Configuring hybrid networking

As a cluster administrator, you can configure the Red Hat OpenShift Networking OVN-Kubernetes network plugin to allow Linux and Windows nodes to host Linux and Windows workloads, respectively.

Configuring hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes

You can configure your cluster to use hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes. This allows a hybrid cluster that supports different node networking configurations. For example, this is necessary to run both Linux and Windows nodes in a cluster.

You must configure hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes during the installation of your cluster. You cannot switch to hybrid networking after the installation process.

Prerequisites

  • You defined OVNKubernetes for the networking.networkType parameter in the install-config.yaml file. See the installation documentation for configuring OKD network customizations on your chosen cloud provider for more information.

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

    1. $ ./openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory>

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

  2. Create a stub manifest file for the advanced network configuration that is named cluster-network-03-config.yml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    1. $ cat <<EOF > <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml
    2. apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    3. kind: Network
    4. metadata:
    5.   name: cluster
    6. spec:
    7. EOF

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

  3. Open the cluster-network-03-config.yml file in an editor and configure OVN-Kubernetes with hybrid networking, such as in the following example:

    Specify a hybrid networking configuration

    1. apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    2. kind: Network
    3. metadata:
    4.   name: cluster
    5. spec:
    6.   defaultNetwork:
    7.     ovnKubernetesConfig:
    8.       hybridOverlayConfig:
    9.         hybridClusterNetwork: (1)
    10.         - cidr: 10.132.0.0/14
    11.           hostPrefix: 23
    12.         hybridOverlayVXLANPort: 9898 (2)
    1Specify the CIDR configuration used for nodes on the additional overlay network. The hybridClusterNetwork CIDR cannot overlap with the clusterNetwork CIDR.
    2Specify a custom VXLAN port for the additional overlay network. This is required for running Windows nodes in a cluster installed on vSphere, and must not be configured for any other cloud provider. The custom port can be any open port excluding the default 4789 port. For more information on this requirement, see the Microsoft documentation on Pod-to-pod connectivity between hosts is broken.

    Windows Server Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC): Windows Server 2019 is not supported on clusters with a custom hybridOverlayVXLANPort value because this Windows server version does not support selecting a custom VXLAN port.

  4. Save the cluster-network-03-config.yml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

Complete any further installation configurations, and then create your cluster. Hybrid networking is enabled when the installation process is finished.

Additional resources