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Configure an external gateway on the default network

As a cluster administrator, you can configure an external gateway on the default network.

This feature offers the following benefits:

  • Granular control over egress traffic on a per-namespace basis

  • Flexible configuration of static and dynamic external gateway IP addresses

  • Support for both IPv4 and IPv6 address families

Prerequisites

  • Your cluster uses the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin.

  • Your infrastructure is configured to route traffic from the secondary external gateway.

How OKD determines the external gateway IP address

You configure a secondary external gateway with the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute custom resource (CR) from the k8s.ovn.org API group. The CR supports static and dynamic approaches for specifying an IP address for an external gateway.

Each namespace that an AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute CR targets cannot be selected by any other AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute CR. A namespace cannot have concurrent secondary external gateways.

Changes to policies are isolated in the controller. If a policy fails to apply, changes to other policies do not trigger a retry of other policies. Policies are re-evaluated when updates occur to the policy or to related objects such as target namespaces, pod gateways, or the namespaces that host them from dynamic hops. When re-evaluated, the policy applies any differences from the changes.

Static assignment

You specify an IP address directly.

Dynamic assignment

You specify an IP address indirectly, with namespace and pod selectors, and an optional network attachment definition.

If the name of a network attachment definition is provided, the external gateway IP address of the network attachment is used.

If the name of a network attachment definition is not provided, the external gateway IP address for the pod itself is used. However, this approach works only if the pod is configured with hostNetwork set to true.

AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object configuration

You can define an AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object, which is cluster scoped, with specific properties.

A namespace can be selected by only one AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute CR at a time.

The following tables detail supported fields for objects.

Table 1. AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object
Field Type Description

metadata.name

string

Specifies the name of the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object.

spec.from

string

Specifies a namespace selector that the routing policies apply to. Only namespaceSelector is supported for external traffic. For example:

from:
  namespaceSelector:
    matchLabels:
      kubernetes.io/metadata.name: novxlan-externalgw-ecmp-4059

A namespace can only be targeted by one AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute CR. If a namespace is selected by more than one AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute CR, a failed error status occurs on the second and subsequent CRs that target the same namespace. To apply updates, you must change the policy itself or related objects such as target namespaces, pod gateways, or namespaces hosting them from dynamic hops. The policy is then re-evaluated and your changes are applied.

spec.nextHops

object

Specifies the destinations where the packets are forwarded to. Must be either or both of static and dynamic. You must have at least one next hop defined.
Table 2. nextHops object
Field Type Description

static

array

Specifies an array of static IP addresses.

dynamic

array

Specifies an array of pod selectors corresponding to pods configured with a network attachment definition to use as the external gateway target.
Table 3. nextHops.static object
Field Type Description

ip

string

Specifies either an IPv4 or IPv6 address of the next destination hop.

bfdEnabled

boolean

Optional field. Specifies whether Bi-Directional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is supported by the network. The default value is false.
Table 4. nextHops.dynamic object
Field Type Description

podSelector

string

Specifies a set-based label selector to filter the pods in the namespace that match this network configuration. For more information, see "Set-based requirement" in the Additional resources section.

namespaceSelector

string

Specifies a set-based selector to filter the namespaces that the podSelector applies to. You must specify a value for this field.

bfdEnabled

boolean

Optional field. Specifies whether Bi-Directional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is supported by the network. The default value is false.

networkAttachmentName

string

Optional field. Specifies the name of a network attachment definition. The name must match the list of logical networks associated with the pod. If this field is not specified, the host network of the pod is used. However, the pod must be configured as a host network pod to use the host network.

Additional resources

Example secondary external gateway configurations

Reference the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute objects to better understand secondary external gateway configurations.

In the following example, the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object configures two static IP addresses as external gateways for pods in namespaces with the kubernetes.io/metadata.name: novxlan-externalgw-ecmp-4059 label:

apiVersion: k8s.ovn.org/v1
kind: AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute
metadata:
  name: default-route-policy
spec:
  from:
    namespaceSelector:
      matchLabels:
        kubernetes.io/metadata.name: novxlan-externalgw-ecmp-4059
  nextHops:
    static:
    - ip: "172.18.0.8"
    - ip: "172.18.0.9"
# ...

In the following example, the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object configures a dynamic external gateway. The IP addresses used for the external gateway are derived from the additional network attachments associated with each of the selected pods.

apiVersion: k8s.ovn.org/v1
kind: AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute
metadata:
  name: shadow-traffic-policy
spec:
  from:
    namespaceSelector:
      matchLabels:
        externalTraffic: ""
  nextHops:
    dynamic:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          gatewayPod: ""
      namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          shadowTraffic: ""
      networkAttachmentName: shadow-gateway
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          gigabyteGW: ""
      namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          gatewayNamespace: ""
      networkAttachmentName: gateway
# ...

In the following example, the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object configures both static and dynamic external gateways:

apiVersion: k8s.ovn.org/v1
kind: AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute
metadata:
  name: multi-hop-policy
spec:
  from:
    namespaceSelector:
      matchLabels:
        trafficType: "egress"
  nextHops:
    static:
    - ip: "172.18.0.8"
    - ip: "172.18.0.9"
    dynamic:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          gatewayPod: ""
      namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          egressTraffic: ""
      networkAttachmentName: gigabyte
# ...

Configure a secondary external gateway

You can configure an external gateway on the default network for a namespace in your cluster.

Prerequisites

  • You installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • You are logged in to the cluster with a user with cluster-admin privileges.

Procedure

  1. Create a YAML file that contains an AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object. For more information, see "AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object configuration".

  2. To create an admin policy based external route, enter the following command:

    $ oc create -f <file>.yaml

    • <file>: Specifies the name of the YAML file that you created in a previous step.

      Example output
      adminpolicybasedexternalroute.k8s.ovn.org/default-route-policy created

  3. To confirm that the admin policy based external route was created, enter the following command:

    $ oc describe apbexternalroute <name> | tail -n 6

    • <name>: Specifies the name of the AdminPolicyBasedExternalRoute object.

      Example output
      Status:
  Last Transition Time:  2023-04-24T15:09:01Z
  Messages:
  Configured external gateway IPs: 172.18.0.8
  Status:  Success
Events:  <none>

Additional resources