DaemonSet

Some Kubernetes distributions can bring up a Kubernetes cluster without depending on a pre-existing VIP (but they may be configured to support one). A prime example of this would be K3s which can be configured to start and also sign the certificates to allow incoming traffic to a virtual IP. Given we don't need the VIP to exist before the cluster, we can bring up the K3s node(s) and then add kube-vip as a DaemonSet for all control plane nodes.

If the Kubernetes installer allows for adding a virtual IP as an additional SAN to the API server certificate, we can apply kube-vip to the cluster once the first node has been brought up.

Unlike running kube-vip as a static Pod there are a few more things that may need configuring when running kube-vip as a DaemonSet. This page will cover primarily the differences.

kube-vip as HA, Load Balancer, or both

The functionality of kube-vip depends on the flags used to create the static Pod manifest. By passing in --controlplane we instruct kube-vip to provide and advertise a virtual IP to be used by the control plane. By passing in --services we tell kube-vip to provide load balancing for Kubernetes Service resources created inside the cluster. With both enabled, kube-vip will manage a virtual IP address that is passed through its configuration for a highly available Kubernetes cluster. It will also watch Services of type LoadBalancer and once their service.metadata.annotations["kube-vip.io/loadbalancerIPs"] or spec.LoadBalancerIP is updated (typically by a cloud controller, including (optionally) the one provided by kube-vip in on-prem scenarios) it will advertise this address using BGP/ARP. In this example, we will use both when generating the manifest.

When in routing table mode, kube-vip can be configured to not use any kind of leader election. In such case every kube-vip instance will watch all the configured services and will configure routing if the node kube-vip instance is running on has an endpoint associated with the service. To achieve this, both leaderElection and servicesElection flags should not be set.

Create the RBAC settings

Since kube-vip as a DaemonSet runs as a regular resource instead of a static Pod, it still needs the correct access to be able to watch Kubernetes Services and other objects. In order to do this, RBAC resources must be created which include a ServiceAccount, ClusterRole, and ClusterRoleBinding and can be applied this with the command:

1kubectl apply -f https://kube-vip.io/manifests/rbac.yaml

Generating a Manifest

In order to create an easier experience of consuming the various functionality within kube-vip, we can use the kube-vip container itself to generate our static Pod manifest. We do this by running the kube-vip image as a container and passing in the various flags for the capabilities we want to enable.

Set configuration details

We use environment variables to predefine the values of the inputs to supply to kube-vip.

Set the VIP address to be used for the control plane:

export VIP=192.168.0.40

Set the INTERFACE name to the name of the interface on the control plane(s) which will announce the VIP. In many Linux distributions this can be found with the ip a command.

export INTERFACE=ens160

Get the latest version of the kube-vip release by parsing the GitHub API. This step requires that jq and curl are installed.

KVVERSION=$(curl -sL https://api.github.com/repos/kube-vip/kube-vip/releases | jq -r ".[0].name")

To set manually instead, find the desired release tag:

export KVVERSION=v0.5.0

Creating the manifest

With the input values now set, we can pull and run the kube-vip image supplying it the desired flags and values. Once the static Pod manifest is generated for your desired method (ARP or BGP), if running multiple control plane nodes, ensure it is placed in each control plane's static manifest directory (by default, /etc/kubernetes/manifests).

Depending on the container runtime, use one of the two aliased commands to create a kube-vip command which runs the kube-vip image as a container.

For containerd, run the below command:

alias kube-vip="ctr image pull ghcr.io/kube-vip/kube-vip:$KVVERSION; ctr run --rm --net-host ghcr.io/kube-vip/kube-vip:$KVVERSION vip /kube-vip"

For Docker, run the below command:

alias kube-vip="docker run --network host --rm ghcr.io/kube-vip/kube-vip:$KVVERSION"

ARP Example for DaemonSet

When creating the kube-vip installation manifest as a DaemonSet, the manifest subcommand takes the value daemonset as opposed to the pod value. The flags --inCluster and --taint are also needed to configure the DaemonSet to use a ServiceAccount and affine the kube-vip Pods to control plane nodes thereby preventing them from running on worker instances.

1kube-vip manifest daemonset \
2    --interface $INTERFACE \
3    --address $VIP \
4    --inCluster \
5    --taint \
6    --controlplane \
7    --services \
8    --arp \
9    --leaderElection

Example ARP Manifest

 1apiVersion: apps/v1
 2kind: DaemonSet
 3metadata:
 4  creationTimestamp: null
 5  name: kube-vip-ds
 6  namespace: kube-system
 7spec:
 8  selector:
 9    matchLabels:
10      name: kube-vip-ds
11  template:
12    metadata:
13      creationTimestamp: null
14      labels:
15        name: kube-vip-ds
16    spec:
17      affinity:
18        nodeAffinity:
19          requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
20            nodeSelectorTerms:
21            - matchExpressions:
22              - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
23                operator: Exists
24            - matchExpressions:
25              - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane
26                operator: Exists
27      containers:
28      - args:
29        - manager
30        env:
31        - name: vip_arp
32          value: "true"
33        - name: port
34          value: "6443"
35        - name: vip_interface
36          value: ens160
37        - name: vip_cidr
38          value: "32"
39        - name: cp_enable
40          value: "true"
41        - name: cp_namespace
42          value: kube-system
43        - name: vip_ddns
44          value: "false"
45        - name: svc_enable
46          value: "true"
47        - name: vip_leaderelection
48          value: "true"
49        - name: vip_leaseduration
50          value: "5"
51        - name: vip_renewdeadline
52          value: "3"
53        - name: vip_retryperiod
54          value: "1"
55        - name: address
56          value: 192.168.0.40
57        image: ghcr.io/kube-vip/kube-vip:v0.4.0
58        imagePullPolicy: Always
59        name: kube-vip
60        resources: {}
61        securityContext:
62          capabilities:
63            add:
64            - NET_ADMIN
65            - NET_RAW
66            - SYS_TIME
67      hostNetwork: true
68      serviceAccountName: kube-vip
69      tolerations:
70      - effect: NoSchedule
71        operator: Exists
72      - effect: NoExecute
73        operator: Exists
74  updateStrategy: {}
75status:
76  currentNumberScheduled: 0
77  desiredNumberScheduled: 0
78  numberMisscheduled: 0
79  numberReady: 0

BGP Example for DaemonSet

This configuration will create a manifest that starts kube-vip providing control plane VIP and Kubernetes Service management. Unlike ARP, all nodes in the BGP configuration will advertise virtual IP addresses.

Note we bind the address to lo as we don't want multiple devices that have the same address on public interfaces. We can specify all the peers in a comma-separated list in the format of address:AS:password:multihop.

export INTERFACE=lo

 1kube-vip manifest daemonset \
 2    --interface $INTERFACE \
 3    --address $VIP \
 4    --inCluster \
 5    --taint \
 6    --controlplane \
 7    --services \
 8    --bgp \
 9    --localAS 65000 \
10    --bgpRouterID 192.168.0.2 \
11    --bgppeers 192.168.0.10:65000::false,192.168.0.11:65000::false

Example BGP Manifest

 1apiVersion: apps/v1
 2kind: DaemonSet
 3metadata:
 4  creationTimestamp: null
 5  name: kube-vip-ds
 6  namespace: kube-system
 7spec:
 8  selector:
 9    matchLabels:
10      name: kube-vip-ds
11  template:
12    metadata:
13      creationTimestamp: null
14      labels:
15        name: kube-vip-ds
16    spec:
17      affinity:
18        nodeAffinity:
19          requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
20            nodeSelectorTerms:
21            - matchExpressions:
22              - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
23                operator: Exists
24            - matchExpressions:
25              - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane
26                operator: Exists
27      containers:
28      - args:
29        - manager
30        env:
31        - name: vip_arp
32          value: "false"
33        - name: port
34          value: "6443"
35        - name: vip_interface
36          value: ens160
37        - name: vip_cidr
38          value: "32"
39        - name: cp_enable
40          value: "true"
41        - name: cp_namespace
42          value: kube-system
43        - name: vip_ddns
44          value: "false"
45        - name: svc_enable
46          value: "true"
47        - name: bgp_enable
48          value: "true"
49        - name: bgp_routerid
50          value: 192.168.0.2
51        - name: bgp_as
52          value: "65000"
53        - name: bgp_peeraddress
54        - name: bgp_peerpass
55        - name: bgp_peeras
56          value: "65000"
57        - name: bgp_peers
58          value: 192.168.0.10:65000::false,192.168.0.11:65000::false
59        - name: address
60          value: 192.168.0.40
61        image: ghcr.io/kube-vip/kube-vip:v0.4.0
62        imagePullPolicy: Always
63        name: kube-vip
64        resources: {}
65        securityContext:
66          capabilities:
67            add:
68            - NET_ADMIN
69            - NET_RAW
70            - SYS_TIME
71      hostNetwork: true
72      serviceAccountName: kube-vip
73      tolerations:
74      - effect: NoSchedule
75        operator: Exists
76      - effect: NoExecute
77        operator: Exists
78  updateStrategy: {}
79status:
80  currentNumberScheduled: 0
81  desiredNumberScheduled: 0
82  numberMisscheduled: 0
83  numberReady: 0

Managing a routerID as a DaemonSet

The routerID needs to be unique on each node that participates in BGP advertisements. In order to do this, we can modify the manifest so that when kube-vip starts it will look up its local address and use that as the routerID. Add the following to the env[] array of the container:

1- name: bgp_routerinterface
2  value: "ens160"

Alternatively, we can use the IP address of the pod itself as a unique value for the routerID:

1- name: bgp_routerid
2  valueFrom:
3    fieldRef:
4      fieldPath: status.podIP

DaemonSet Manifest Overview

Once the manifest for kube-vip as a DaemonSet is generated, these are some of the notable differences over the static Pod manifest and their significance.

  • nodeSelector: Ensures that DaemonSet Pods only run on control plane nodes.
  • serviceAccountName: kube-vip: Specifies the ServiceAccount name that will be used to get/update Kubernetes Service resources.
  • tolerations: Allows scheduling to control plane nodes that normally specify NoSchedule or NoExecute taints.