Installation using Azure CNI Powered by Cilium in AKS

This guide walks you through the installation of Cilium on AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) via the Azure Container Network Interface (CNI) Powered by Cilium option.

Create the cluster

Create an Azure CNI Powered by Cilium AKS cluster with network-plugin azure and --network-dataplane cilium. You can create the cluster either in podsubnet or overlay mode. In both modes, traffic is routed through the Azure Virtual Network Stack. The choice between these modes depends on the specific use case and requirements of the cluster. Refer to the related documentation to know more about these two modes.

az aks create -n <clusterName> -g <resourceGroupName> -l <location> \
--network-plugin azure \
--network-dataplane cilium \
--network-plugin-mode overlay \
--pod-cidr 192.168.0.0/16

az aks create -n <clusterName> -g <resourceGroupName> -l <location> \
--network-plugin azure \
--network-dataplane cilium \
--vnet-subnet-id /subscriptions/<subscriptionId>/resourceGroups/<resourceGroupName>/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/<vnetName>/subnets/nodesubnet \
--pod-subnet-id /subscriptions/<subscriptionId>/resourceGroups/<resourceGroupName>/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/<vnetName>/subnets/podsubnet

Validate the Installation

Warning

Make sure you install cilium-cli v0.15.0 or later. The rest of instructions do not work with older versions of cilium-cli. To confirm the cilium-cli version that’s installed in your system, run:

cilium version --client

See Cilium CLI upgrade notes for more details.

Install the latest version of the Cilium CLI. The Cilium CLI can be used to install Cilium, inspect the state of a Cilium installation, and enable/disable various features (e.g. clustermesh, Hubble).

CILIUM_CLI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium-cli/main/stable.txt)
CLI_ARCH=amd64
if [ "$(uname -m)" = "aarch64" ]; then CLI_ARCH=arm64; fi
curl -L --fail --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/download/${CILIUM_CLI_VERSION}/cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
sha256sum --check cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz.sha256sum
sudo tar xzvfC cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz /usr/local/bin
rm cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}

CILIUM_CLI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium-cli/main/stable.txt)
CLI_ARCH=amd64
if [ "$(uname -m)" = "arm64" ]; then CLI_ARCH=arm64; fi
curl -L --fail --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/download/${CILIUM_CLI_VERSION}/cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
shasum -a 256 -c cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz.sha256sum
sudo tar xzvfC cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz /usr/local/bin
rm cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}

To validate that Cilium has been properly installed, you can run

$ cilium status --wait
   /¯¯\
/¯¯\__/¯¯\    Cilium:         OK
\__/¯¯\__/    Operator:       OK
/¯¯\__/¯¯\    Hubble:         disabled
\__/¯¯\__/    ClusterMesh:    disabled
   \__/

DaemonSet         cilium             Desired: 2, Ready: 2/2, Available: 2/2
Deployment        cilium-operator    Desired: 2, Ready: 2/2, Available: 2/2
Containers:       cilium-operator    Running: 2
                  cilium             Running: 2
Image versions    cilium             quay.io/cilium/cilium:v1.9.5: 2
                  cilium-operator    quay.io/cilium/operator-generic:v1.9.5: 2

Run the following command to validate that your cluster has proper network connectivity:

$ cilium connectivity test
ℹ️  Monitor aggregation detected, will skip some flow validation steps
✨ [k8s-cluster] Creating namespace for connectivity check...
(...)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
📋 Test Report
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
✅ 69/69 tests successful (0 warnings)

Note

The connectivity test may fail to deploy due to too many open files in one or more of the pods. If you notice this error, you can increase the inotify resource limits on your host machine (see Pod errors due to “too many open files”).

Congratulations! You have a fully functional Kubernetes cluster with Cilium. 🎉

You can monitor as Cilium and all required components are being installed:

$ kubectl -n kube-system get pods --watch
NAME                                    READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
cilium-operator-cb4578bc5-q52qk         0/1     Pending             0          8s
cilium-s8w5m                            0/1     PodInitializing     0          7s
coredns-86c58d9df4-4g7dd                0/1     ContainerCreating   0          8m57s
coredns-86c58d9df4-4l6b2                0/1     ContainerCreating   0          8m57s

It may take a couple of minutes for all components to come up:

cilium-operator-cb4578bc5-q52qk         1/1     Running   0          4m13s
cilium-s8w5m                            1/1     Running   0          4m12s
coredns-86c58d9df4-4g7dd                1/1     Running   0          13m
coredns-86c58d9df4-4l6b2                1/1     Running   0          13m

You can deploy the “connectivity-check” to test connectivity between pods. It is recommended to create a separate namespace for this.

kubectl create ns cilium-test

Deploy the check with:

kubectl apply -n cilium-test -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium/1.16.3/examples/kubernetes/connectivity-check/connectivity-check.yaml

It will deploy a series of deployments which will use various connectivity paths to connect to each other. Connectivity paths include with and without service load-balancing and various network policy combinations. The pod name indicates the connectivity variant and the readiness and liveness gate indicates success or failure of the test:

$ kubectl get pods -n cilium-test
NAME                                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
echo-a-76c5d9bd76-q8d99                                  1/1     Running   0          66s
echo-b-795c4b4f76-9wrrx                                  1/1     Running   0          66s
echo-b-host-6b7fc94b7c-xtsff                             1/1     Running   0          66s
host-to-b-multi-node-clusterip-85476cd779-bpg4b          1/1     Running   0          66s
host-to-b-multi-node-headless-dc6c44cb5-8jdz8            1/1     Running   0          65s
pod-to-a-79546bc469-rl2qq                                1/1     Running   0          66s
pod-to-a-allowed-cnp-58b7f7fb8f-lkq7p                    1/1     Running   0          66s
pod-to-a-denied-cnp-6967cb6f7f-7h9fn                     1/1     Running   0          66s
pod-to-b-intra-node-nodeport-9b487cf89-6ptrt             1/1     Running   0          65s
pod-to-b-multi-node-clusterip-7db5dfdcf7-jkjpw           1/1     Running   0          66s
pod-to-b-multi-node-headless-7d44b85d69-mtscc            1/1     Running   0          66s
pod-to-b-multi-node-nodeport-7ffc76db7c-rrw82            1/1     Running   0          65s
pod-to-external-1111-d56f47579-d79dz                     1/1     Running   0          66s
pod-to-external-fqdn-allow-google-cnp-78986f4bcf-btjn7   1/1     Running   0          66s

Note

If you deploy the connectivity check to a single node cluster, pods that check multi-node functionalities will remain in the Pending state. This is expected since these pods need at least 2 nodes to be scheduled successfully.

Once done with the test, remove the cilium-test namespace:

kubectl delete ns cilium-test

Delegated Azure IPAM

Delegated Azure IPAM (IP Address Manager) manages the IP allocation for pods created in Azure CNI Powered by Cilium clusters. It assigns IPs that are routable in Azure Virtual Network stack. To know more about the Delegated Azure IPAM, see Azure Delegated IPAM.