Configure IP pools

A workload is a container or VM that Calico handles the virtual networking for. In Kubernetes, workloads are pods. A workload endpoint is the virtual network interface a workload uses to connect to the Calico network.

IP pools are ranges of IP addresses that Calico uses for workload endpoints.

When we stood up the Kubernetes cluster, we set the pod CIDR, which is the range of IP addresses Kubernetes thinks the pods should be in. Many Kubernetes components use this setting to determine if an IP belongs to a pod, so you normally want all IP pools you configure to be subsets of the pod CIDR.

Let’s define two IP pools for use in this cluster. You can have a production-ready Calico install with only a single pool, but we define two so that we can show advanced networking later in this guide.

  1. cat > pool1.yaml <<EOF
  2. apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
  3. kind: IPPool
  4. metadata:
  5.   name: pool1
  6. spec:
  7.   cidr: 192.168.0.0/18
  8.   ipipMode: Never
  9.   natOutgoing: true
  10.   disabled: false
  11.   nodeSelector: all()
  12. EOF

The pod CIDR was 192.168.0.0/16. The /16 means 16 bits of a 32-bit IPv4 address is the fixed prefix, therefore 16 bits are freely variable within the CIDR, or about 64K addresses. For our first IP pool, we define the prefix 192.168.0.0/18, leaving only 14 bits free, or about 16K addresses for pods. This is enough for a very large Kubernetes cluster, and it still leaves a lot of room in the pod CIDR if we want to create some more IP pools.

Let’s define a second pool right now.

  1. cat > pool2.yaml <<EOF
  2. apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
  3. kind: IPPool
  4. metadata:
  5.   name: pool2
  6. spec:
  7.   cidr: 192.168.192.0/19
  8.   ipipMode: Never
  9.   natOutgoing: true
  10.   disabled: true
  11.   nodeSelector: all()
  12. EOF

In this second pool, we set disabled to true, meaning that Calico will not create new pods with addresses in the pool but will still recognize pods with these addresses as part of the Calico network. Later, in the test networking lab, we will enable this pool and demonstrate how to control which pools your pods are assigned addresses from.

The nodeSelector is a label selector which determines which nodes use the pool. They are both set to all() meaning all nodes can use the pools.

Add these pools to Calico

  1. calicoctl create -f pool1.yaml
  2. calicoctl create -f pool2.yaml

Verify the pools are created by

  1. calicoctl get ippools

You should see output similar to

  1. NAME    CIDR               SELECTOR
  2. pool1   192.168.0.0/18     all()
  3. pool2   192.168.192.0/19   all()

Next

Install CNI plugin