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Launching OVN-Kubernetes using Helm Charts

Introduction

This helm chart supports deploying OVN K8s CNI in a K8s cluster.

Open Virtual Networking (OVN) Kubernetes CNI is an open source networking and network security solution for Kubernetes workloads. It leverages a distributed OVN SDN control plane and per-node Open vSwitch (OVS) to provide network virtualization and network connectivity to K8s Pods. It does so by creating a logical network topology using logical constructs such as logical switches (Layer 2) and logical routers (Layer 3). The Pod interfaces are represented by logical ports on the logical switches. On these logical switch ports, one can specify IP network information (IP address and MAC address), anti-spoofing rules (MAC and IP), Security Groups, QoS configuration, and so on.

A port, either physical SR-IOV VF or virtual VETH, assigned to a Pod will be associated with a corresponding logical port, this will result in applying all the logical port configuration onto the physical port. The logical port becomes the API for configuring the physical port.

In addition to providing overlay network connectivity for Pods in the K8s cluster, OVN K8s CNI supports a plethora of advanced networking features, such as

- Optimized and Accelerated K8s Network Policy on Pod's traffic
- Optimized and Accelerated K8s Service Implementation (aka Load Balancers and NAT)
- Optimized and Accelerated Policy Based Routing
- Multi-Home Pods with an option for Secondary networks to be on a Layer-2
  Overlay (flat network), Layer-2 Underlay (VLAN-based) on private or public
  subnets.
- Optimized and Accelerated K8s Network Policy on Pod's secondary networks

Most of these services are distributed and implemented via a pipeline (series of OpenFlow tables with OpenFlow flows) on local OVS switches. These OVS pipelines are very amenable to offloading to NIC hardware, which should result in the best possible networking performance and CPU savings on the host.

The OVN K8s CNI architecture is a layered architecture with OVS at the bottom, followed by OVN, and finally OVN K8s CNI at the top. Each layer has several K8s components - deployments, daemonsets, and statefulsets. Each component at every layer is a subchart by itself. Based on the deployment needs, all or some of these subcharts are installed to provide the aforementioned OVN K8s CNI features, this can be done by editing tags section in values.yaml file.

Quickstart:

Run script helm/basic-deploy.sh to set up a basic OVN/Kubernetes cluster.

Manual steps:

  • Disable IPv6 of kind docker network, otherwise ovnkube-node will fail to start 

    # docker network rm kind (delete `kind` network if it already exists)
# docker network create kind -o "com.docker.network.bridge.enable_ip_masquerade"="true" -o "com.docker.network.driver.mtu"="1500"

  • Launch a Kind cluster without CNI and kubeproxy (additional controle-plane or worker nodes can be added) 

    kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
nodes:
- role: control-plane
- role: worker
networking:
  disableDefaultCNI: true
  kubeProxyMode: none

  • Optional: build local image and load it into Kind nodes 

    # cd dist/images
# make ubuntu
# docker tag ovn-kube-ubuntu:latest ghcr.io/ovn-org/ovn-kubernetes/ovn-kube-ubuntu:master
# kind load docker-image ghcr.io/ovn-org/ovn-kubernetes/ovn-kube-ubuntu:master

  • Run helm install with propery k8sAPIServer, ovnkube-identity.replicas, image repo and tag 

    # cd helm/ovn-kubernetes
# helm install ovn-kubernetes . -f values.yaml --set k8sAPIServer="https://$(kubectl get pods -n kube-system -l component=kube-apiserver -o jsonpath='{.items[0].status.hostIP}'):6443" --set ovnkube-identity.replicas=$(kubectl get node -l node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane --no-headers | wc -l) --set global.image.repository=ghcr.io/ovn-org/ovn-kubernetes/ovn-kube-ubuntu --set global.image.tag=master

Notes:

  • Only following scenarios were tested with Kind cluster
  • ovs-node + ovnkube-node + ovnkube-db + ovnkube-master, with/without ovnkube-identity
  • ovs-node + ovnkube-node + ovnkube-db-raft + ovnkube-master, with/without ovnkube-identity

Following section describes the meaning of the values.

Values

Key Type Default Description
global.aclLoggingRateLimit int 
20
The largest number of messages per second that gets logged before drop @default 20
global.disableForwarding string 
false
Controls if forwarding is allowed on OVNK controlled interfaces
global.disableIfaceIdVer bool 
false
Deprecated: iface-id-ver is always enabled
global.disablePacketMtuCheck string 
""
Disables adding openflow flows to check packets too large to be delivered to OVN due to pod MTU being lower than NIC MTU
global.disableSnatMultipleGws string 
""
Whether to disable SNAT of egress traffic in namespaces annotated with routing-external-gws
global.egressIpHealthCheckPort string 
""
Configure EgressIP node reachability using gRPC on this TCP port
global.emptyLbEvents string 
""
If set, then load balancers do not get deleted when all backends are removed
global.enableAdminNetworkPolicy string 
""
Whether or not to use Admin Network Policy CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableCompactMode bool 
false
Indicate if ovnkube run master and node in one process
global.enableConfigDuration string 
""
Enables monitoring OVN-Kubernetes master and OVN configuration duration
global.enableEgressFirewall string 
""
Configure to use EgressFirewall CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableEgressIp string 
""
Configure to use EgressIP CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableEgressQos string 
""
Configure to use EgressQoS CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableEgressService string 
""
Configure to use EgressService CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableHybridOverlay string 
""
Whether or not to enable hybrid overlay functionality
global.enableInterconnect bool 
false
Configure to enable interconnecting multiple zones
global.enableIpsec bool 
false
Configure to enable IPsec
global.enableLFlowCache bool 
true
Indicates if ovn-controller should enable/disable the logical flow in-memory cache when processing Southbound database logical flow changes
global.enableMetricsScale string 
""
Enables metrics related to scaling
global.enableMultiExternalGateway bool 
false
Configure to use AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableMultiNetwork bool 
false
Configure to use multiple NetworkAttachmentDefinition CRD feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableMulticast string 
""
Enables multicast support between the pods within the same namespace
global.enableOvnKubeIdentity bool 
true
Whether or not enable ovnkube identity webhook
global.enableSsl bool 
false
Use SSL transport to NB/SB db and northd
global.enableStatelessNetworkPolicy bool 
false
Configure to use stateless network policy feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.enableSvcTemplate bool 
true
Configure to use service template feature with ovn-kubernetes
global.encapPort int 
6081
GENEVE UDP port (default 6081)
global.extGatewayNetworkInterface string 
""
The interface on nodes that will be used for external gateway network traffic
global.gatewayMode string 
"shared"
The gateway mode (shared or local), if not given, gateway functionality is disabled
global.gatewayOpts string 
""
Optional extra gateway options
global.hybridOverlayNetCidr string 
""
A comma separated set of IP subnets and the associated hostsubnetlengths (eg, \"10.128.0.0/14/23,10.0.0.0/14/23\") to use with the extended hybrid network
global.image.pullPolicy string 
"IfNotPresent"
Image pull policy
global.image.repository string 
"ghcr.io/ovn-org/ovn-kubernetes/ovn-kube-ubuntu"
Image repository for ovn-kubernetes components
global.image.tag string 
"master"
Specify image tag to run
global.ipfixCacheActiveTimeout string 
""
Maximum period in seconds for which an IPFIX flow record is cached and aggregated before being sent @default 60
global.ipfixCacheMaxFlows string 
""
Maximum number of IPFIX flow records that can be cached at a time @default 0, meaning disabled
global.ipfixSampling string 
""
Rate at which packets should be sampled and sent to each target collector @default 400
global.ipfixTargets string 
""
A comma separated set of IPFIX collectors to export flow data
global.lFlowCacheLimit string 
unlimited
Maximum number of logical flow cache entries ovn-controller may create when the logical flow cache is enabled
global.lFlowCacheLimitKb string 
""
Maximum size of the logical flow cache (in KB) ovn-controller may create when the logical flow cache is enabled
global.libovsdbClientLogFile string 
""
Separate log file for libovsdb client
global.monitorAll string 
""
Enable monitoring all data from SB DB instead of conditionally monitoring the data relevant to this node only @default true
global.nbPort int 
6641
Port of north bound ovsdb
global.netFlowTargets string 
""
A comma separated set of NetFlow collectors to export flow data
global.nodeMgmtPortNetdev string 
""
The net device to be used for management port, will be renamed to ovn-k8s-mp0 and used to allow host network services and pods to access k8s pod and service networks
global.ofctrlWaitBeforeClear string 
""
ovn-controller wait time in ms before clearing OpenFlow rules during start up @default 0
global.remoteProbeInterval int 
100000
OVN remote probe interval in ms @default 100000
global.sbPort int 
6642
Port of south bound ovsdb
global.sflowTargets string 
""
A comma separated set of SFlow collectors to export flow data
global.unprivilegedMode bool 
false
This allows ovnkube-node to run without SYS_ADMIN capability, by performing interface setup in the CNI plugin
global.v4JoinSubnet string 
""
The v4 join subnet used for assigning join switch IPv4 addresses
global.v4MasqueradeSubnet string 
""
The v4 masquerade subnet used for assigning masquerade IPv4 addresses
global.v6JoinSubnet string 
""
The v6 join subnet used for assigning join switch IPv6 addresses
global.v6MasqueradeSubnet string 
""
The v6 masquerade subnet used for assigning masquerade IPv6 addresses
k8sAPIServer string 
"https://172.25.0.2:6443"
Endpoint of Kubernetes api server
mtu int 
1400
MTU of network interface in a Kubernetes pod
ovnkube-identity.replicas int 
1
number of ovnube-identity pods, co-located with kube-apiserver process, so need to be the same number of control plane nodes
podNetwork string 
"10.128.0.0/14/23"
IP range for Kubernetes pods, /14 is the top level range, under which each /23 range will be assigned to a node
serviceNetwork string 
"172.30.0.0/16"
A comma-separated set of CIDR notation IP ranges from which k8s assigns service cluster IPs. This should be the same as the value provided for kube-apiserver "--service-cluster-ip-range" option
skipCallToK8s bool 
false
Whether or not call `lookup` Helm function, set it to `true` if you want to run `helm dry-run/template/lint`
tags object 
{
  "ovn-ipsec": false,
  "ovnkube-control-plane": false,
  "ovnkube-db-raft": false,
  "ovnkube-node-dpu": false,
  "ovnkube-node-dpu-host": false,
  "ovnkube-single-node-zone": false,
  "ovnkube-zone-controller": false
}
list of dependent subcharts that need to be installed for the given deployment mode, these subcharts haven't been tested yet.