AWS ENI

The AWS ENI allocator is specific to Cilium deployments running in the AWS cloud and performs IP allocation based on IPs of AWS Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI) by communicating with the AWS EC2 API.

The architecture ensures that only a single operator communicates with the EC2 service API to avoid rate-limiting issues in large clusters. A pre-allocation watermark is used to maintain a number of IP addresses to be available for use on nodes at all time without needing to contact the EC2 API when a new pod is scheduled in the cluster.

Note that Cilium currently does not support IPv6-only ENIs. Cilium support for IPv6 ENIs is being tracked in GitHub issue 18405, and the related feature of assigning IPv6 prefixes in GitHub issue 19251.

Architecture

The AWS ENI allocator builds on top of the CRD-backed allocator. Each node creates a ciliumnodes.cilium.io custom resource matching the node name when Cilium starts up for the first time on that node. It contacts the EC2 metadata API to retrieve the instance ID, instance type, and VPC information, then it populates the custom resource with this information. ENI allocation parameters are provided as agent configuration option and are passed into the custom resource as well.

The Cilium operator listens for new ciliumnodes.cilium.io custom resources and starts managing the IPAM aspect automatically. It scans the EC2 instances for existing ENIs with associated IPs and makes them available via the spec.ipam.available field. It will then constantly monitor the used IP addresses in the status.ipam.used field and automatically create ENIs and allocate more IPs as needed to meet the IP pre-allocation watermark. This ensures that there are always IPs available.

The selection of subnets to use for allocation as well as attachment of security groups to new ENIs can be controlled separately for each node. This makes it possible to hand out pod IPs with differing security groups on individual nodes.

The corresponding datapath is described in section AWS ENI.

Configuration

The Cilium agent and operator must be run with the option --ipam=eni or the option ipam: eni must be set in the ConfigMap. This will enable ENI allocation in both the node agent and operator.
In most scenarios, it makes sense to automatically create the ciliumnodes.cilium.io custom resource when the agent starts up on a node for the first time. To enable this, specify the option --auto-create-cilium-node-resource or set auto-create-cilium-node-resource: "true" in the ConfigMap.
If IPs are limited, run the Operator with option --aws-release-excess-ips=true. When enabled, operator checks the number of IPs regularly and attempts to release excess free IPs from ENI.
It is generally a good idea to enable metrics in the Operator as well with the option --enable-metrics. See the section Running Prometheus & Grafana for additional information how to install and run Prometheus including the Grafana dashboard.
By default, ENIs will be tagged with the cluster name, to allow Cilium Operator to garbage collect these ENIs if left dangling. The cluster name is either extracted from Cilium’s own cluster-name flag or from the aws:eks:cluster-name tag on the operator’s EC2 instance. If neither cluster names are available, a static default cluster name is assumed and ENI garbage collection will be performed across all such unnamed clusters. You may override this behavior by setting a cluster-specific --eni-gc-tags tag set.

Custom ENI Configuration

Custom ENI configuration can be defined with a custom CNI configuration ConfigMap:

Create a CNI configuration

Create a cni-config.yaml file based on the template below. Fill in the subnet-tags field, assuming that the subnets in AWS have the tags applied to them:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: cni-configuration
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  cni-config: |-
    {
      "cniVersion":"0.3.1",
      "name":"cilium",
      "plugins": [
        {
          "cniVersion":"0.3.1",
          "type":"cilium-cni",
          "eni": {
            "subnet-tags":{
              "foo":"true"
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }

Additional parameters may be configured in the eni or ipam section of the CNI configuration file. See the list of ENI allocation parameters below for a reference of the supported options.

Deploy the ConfigMap:

kubectl apply -f cni-config.yaml

Configure Cilium with subnet-tags-filter

Using the instructions above to deploy Cilium and CNI config, specify the following additional arguments to Helm:

--set cni.customConf=true \
--set cni.configMap=cni-configuration

ENI Allocation Parameters

The following parameters are available to control the ENI creation and IP allocation:

InstanceType

The AWS EC2 instance type

This field is automatically populated when using ``–auto-create-cilium-node-resource``

spec.eni.vpc-id

The VPC identifier used to create ENIs and select AWS subnets for IP allocation.

This field is automatically populated when using ``–auto-create-cilium-node-resource``

spec.eni.availability-zone

The availability zone used to create ENIs and select AWS subnets for IP allocation.

This field is automatically populated when using ``–auto-create-cilium-node-resource``

spec.eni.node-subnet-id

The subnet ID of the first ENI of a node. Used as a fallback for subnet selection in the case where no subnet IDs or tags are configured.

This field is automatically populated when using ``–auto-create-cilium-node-resource``

spec.ipam.min-allocate

The minimum number of IPs that must be allocated when the node is first bootstrapped. It defines the minimum base socket of addresses that must be available. After reaching this watermark, the PreAllocate and MaxAboveWatermark logic takes over to continue allocating IPs.

If unspecified, no minimum number of IPs is required.

spec.ipam.max-allocate

The maximum number of IPs that can be allocated to the node. When the current amount of allocated IPs will approach this value, the considered value for PreAllocate will decrease down to 0 in order to not attempt to allocate more addresses than defined.

If unspecified, no maximum number of IPs will be enforced.

spec.ipam.pre-allocate

The number of IP addresses that must be available for allocation at all times. It defines the buffer of addresses available immediately without requiring for the operator to get involved.

If unspecified, this value defaults to 8.

spec.ipam.max-above-watermark

The maximum number of addresses to allocate beyond the addresses needed to reach the PreAllocate watermark. Going above the watermark can help reduce the number of API calls to allocate IPs, e.g. when a new ENI is allocated, as many secondary IPs as possible are allocated. Limiting the amount can help reduce waste of IPs.

If let unspecified, the value defaults to 0.

spec.eni.first-interface-index

The index of the first ENI to use for IP allocation, e.g. if the node has eth0, eth1, eth2 and FirstInterfaceIndex is set to 1, then only eth1 and eth2 will be used for IP allocation, eth0 will be ignored for PodIP allocation.

If unspecified, this value defaults to 0 which means that eth0 will be used for pod IPs.

spec.eni.security-group-tags

The list tags which will be used to filter the security groups to attach to any ENI that is created and attached to the instance.

If unspecified, the security group ids passed in spec.eni.security-groups field will be used.

spec.eni.security-groups

The list of security group ids to attach to any ENI that is created and attached to the instance.

If unspecified, the security group ids of eth0 will be used.

spec.eni.subnet-ids

The subnet IDs used to select the AWS subnets for IP allocation. This is an additional requirement on top of requiring to match the availability zone and VPC of the instance. This parameter is mutually exclusive and has priority over spec.eni.subnet-tags.

If unspecified, it will let the operator pick any available subnet in the AZ with the most IP addresses available.

spec.eni.subnet-tags

The tags used to select the AWS subnets for IP allocation. This is an additional requirement on top of requiring to match the availability zone and VPC of the instance.

If unspecified, no tags are required.

spec.eni.exclude-interface-tags

The tags used to exclude interfaces from IP allocation. Any ENI attached to a node which matches this set of tags will be ignored by Cilium and may be used for other purposes. This parameter can be used in combination with subnet-tags or first-interface-index to exclude additional interfaces.

If unspecified, no tags are used to exclude interfaces.

spec.eni.delete-on-termination

Remove the ENI when the instance is terminated

If unspecified, this option is enabled.

Operational Details

Cache of ENIs, Subnets, and VPCs

The operator maintains a list of all EC2 ENIs, VPCs and subnets associated with the AWS account in a cache. For this purpose, the operator performs the following three EC2 API operations:

DescribeNetworkInterfaces

DescribeSubnets

DescribeVpcs

The cache is updated once per minute or after an IP allocation or ENI creation has been performed. When triggered based on an allocation or creation, the operation is performed at most once per second.

Publication of available ENI IPs

Following the update of the cache, all CiliumNode custom resources representing nodes are updated to publish eventual new IPs that have become available.

In this process, all ENIs with an interface index greater than spec.eni.first-interface-index are scanned for all available IPs. All IPs found are added to spec.ipam.available. Each ENI meeting this criteria is also added to status.eni.enis.

If this update caused the custom resource to change, the custom resource is updated using the Kubernetes API methods Update() and/or UpdateStatus() if available.

Determination of ENI IP deficits or excess

The operator constantly monitors all nodes and detects deficits in available ENI IP addresses. The check to recognize a deficit is performed on two occasions:

When a CiliumNode custom resource is updated

All nodes are scanned in a regular interval (once per minute)

If --aws-release-excess-ips is enabled, the check to recognize IP excess is performed at the interval based scan.

When determining whether a node has a deficit in IP addresses, the following calculation is performed:

availableIPs := len(spec.ipam.pool)
neededIPs = max(spec.ipam.pre-allocate - (availableIPs - len(status.ipam.used)), spec.ipam.min-allocate - availableIPs)
if spec.ipam.max-allocate > 0 {
 neededIPs = min(max(spec.ipam.max-allocate - availableIPs, 0), neededIPs)
}

For excess IP calculation:

availableIPs := len(spec.ipam.pool)
upperBound := spec.ipam.min-allocate + spec.ipam.max-above-watermark
switch {
case availableIPs <= upperBound:
  excessIPs = 0
case len(status.ipam.used) <= upperBound && len(status.ipam.used) + spec.ipam.pre-allocate <= upperBound:
  excessIPs = availableIPs - upperBound
default:
  excessIPs = max(availableIPs - len(status.ipam.used) - upperBound, 0)
}

Upon detection of a deficit, the node is added to the list of nodes which require IP address allocation. When a deficit is detected using the interval based scan, the allocation order of nodes is determined based on the severity of the deficit, i.e. the node with the biggest deficit will be at the front of the allocation queue. Nodes that need to release IPs are behind nodes that need allocation.

The allocation queue is handled on demand but at most once per second.

IP Allocation

When performing IP allocation for a node with an address deficit, the operator first looks at the ENIs which are already attached to the instance represented by the CiliumNode resource. All ENIs with an interface index greater than spec.eni.first-interface-index are considered for use.

Note

In order to not use eth0 for IP allocation, set spec.eni.first-interface-index to 1 to skip the first interface in line.

The operator will then pick the first already allocated ENI which meets the following criteria:

The ENI has addresses associated which are not yet used or the number of addresses associated with the ENI is lesser than the instance type specific limit.

The subnet associated with the ENI has IPs available for allocation

The following formula is used to determine how many IPs are allocated on the ENI:

// surgeAllocate kicks in if numPendingPods is greater than NeededAddresses
min(AvailableOnSubnet, min(AvailableOnENI, NeededAddresses + spec.ipam.max-above-watermark + surgeAllocate))

Note

In scenarios where the pre-allocated number is lower than the number of pending pods on the node, the operator will pro-actively allocate more than the pre-allocated number of IPs to avoid having to wait for the next allocation cycles.

This means that the number of IPs allocated in a single allocation cycle can be less than what is required to fulfill spec.ipam.pre-allocate.

In order to allocate the IPs, the method AssignPrivateIpAddresses of the EC2 service API is called. When no more ENIs are available meeting the above criteria, a new ENI is created.

IP Release

When performing IP release for a node with IP excess, the operator scans ENIs attached to the node with an interface index greater than spec.eni.first-interface-index and selects an ENI with the most free IPs available for release. The following formula is used to determine how many IPs are available for release on the ENI:

min(FreeOnENI, (FreeIPs - spec.ipam.pre-allocate - spec.ipam.max-above-watermark))

Operator releases IPs from the selected ENI, if there is still excess free IP not released, operator will attempt to release in next release cycle.

In order to release the IPs, the method UnassignPrivateIpAddresses of the EC2 service API is called. There is no limit on ENIs per subnet so ENIs are remained on the node.

ENI Creation

As long as an instance type is capable allocating additional ENIs, ENIs are allocated automatically based on demand.

When allocating an ENI, the first operation performed is to identify the best subnet. This is done by searching through all subnets and finding a subnet that matches the following criteria:

The VPC ID of the subnet matches spec.eni.vpc-id

The Availability Zone of the subnet matches spec.eni.availability-zone

If set, spec.eni.subnet-ids or spec.eni.subnet-tags are used to further narrow down the set of candidate subnets. Any subnet with an ID in subnet-ids is a candidate, whereas a subnet must match all subnet-tags to be candidate. Note that when subnet-ids is set, subnet-tags are ignored. If multiple subnets match, the subnet with the most available addresses is selected.

If neither subnet-ids nor subnet-tags are set, the operator consults spec.eni.node-subnet-id, attempting to create the ENI in the same subnet as the primary ENI of the instance. If this is not possible (e.g. if there are not enough IPs in said subnet), the operator will look for the subnet in the same route table with the node’s subnet. If it’s not possible, falls back to allocating the IP in the largest subnet matching VPC and Availability Zone.

After selecting the subnet, operator will check selected subnets is in the same route table with the node’s subnet. It will generate the warning log if there is mismatch to prevent the unexpected routing behavior.

After selecting the subnet, the interface index is determined. For this purpose, all existing ENIs are scanned and the first unused index greater than spec.eni.first-interface-index is selected.

After determining the subnet and interface index, the ENI is created and attached to the EC2 instance using the methods CreateNetworkInterface and AttachNetworkInterface of the EC2 API.

The security group ids attached to the ENI are computed in the following order:

The field spec.eni.security-groups is consulted first. If this is set then these will be the security group ids attached to the newly created ENI.

The filed spec.eni.security-group-tags is consulted. If this is set then the operator will list all security groups in the account and will attach to the ENI the ones that match the list of tags passed.

Finally if none of the above fields are set then the newly created ENI will inherit the security group ids of eth0 of the machine.

The description will be in the following format:

"Cilium-CNI (<EC2 instance ID>)"

If the ENI tagging feature is enabled then the ENI will be tagged with the provided information.

ENI Deletion Policy

ENIs can be marked for deletion when the EC2 instance to which the ENI is attached to is terminated. In order to enable this, the option spec.eni.delete-on-termination can be enabled. If enabled, the ENI is modified after creation using ModifyNetworkInterfaceAttribute to specify this deletion policy.

Node Termination

When a node or instance terminates, the Kubernetes apiserver will send a node deletion event. This event will be picked up by the operator and the operator will delete the corresponding ciliumnodes.cilium.io custom resource.

Required Privileges

The following EC2 privileges are required by the Cilium operator in order to perform ENI creation and IP allocation:

DeleteNetworkInterface

DescribeNetworkInterfaces

DescribeSubnets

DescribeVpcs

DescribeRouteTables

DescribeSecurityGroups

CreateNetworkInterface

AttachNetworkInterface

ModifyNetworkInterfaceAttribute

AssignPrivateIpAddresses

CreateTags

If ENI GC is enabled (which is the default), and --cluster-name and --eni-gc-tags are not set to custom values:

DescribeTags

If release excess IP enabled:

UnassignPrivateIpAddresses

If --instance-tags-filter is used:

DescribeInstances

EC2 instance types ENI limits

The EC2 Instance ENI limits is only fetched from the EC2 API dynamically from 1.18 onwards.

This requires the EC2 having DescribeInstanceTypes IAM permission, which is included in the EKS built-in policy AmazonEKSWorkerNodePolicy. you can find more details at AmazonEKSWorkerNodePolicy.

Metrics

The IPAM metrics are documented in the section IPAM.

Node Configuration

The IP address and routes on ENIs attached to the instance will be managed by the Cilium agent. Therefore, any system service trying to manage newly attached network interfaces will interfere with Cilium’s configuration. Common scenarios are NetworkManager or systemd-networkd automatically performing DHCP on these interfaces or removing Cilium’s IP address when the carrier is temporarily lost. Be sure to disable these services or configure your Linux distribution to not manage the newly attached ENI devices. The following examples configure all Linux network devices named eth* except eth0 as unmanaged.

# cat <<EOF >/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/99-unmanaged-devices.conf
[keyfile]
unmanaged-devices=interface-name:eth*,except:interface-name:eth0
EOF
# systemctl reload NetworkManager

# cat <<EOF >/etc/systemd/network/99-unmanaged-devices.network
[Match]
Name=eth[1-9]*

[Link]
Unmanaged=yes
EOF
# systemctl restart systemd-networkd