<path-to-ca-certificate>
The kubeconfig file avoids this repetition by storing the configuration.

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Methods

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Viewing and switching contexts

kubectl config -h
kubectl config view                           # view current kubeconfig
kubectl config view --kubeconfig=config       # view a specific kubeconfig file

kubectl config use-context <context-name>     # switch active context
kubectl config use-context prod@production
To set the default context in the file:
config
apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
current-context: prod@production
...

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Setting a default kubeconfig file

export KUBECONFIG=<file-path>
export KUBECONFIG=/new-kube-config

# Or persist it in .bashrc
echo "export KUBECONFIG=/root/my-kube-config" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

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Using base64-encoded certificate data

Instead of pointing to a certificate file with certificate-authority, you can embed the certificate data directly as base64:
config
apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
clusters:
  - name: production
    cluster:
      server: https://production:6443
      certificate-authority-data: <base64-encoded-ca-certificate>

# Encode the CA certificate to base64
cat /etc/kubernetes/pki/ca.crt | base64 -w 0

# Decode base64-encoded data
echo "<base64-encoded-ca-certificate>" | base64 -d

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