cloud-provider-cherry

Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager for Cherry Servers

cloud-provider-cherry is the Kubernetes CCM implementation for Cherry Servers. Read more about the CCM in the official Kubernetes documentation.

This repository is Maintained!

Requirements

At the current state of Kubernetes, running the CCM requires a few things. Please read through the requirements carefully as they are critical to running the CCM on a Kubernetes cluster.

Compatibility with Kubernetes

The CCM is released with a specific semantic version that correlates with the Kubernetes upstream version.

• The major and minor versions are equivalent to the compatible upstream release.
• The patch version is reserved for internal releases of the CCM.

Currently, for a given cloud provider release version, compatibility is guaranteed only between that major/minor release and the corresponding Kubernetes major/minor version. That means you need to upgrade the cloud provider components every time you upgrade Kubernetes major or minor version.

This is based on, but not identical to, the external cloud provider versioning KEP.

For example, any version 1.28.X of the CCM, for any X, should be compatible with 1.28.Y, for any Y of Kubernetes.

However, other versions may work as well. For example, CCM 1.28.X may work with 1.29.Y, but it is not guaranteed.

Deployment

TL;DR

1. Set Kubernetes binary arguments correctly
2. Get your Cherry Servers project ID and secret API token
3. Deploy your Cherry Servers project ID and secret API token to your cluster in a secret
4. Deploy the CCM
5. Deploy the load balancer (optional)

Kubernetes Binary Arguments

Control plane binaries in your cluster must start with the correct flags:

• kubelet: All kubelets in your cluster MUST set the flag --cloud-provider=external. This must be done for every kubelet. Note that k3s sets its own CCM by default. If you want to use the CCM with k3s, you must disable the k3s CCM and enable this one, as --disable-cloud-controller --kubelet-arg cloud-provider=external.
• kube-apiserver and kube-controller-manager must NOT set the flag --cloud-provider. They then will use no cloud provider natively, leaving room for the Cherry Servers CCM.

WARNING: setting the kubelet flag --cloud-provider=external will taint all nodes in a cluster with node.cloudprovider.kubernetes.io/uninitialized. The CCM itself will untaint those nodes when it initializes them. Any pod that does not tolerate that taint will be unscheduled until the CCM is running.

You must set the kubelet flag the first time you run the kubelet. Stopping the kubelet, adding it after, and then restarting it will not work.

Kubernetes node names must match the device name

By default, the kubelet will name nodes based on the node's hostname. Cherry Servers device hostnames are set based on the name of the device. It is important that the Kubernetes node name matches the device name.

Get Cherry Servers Project ID and API Token

To run cloud-provider-cherry, you need your Cherry Servers project ID and secret API key ID that your cluster is running in. If you are already logged into the Cherry Servers portal, you can create one by clicking on your profile in the upper right then "API keys". To get your project ID, select your team from the upper left corner, and then View All Projects from the pull-down.

You will see a list of projects. Next to the name of the project that you want to use, in () brackets, you will see the project ID.

Alternatively, you can click into the project. Now check the URL, and it will give you your project ID. For example:

https://portal.cherryservers.com/#/projects/87553/servers

In this case, the project is 87553.

Once you have this information you will be able to fill in the config needed for the CCM.

Deploy Project and API

Copy deploy/template/secret.yaml to someplace useful:

cp deploy/template/secret.yaml /tmp/secret.yaml

Replace the placeholder in the copy with your token. When you're done, the yaml should look something like this:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: cherry-cloud-config
  namespace: kube-system
stringData:
  cloud-sa.json: |
    {
    "apiKey": "abc123abc123abc123",
    "projectID": 0123456789
    }  

Then apply the secret, e.g.:

kubectl apply -f /tmp/secret.yaml

You can confirm that the secret was created with the following:

$ kubectl -n kube-system get secrets cherry-cloud-config
NAME                  TYPE                                  DATA      AGE
cherry-cloud-config   Opaque                                1         2m

Deploy CCM

To apply the CCM itself, select your release and apply the manifest:

RELEASE=v2.0.0
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cherryservers/cloud-provider-cherry/releases/download/${RELEASE}/deployment.yaml

The CCM uses multiple configuration options. See the configuration section for all of the options.

Deploy Load Balancer

If you want load balancing to work as well, deploy a supported load-balancer.

CCM provides the correct logic, if necessary, to manage load balancer configs for supported load-balancers.

See further in this document under loadbalancing, for details.

Logging

By default, ccm does minimal logging, relying on the supporting infrastructure from kubernetes. However, it does support optional additional logging levels via the --v=<level> flag. In general:

• --v=2: log most function calls for devices and facilities, when relevant logging the returned values
• --v=3: log additional data when logging returned values, usually entire go structs
• --v=5: log every function call, including those called very frequently

Configuration

The Cherry Servers CCM has multiple configuration options. These include several different ways to set most of them, for your convenience.

1. Command-line flags, e.g. --option value or --option=value; if not set, then
2. Environment variables, e.g. CCM_OPTION=value; if not set, then
3. Field in the configuration secret; if not set, then
4. Default, if available; if not available, then an error

This section lists each configuration option, and whether it can be set by each method.

Purpose	CLI Flag	Env Var	Secret Field	Default
Path to config secret			cloud-config	error
API Key		CHERRY_API_KEY	apiKey	error
Project ID		CHERRY_PROJECT_ID	projectID	error
Region in which to create LoadBalancer Floating IPs		CHERRY_REGION_NAME	region	Service-specific annotation, else error
Base URL to Cherry Servers API			base-url	Official Cherry Servers API
Load balancer setting		CHERRY_LOAD_BALANCER	loadbalancer	none
Kubernetes annotation to set node's BGP ASN, {{n}} replaced with ordinal index of peer		CHERRY_ANNOTATION_LOCAL_ASN	annotationLocalASN	"cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-node-asn"
Kubernetes annotation to set BGP peer's ASN, {{n}} replaced with ordinal index of peer		CHERRY_ANNOTATION_PEER_ASN	annotationPeerASN	"cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-peer-asn"
Kubernetes annotation to set BGP peer's IPs, {{n}} replaced with ordinal index of peer		CHERRY_ANNOTATION_PEER_IP	annotationPeerIP	"cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-peer-ip"
Kubernetes annotation to set source IP for BGP peering, {{n}} replaced with ordinal index of peer		CHERRY_ANNOTATION_SRC_IP	annotationSrcIP	"cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-src-ip"
Kubernetes Service annotation to set Floating IP region		CHERRY_ANNOTATION_FIP_REGION	annotationFIPRegion	"cherryservers.com/fip-region"
Tag for control plane Floating IP, in "key=value" format		CHERRY_FIP_TAG	fipTag	No control plane Floating IP
Kubernetes API server port for Floating IP		CHERRY_API_SERVER_PORT	apiServerPort	Same as kube-apiserver on control plane nodes, same as 0
Filter for cluster nodes on which to enable BGP		CHERRY_BGP_NODE_SELECTOR	bgpNodeSelector	All nodes
Use host IP for Control Plane endpoint health checks		CHERRY_FIP_HEALTH_CHECK_USE_HOST_IP	fipHealthCheckUseHostIP	false

Region Note: In all cases, where a "region" is required, use the full name of the region. For example, the region "EU-Nord-1" is also known by its ISO 2-character designation "LT". All usages of region should use "EU-Nord-1" unless otherwise specified.

How It Works

The Kubernetes CCM for Cherry Servers deploys as a Deployment into your cluster with a replica of 1. It provides the following services:

• lists and retrieves instances by ID, returning Cherry Servers instances
• manages load balancers

Load Balancers

Cherry Servers does not offer managed load balancers like AWS ELB or GCP Load Balancers. Instead, if configured to do so, Cherry Servers CCM will interface with and configure external bare-metal loadbalancers.

When a load balancer is enabled, the CCM does the following:

1. Enable BGP for the project
2. Enable BGP on each node as it comes up
3. For each Service of type=LoadBalancer:
   • If you have specified a load balancer IP on Service.Spec.LoadBalancerIP (bring your own IP, or BYOIP), do nothing
   • If you have not specified a load balancer IP on Service.Spec.LoadBalancerIP, get a Cherry Servers Floating IP and set it on Service.Spec.LoadBalancerIP, see below
4. Pass control to the specific load balancer implementation

Service Load Balancer IP

There are two options for getting a Floating IP (FIP) for a Service of type=LoadBalancer: bring-your-own or let CCM create one using the Cherry Servers API.

Whether you bring your own IP or rely on CCM to request one for you, the load balancer IP will be set, and load balancers can consume them.

Whenever a Service of type=LoadBalancer is encountered, the CCM tries to ensure that an externally accessible load balancer IP is available. It does this in one of two ways:

If you want to use a specific IP that you have ready, either because you brought it from the outside or because you retrieved an Floating IP from Cherry Servers separately, you can add it to the Service explicitly as Service.Spec.LoadBalancerIP. For example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: ip-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: MyAppIP
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 80
      targetPort: 9376
  type: LoadBalancer
  loadBalancerIP: 145.60.80.60

CCM will detect that loadBalancerIP already was set and not try to create a new Cherry Servers Floating IP.

If the Service.Spec.LoadBalancerIP was not set, then CCM will use the Cherry Servers API to request a new, region-specific Floating IP and set it to Service.Spec.LoadBalancerIP.

The CCM needs to determine where to request the FIP. It does not attempt to figure out where the nodes are, as that can change over time, the nodes might not be in existence when the CCM is running or Service is created, and you could run a Kubernetes cluster across multiple regions, or even cloud providers.

The CCM uses the following rules to determine where to create the FIP:

1. if region is set globally using the environment variable CHERRY_REGION_NAME, use it; else
2. if the Service for which the FIP is being created has the annotation indicating in which region the FIP should be created, use it; else
3. Return an error, cannot set a FIP

The overrides of environment variable and config file are provided so that you can run explicitly control where the FIPs are created at a system-wide level, ignoring the annotations.

Using these flags and annotations, you can run the CCM on a node in a different region, or even outside of Cherry Servers entirely.

Control Plane LoadBalancer Implementation

For the control plane nodes, the Cherry Servers CCM uses static Floating IP assignment, via the Cherry Servers API, to tell the Cherry Servers network which control plane node should receive the traffic. For more details on the control plane load-balancer, see this section.

Service LoadBalancer Implementations

Loadbalancing is enabled as follows.

1. If the environment variable CHERRY_LOAD_BALANCER is set, read that. Else...
2. If the config file has a key named loadbalancer, read that. Else...
3. Load balancing is disabled.

The value of the loadbalancing configuration is <type>:///<detail> where:

• <type> is the named supported type, of one of those listed below
• <detail> is any additional detail needed to configure the implementation, details in the description below

For loadbalancing for Kubernetes Service of type=LoadBalancer, the following implementations are supported:

• kube-vip
• MetalLB
• empty

CCM does not deploy any load balancers for you. It limits itself to managing the Cherry Servers-specific API calls to support a load balancer, and providing configuration for supported load balancers.

When the kube-vip option is enabled, for user-deployed Kubernetes Service of type=LoadBalancer, the Cherry Servers CCM enables BGP on the project and nodes, assigns a FIP for each such Service, and adds annotations to the nodes. These annotations are configured to be consumable by kube-vip.

To enable it, set the configuration CHERRY_LOAD_BALANCER or config loadbalancer to:

kube-vip://

Directions on using configuring kube-vip in this method are available at the kube-vip site

If kube-vip management is enabled, then CCM does the following.

1. Enable BGP on the Cherry Servers project
2. For each node currently in the cluster or added:
   • retrieve the node's Cherry Servers ID via the node provider ID
   • retrieve the device's BGP configuration: node ASN, peer ASN, peer IPs, source IP
   • add the information to appropriate annotations on the node
3. For each service of type=LoadBalancer currently in the cluster or added:
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags exists, and the Service already has that IP address affiliated with it, it is ready; ignore
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags exists, and the Service does not have that IP affiliated with it, add it to the service spec
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags does not exist, create it and add it to the services spec
4. For each service of type=LoadBalancer deleted from the cluster:
   • find the Floating IP address from the service spec and remove it
   • delete the Floating IP reservation from Cherry Servers

Minimum Version: MetalLB version 0.13.2

When MetalLB is enabled, for user-deployed Kubernetes Service of type=LoadBalancer, the Cherry Servers CCM uses BGP to provide the equivalence of load balancing, without requiring an additional managed service (or hop). BGP route advertisements enable Cherry Servers's network to route traffic for your services at the Floating IP to the correct host.

To enable it, set the configuration CHERRY_LOAD_BALANCER or config loadbalancer to:

metallb:///<metalNamespace>/

For example:

• metallb:///metallb-system/ - enable MetalLB management and update of the CRDs in the namespace metallb-system
• metallb:///foonamespace/ - - enable MetalLB management and update of the CRDs in the namespace foonamespae
• metallb:/// - enable MetalLB management and update of the CRDs in the default namespace, i.e. metallb-system

Notice the *three slashes. In the URL, the namespace is in the path.

Note: This CCM no longer supports the pre-0.13.2 version of MetalLB with configmaps. If you are using configmaps, MetalLB provides a tool to convert them to CRDs. See the MetalLB documentation for more information.

When enabled, CCM controls the loadbalancer by updating the CRDs.

If MetalLB management is enabled, then CCM does the following.

1. Get the appropriate namespace, based on the rules above.
2. Enable BGP on the Cherry Servers project
3. For each node currently in the cluster or added:
   • retrieve the node's Cherry Server ID via the node provider ID
   • retrieve the device's BGP configuration: node ASN, peer ASN, peer IPs, source IP
   • add them to the metallb CRDs with a kubernetes selector ensuring that the peer is only for this node
4. For each node deleted from the cluster:
   • remove the node from the MetalLB CRDs
5. For each service of type=LoadBalancer currently in the cluster or added:
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags exists, and the Service already has that IP address affiliated with it, it is ready; ignore
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags exists, and the Service does not have that IP affiliated with it, add it to the service spec and ensure it is in the pools of the MetalLB CRDs with auto-assign: false
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags does not exist, create it and add it to the services spec, and ensure it is in the pools of the MetalLB CRDs with auto-assign: false
6. For each service of type=LoadBalancer deleted from the cluster:
   • find the Floating IP address from the service spec and remove it
   • remove the IP from the CRDs
   • delete the Floating IP reservation from Cherry Servers

CCM itself does not deploy the load-balancer or any part of it. This can be deployed by the administrator separately, using the manifest provided in the releases page, or in any other manner.

When the empty option is enabled, for user-deployed Kubernetes Service of type=LoadBalancer, the Cherry Servers CCM enables BGP on the project and nodes, assigns a FIP for each such Service, and adds annotations to the nodes. It does not integrate directly with any load balancer. This is useful if you have your own implementation, but want to leverage Cherry Servers CCM's management of BGP and FIPs.

To enable it, set the configuration CHERRY_LOAD_BALANCER or config loadbalancer to:

empty://

If empty management is enabled, then CCM does the following.

1. Enable BGP on the Cherry Servers project
2. For each node currently in the cluster or added:
   • retrieve the node's Cherry Servers ID via the node provider ID
   • retrieve the device's BGP configuration: node ASN, peer ASN, peer IPs, source IP
   • add the information to appropriate annotations on the node
3. For each service of type=LoadBalancer currently in the cluster or added:
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags exists, and the Service already has that IP address affiliated with it, it is ready; ignore
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags exists, and the Service does not have that IP affiliated with it, add it to the service spec
   • if a Floating IP address reservation with the appropriate tags does not exist, create it and add it to the services spec
4. For each service of type=LoadBalancer deleted from the cluster:
   • find the Floating IP address from the service spec and remove it
   • delete the Floating IP reservation from Cherry Servers

Control Plane Load Balancing

CCM implements an optional control plane load balancer using a Cherry Servers Floating IP (FIP) and the Cherry Servers API's ability to assign that FIP to different devices.

You have several options for control plane load-balancing:

• CCM managed
• No control plane load-balancing (or at least, none known to CCM)

CCM Managed

It is a common procedure to use a Floating IP as Control Plane endpoint in order to have a static endpoint that you can use from the outside, or when configuring the advertise address for the kubelet.

To enable CCM to manage the control plane FIP:

1. Create a Floating IP, using the Cherry Servers API, Web UI or CLI
2. Put an arbitrary but unique tag on the FIP
3. When starting the CCM
   • set the configuration for the control plane FIP tag, e.g. env var CHERRY_FIP_TAG=<tag>, where <tag> is whatever tag you set on the FIP
   • (optional) set the port that the FIP should listen on; by default, or when set to 0, it will use the same port as the kube-apiserver on the control plane nodes. This port can also be specified with CHERRY_API_SERVER_PORT=<port>.
   • (optional) set the configuration for using the host IP for control plane endpoint health checks. This is needed when the FIP is configured as a loopback IP address

Cherry Servers does not provide an as-a-service load balancer; this means that in some way we have to check if the Floating IP is still assigned to an healthy control plane.

In order to do so CCM implements a reconciliation loop that checks if the Control Plane Endpoint respond correctly using the /healthz endpoint.

When the healthcheck fails CCM looks for the other Control Planes, when it gets a healthy one it move the FIP to the new device.

This feature by default is disabled and it assumes that the FIP for the cluster is available and tagged with an arbitrary label.

When the tag is present CCM will filter the available FIPs for the specified project via tag to lookup the one used by your cluster.

It will check the correct answer, when it stops responding the IP reassign logic will start.

The logic will circle over all the available control planes looking for an active api server. As soon as it can find one the FIP will be unassigned and reassigned to the working node.

How the Floating IP Traffic is Routed

Of course, even if the router sends traffic for your Floating IP (FIP) to a given control plane node, that node needs to know to process the traffic. Rather than require you to manage the IP assignment on each node, which can lead to some complex timing issues, the Cherry Servers CCM handles it for you.

The structure relies on the already existing default/kubernetes service, which creates an Endpoints structure that includes all of the functioning control plane nodes. The CCM does the following on each loop:

1. Reads the Kubernetes-created default/kubernetes service to discover:
   • what port kube-apiserver is listening on from targetPort
   • all of the endpoints, i.e. control plane nodes where kube-apiserver is running
2. Creates a service named kube-system/cloud-provider-cherry-kubernetes-external with the following settings:
   • type=LoadBalancer
   • spec.loadBalancerIP=<fip>
   • status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip=<fip>
   • metadata.annotations["metallb.universe.tf/address-pool"]=disabled-metallb-do-not-use-any-address-pool
   • spec.ports[0].targetPort=<targetPort>
   • spec.ports[0].port=<targetPort_or_override>
3. Updates the service kube-system/cloud-provider-cherry-kubernetes-external to have endpoints identical to those in default/kubernetes

This has the following effect:

• the annotation prevents MetalLB from trying to manage the IP
• the name prevents CCM from passing it to the loadbalancer provider address mapping, thus preventing any of them from managing it
• the spec.loadBalancerIP and status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip cause kube-proxy to set up routes on all of the nodes
• the endpoints cause the traffic to be routed to the control plane nodes

Note that we wanted to just set externalIPs on the original default/kubernetes, but that would prevent traffic from being routed to it from the control nodes, due to iptables rules. LoadBalancer types allow local traffic.

Core Control Loop

On startup, the CCM sets up the following control loop structures:

1. Implement the cloud-provider interface, providing primarily the following API calls:
   • Initialize()
   • InstancesV2()
   • LoadBalancer()
2. In Initialize:
   1. If BGP is configured, enable BGP on the project
   2. If FIP control plane management is enabled, create an informer for Service, Node and Endpoints, updating the control plane FIP as needed.

BGP Configuration

If a loadbalancer is enabled, the CCM enables BGP for the project and enables it by default on all nodes as they come up. It retrieves the ASNs from the Cherry Servers API and sets it for each server instance.

The set of servers on which BGP will be enabled can be filtered as well, using the the options in configuration. Value for node selector should be a valid Kubernetes label selector (e.g. key1=value1,key2=value2).

Node Annotations

The Cherry Servers CCM sets Kubernetes annotations on each cluster node.

• Node, or local, ASN, default annotation cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-node-asn
• Peer ASN, default annotation cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-peer-asn
• Peer IP, default annotation cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-peer-ip
• Source IP to use when communicating with peer, default annotation cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-src-ip

These annotation names can be overridden, if you so choose, using the options in configuration.

Note that the annotations for BGP peering are a pattern. There is one annotation per data point per peer, following the pattern cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-{{n}}-<info>, where:

• {{n}} is the number of the peer, always starting with 0
• <info> is the relevant information, such as node-asn or peer-ip

For example:

• cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-0-peer-asn - ASN of peer 0
• cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-1-peer-asn - ASN of peer 1
• cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-0-peer-ip - IP of peer 0
• cherryservers.com/bgp-peers-1-peer-ip - IP of peer 1

Floating IP Configuration

If a loadbalancer is enabled, CCM creates a Cherry Servers Floating IP (FIP) reservation for each Service of type=LoadBalancer. It tags the Reservation with the following tags:

• usage="cloud-provider-cherry-auto"
• service="<service-hash>" where <service-hash> is the sha256 hash of <namespace>/<service-name>. We do this so that the name of the service does not leak out to Cherry Servers itself.
• cluster=<clusterID> where <clusterID> is the UID of the immutable kube-system namespace. We do this so that if someone runs two clusters in the same project, and there is one Service in each cluster with the same namespace and name, then the two FIPs will not conflict.

Building

For information on how to build the CCM, as opposed to just using a released version, and how to run it locally for development, see BUILD.md.