//standard custom resources intro text
A deployment of Kafka components to a Kubernetes cluster using Strimzi is highly configurable through the application of custom resources.
Custom resources are created as instances of APIs added by Custom resource definitions (CRDs) to extend Kubernetes resources.

CRDs act as configuration instructions to describe the custom resources in a Kubernetes cluster,
and are provided with Strimzi for each Kafka component used in a deployment, as well as users and topics.
CRDs and custom resources are defined as YAML files.
Example YAML files are provided with the Strimzi distribution.

CRDs also allow Strimzi resources to benefit from native Kubernetes features like CLI accessibility and configuration validation.
