Upgrade Guide

This upgrade guide is intended for Cilium running on Kubernetes. If you have questions, feel free to ping us on the Slack channel.

Warning

Read the full upgrade guide to understand all the necessary steps before performing them.

Do not upgrade to 1.9.0 before reading the section 1.9.1 Upgrade Notes and completing the required steps. Skipping this step may lead to an non-functional upgrade.

Running pre-flight check (Required)

When rolling out an upgrade with Kubernetes, Kubernetes will first terminate the pod followed by pulling the new image version and then finally spin up the new image. In order to reduce the downtime of the agent and to prevent ErrImagePull errors during upgrade, the pre-flight check pre-pulls the new image version. If you are running in Kubernetes Without kube-proxy mode you must also pass on the Kubernetes API Server IP and / or the Kubernetes API Server Port when generating the cilium-preflight.yaml file.

kubectl
Helm
kubectl (kubeproxy-free)
Helm (kubeproxy-free)
helm template cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  > cilium-preflight.yaml
kubectl create -f cilium-preflight.yaml

helm install cilium-preflight cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false

helm template cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  --set k8sServiceHost=API_SERVER_IP \
  --set k8sServicePort=API_SERVER_PORT \
  > cilium-preflight.yaml
kubectl create -f cilium-preflight.yaml

helm install cilium-preflight cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  --set k8sServiceHost=API_SERVER_IP \
  --set k8sServicePort=API_SERVER_PORT

After applying the cilium-preflight.yaml, ensure that the number of READY pods is the same number of Cilium pods running.

$ kubectl get daemonset -n kube-system | sed -n '1p;/cilium/p'
NAME                      DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR   AGE
cilium                    2         2         2       2            2           <none>          1h20m
cilium-pre-flight-check   2         2         2       2            2           <none>          7m15s

Once the number of READY pods are the equal, make sure the Cilium pre-flight deployment is also marked as READY 1/1. If it shows READY 0/1, consult the CNP Validation section and resolve issues with the deployment before continuing with the upgrade.

$ kubectl get deployment -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check -w
NAME                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
cilium-pre-flight-check   1/1     1            0           12s

Clean up pre-flight check

Once the number of READY for the preflight DaemonSet is the same as the number of cilium pods running and the preflight Deployment is marked as READY 1/1 you can delete the cilium-preflight and proceed with the upgrade.

kubectl
Helm
kubectl delete -f cilium-preflight.yaml

helm delete cilium-preflight --namespace=kube-system

Upgrading Cilium

Warning

Read the full upgrade guide to understand all the necessary steps before performing them.

Do not upgrade to 1.9.0 before reading the section 1.9.1 Upgrade Notes and completing the required steps. Skipping this step may lead to an non-functional upgrade.

Step 2: Use Helm to Upgrade your Cilium deployment

Helm can be used to either upgrade Cilium directly or to generate a new set of YAML files that can be used to upgrade an existing deployment via kubectl. By default, Helm will generate the new templates using the default values files packaged with each new release. You still need to ensure that you are specifying the equivalent options as used for the initial deployment, either by specifying a them at the command line or by committing the values to a YAML file. The 1.9 Helm options section describes how to determine the exact options that should be set based on the initial options used to install Cilium.

Note

First, make sure you have Helm 3 installed. Helm 2 is no longer supported.

Setup Helm repository:

helm repo add cilium https://helm.cilium.io/

To minimize datapath disruption during the upgrade, the upgradeCompatibility option should be set to the initial Cilium version which was installed in this cluster. Valid options are:

  • 1.7 if the initial install was Cilium 1.7.x or earlier.
  • 1.8 if the initial install was Cilium 1.8.x.
kubectl
Helm

Generate the required YAML file and deploy it:

helm template cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --set upgradeCompatibility=1.X \
  --namespace kube-system \
  > cilium.yaml
kubectl apply -f cilium.yaml

Deploy Cilium release via Helm:

helm upgrade cilium cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set upgradeCompatibility=1.X

Note

Make sure that you are using the equivalent options as for the initial deployment. Cilium 1.9 renamed many of the Helm options to better support specifying Cilium configuration via a values.yaml file. Consult the 1.9 Helm options to determine the 1.9 equivalent options for options you previously specified when initially installing Cilium.

For example, an 1.8 installation with the following options:

--namespace=kube-system \\
--set global.k8sServiceHost=API_SERVER_IP \\
--set global.k8sServicePort=API_SERVER_PORT \\
--set config.ipam=kubernetes \\
--set global.kubeProxyReplacement=strict

Can be upgraded using the options below:

--namespace=kube-system \\
--set upgradeCompatibility=1.8 \\
--set k8sServiceHost=API_SERVER_IP \\
--set k8sServicePort=API_SERVER_PORT \\
--set ipam.mode=kubernetes \\
--set kubeProxyReplacement=strict

Instead of using --set, you can also save the values relative to your deployment in a YAML file and use it to regenerate the YAML for the latest Cilium version. Running any of the previous commands will overwrite the existing cluster’s ConfigMap so it is critical to preserve any existing options, either by setting them at the command line or storing them in a YAML file, similar to:

agent: true
upgradeCompatibility: "1.8"
ipam:
  mode: "kubernetes"
k8sServiceHost: "API_SERVER_IP"
k8sServicePort: "API_SERVER_PORT"
kubeProxyReplacement: "strict"

You can then upgrade using this values file by running:

helm upgrade cilium cilium/cilium --version 1.9.11 \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  -f my-values.yaml

Step 3: Rolling Back

Occasionally, it may be necessary to undo the rollout because a step was missed or something went wrong during upgrade. To undo the rollout run:

kubectl
Helm
kubectl rollout undo daemonset/cilium -n kube-system

helm history cilium --namespace=kube-system
helm rollback cilium [REVISION] --namespace=kube-system

This will revert the latest changes to the Cilium DaemonSet and return Cilium to the state it was in prior to the upgrade.

Note

When rolling back after new features of the new minor version have already been consumed, consult the Version Specific Notes to check and prepare for incompatible feature use before downgrading/rolling back. This step is only required after new functionality introduced in the new minor version has already been explicitly used by creating new resources or by opting into new features via the ConfigMap.

Version Specific Notes

This section documents the specific steps required for upgrading from one version of Cilium to another version of Cilium. There are particular version transitions which are suggested by the Cilium developers to avoid known issues during upgrade, then subsequently there are sections for specific upgrade transitions, ordered by version.

The table below lists suggested upgrade transitions, from a specified current version running in a cluster to a specified target version. If a specific combination is not listed in the table below, then it may not be safe. In that case, consider performing incremental upgrades between versions (e.g. upgrade from 1.7.x to 1.8.y first, and to 1.9.z only afterwards).

Current version Target version L3 impact L7 impact
1.8.x 1.9.y Minimal to None Clients must reconnect[1]
1.7.x 1.8.y Minimal to None Clients must reconnect[1]

Annotations:

  1. Clients must reconnect: Any traffic flowing via a proxy (for example, because an L7 policy is in place) will be disrupted during upgrade. Endpoints communicating via the proxy must reconnect to re-establish connections.

1.9.1 Upgrade Notes

  • Helm option nodeSelector is removed, please use the option for respective component (e.g. operator.nodeSelector, etcd.nodeSelector and preflight.nodeSelector) instead.

1.9 Upgrade Notes

  • Cilium has bumped the minimal Kubernetes version supported to v1.12.0.
  • Connections between Hubble server and Hubble Relay instances is now secured via mutual TLS (mTLS) by default. Users who have opted to enable Hubble Relay in v1.8 (a beta feature) will experience disruptions of the Hubble Relay service during the upgrade process. Users may opt to disable mTLS by using the following Helm options when upgrading (strongly discouraged):
    • hubble.tls.enabled=false
    • hubble.tls.auto.enabled=false
  • Cilium has upgraded its CRDs to v1, from v1beta1. Users must run the preflight checker to ensure that the custom resources installed inside the cluster are well-formed.
  • The Cilium agent is now enforcing API rate limits for certain API calls. See API Rate Limiting for more information.
  • Cilium Helm charts have been completely re-factored. Most of the values used to drive Helm charts have been re-scoped from global values to be part of a single Cilium Helm chart. When upgrading from a previous version of Cilium, the values will need to be provided using the new structure. In most cases the prefixes of global., agent., and config. can be dropped from the previously used value name. As an example, if you previously ran the command helm install --set global.ipv4.enabled=true you would now run helm install --set ipv4.enabled=true. The following section calls out specific values where the prefix cannot be simply dropped followed by a full table of old and new Helm values.
  • On Linux kernel v5.10 and above, running the agent with BPF kube-proxy replacement under direct routing operation as well as BPF-based masquerading will bypass subsystems like netfilter/iptables in the host namespace in order to significantly improve throughput and latency for the BPF datapath given routing is not performed in the host stack but directly in BPF instead. To opt-out from this behavior, the Helm option bpf.hostRouting=true can be used. If the underlying kernel does not implement the needed BPF features, then the agent will fallback and rely on host routing automatically.
  • For the agent, operator, clustermesh-apiserver and hubble-relay, the gops listener has been mapped to fixed ports instead of port auto-binding. Meaning, the agent’s gops server will listen on 9890, the operator on 9891, the clustermesh-apiserver on 9892, and hubble-relay on port 9893 by default. If needed, the port can also be remapped for each through using the --gops-port flag.

1.9 Helm options

The following values have been renamed:

<= v1.8.x Value >= 1.9.x Renamed Value
agent.enabled agent
config.bpfMasquerade bpf.masquerade
config.bpfClockProbe bpf.clockProbe
config.ipam ipam.mode
global.operatorPrometheus.* operator.prometheus.*
hubble-relay.* hubble.relay.*
hubble-relay.numReplicas hubble.relay.replicas
hubble-ui.* hubble.ui.*
operator.numReplicas operator.replicas
global.nodePort.acceleration loadBalancer.acceleration
global.nodePort.mode loadBalancer.mode

Full list of updated Helm values:

<= v1.8.x Value >= 1.9.x Value
global.autoDirectNodeRoutes autoDirectNodeRoutes
global.azure.enabled azure.enabled
config.bpfClockProbe bpf.clockProbe
global.bpf.ctAnyMax bpf.ctAnyMax
global.bpf.ctTcpMax bpf.ctTcpMax
global.bpf.lbMapMax bpf.lbMapMax
config.bpf.mapDynamicSizeRatio bpf.mapDynamicSizeRatio
config.bpfMasquerade bpf.masquerade
global.bpf.monitorAggregation bpf.monitorAggregation
global.bpf.monitorFlags bpf.monitorFlags
global.bpf.monitorInterval bpf.monitorInterval
global.bpf.natMax bpf.natMax
global.bpf.neighMax bpf.neighMax
global.bpf.policyMapMax bpf.policyMapMax
global.bpf.preallocateMaps bpf.preallocateMaps
global.bpf.waitForMount bpf.waitForMount
config.bpfMasquerade bpf.masquerade
global.cleanBpfState cleanBpfState
global.cleanState cleanState
global.cluster.id cluster.id
global.cluster.name cluster.name
global.cni.binPath cni.binPath
global.cni.chainingMode cni.chainingMode
global.cni.confPath cni.confPath
global.cni.customConf cni.customConf
global.cni.hostConfDirMountPath cni.hostConfDirMountPath
global.cni.install cni.install
config.crdWaitTimeout crdWaitTimeout
config.enableCnpStatusUpdates enableCnpStatusUpdates
config.conntrackGCInterval conntrackGCInterval
global.containerRuntime.integration containerRuntime.integration
global.daemon.runPath daemon.runPath
global.datapathMode datapathMode
global.debug.enabled debug.enabled
config.disableEnvoyVersionCheck disableEnvoyVersionCheck
global.egressMasqueradeInterfaces egressMasqueradeInterfaces
config.enableIdentityMark enableIdentityMark
global.enableXTSocketFallback enableXTSocketFallback
agent.enabled agent
global.encryption.enabled encryption.enabled
global.encryption.interface encryption.interface
global.encryption.keyFile encryption.keyFile
global.encryption.mountPath encryption.mountPath
global.encryption.nodeEncryption encryption.nodeEncryption
global.encryption.secretName encryption.secretName
global.endpointHealthChecking.enabled endpointHealthChecking.enabled
global.endpointRoutes.enabled endpointRoutes.enabled
global.eni eni
global. etcd.clusterDomain etcd.clusterDomain
global.etcd.clusterSize etcd.clusterSize
global.etcd.enabled etcd.enabled
global.etcd.endpoints etcd.endpoints
global.etcd.k8sService etcd.k8sService
global.etcd.managed etcd.managed
global.etcd.ssl etcd.ssl
global.externalIPs.enabled externalIPs.enabled
global.flannel.enabled flannel.enabled
global.flannel.masterDevice flannel.masterDevice
global.flannel.uninstallOnExit flannel.uninstallOnExit
global.fragmentTracking fragmentTracking
global.gke.enabled gke.enabled
config.healthChecking healthChecking
global.healthPort healthPort
global.hostFirewall hostFirewall
global.hostPort.enabled hostPort.enabled
global.hostServices.enabled hostServices.enabled
global.hostServices.protocols hostServices.protocols
global.hubble.enabled hubble.enabled
global.hubble.eventQueueSize hubble.eventQueueSize
global.hubble.flowBufferSize hubble.flowBufferSize
global.hubble.listenAddress hubble.listenAddress
global.hubble.metrics.enabled hubble.metrics.enabled
global.hubble.metrics.port hubble.metrics.port
global.hubble.metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled hubble.metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled
global.hubble.metricsServer hubble.metricsServer
hubble-relay.dialTimeout hubble.relay.dialTimeout
hubble-relay.enabled hubble.relay.enabled
hubble-relay.image.pullPolicy hubble.relay.image.pullPolicy
hubble-relay.image.repository hubble.relay.image.repository
hubble-relay.image.tag hubble.relay.image.tag
hubble-relay.listenHost hubble.relay.listenHost
hubble-relay.listenPort hubble.relay.listenPort
hubble-relay.numReplicas hubble.relay.replicas
hubble-relay.retryTimeout hubble.relay.retryTimeout
hubble-relay.servicePort hubble.relay.servicePort
hubble-relay.sortBufferDrainTimeout hubble.relay.sortBufferDrainTimeout
hubble-relay.sortBufferLenMax hubble.relay.sortBufferLenMax
global.hubble.socketPath hubble.socketPath
hubble-ui.enabled hubble.ui.enabled
hubble-ui.image.pullPolicy hubble.ui.frontend.image.pullPolicy
hubble-ui.image.repository hubble.ui.frontend.image.repository
hubble-ui.image.tag hubble.ui.frontend.image.tag
hubble-ui.ingress.enabled hubble.ui.ingress.enabled
hubble-ui.ingress.hosts hubble.ui.ingress.hosts
hubble.-ui.ingress.path hubble.ui.ingress.path
hubble-ui.ingress.tls hubble.ui.ingress.tls
global.identityAllocationMode identityAllocationMode
config.identityChangeGracePeriod identityChangeGracePeriod
global.identityGCInterval identityGCInterval
global.identityHeartbeatTimeout identityHeartbeatTimeout
global.pullPolicy image.pullPolicy
agent.image image.repository
global.tag image.tag
global.installIptablesRules installIptablesRules
global.ipMasqAgent.enabled ipMasqAgent.enabled
config.ipam ipam.mode
global.ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv4MaskSize ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv4MaskSize
global.ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv4PodCIDR ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv4PodCIDR
global.ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv6MaskSize ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv6MaskSize
global.ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv6PodCIDR ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv6PodCIDR
global.iptablesLockTimeout iptablesLockTimeout
global.ipv4.enabled ipv4.enabled
global.ipv6.enabled ipv6.enabled
global.ipvlan.enabled ipvlan.enabled
global.ipvlan.masterDevice ipvlan.masterDevice
global.k8sServiceHost k8sServiceHost
global.k8sServicePort k8sServicePort
global.k8s.requireIPv4PodCIDR k8s.requireIPv4PodCIDR
agent.keepDeprecatedLabels keepDeprecatedLabels
agent.keepDeprecatedProbes keepDeprecatedProbes
global.kubeProxyReplacement kubeProxyReplacement
global.l7Proxy l7Proxy
config.labels labels
global.logSystemLoad logSystemLoad
global.maglev.tableSize maglev.tableSize
global.masquerade masquerade
agent.monitor.* monitor.*
global.nodePort.acceleration loadBalancer.acceleration
global.nodePort.autoProtectPortRange nodePort.autoProtectPortRange
global.nodePort.bindProtection nodePort.bindProtection
global.nodePort.enableHealthCheck nodePort.enableHealthCheck
global.nodePort.enabled nodePort.enabled
global.nodePort.mode loadBalancer.mode
global.nodePort.range nodePort.range
global.nodeinit.bootstrapFile nodeinit.bootstrapFile
global.nodeinit.enabled nodeinit.enabled
global.pullPolicy nodeinit.image.pullPolicy
nodeinit.image nodeinit.image.repository
global.tag nodeinit.image.tag
global.endpointGCInterval operator.endpointGCInterval
global.identityGCInterval operator.identityGCInterval
global.identityHeartbeatTimeout operator.identityHeartbeatTimeout
global.pullPolicy operator.image.pullPolicy
operator.image operator.image.repository
global.tag operator.image.tag
global.operatorPrometheus.enabled operator.prometheus.enabled
global.operatorPrometheus.port operator.prometheus.port
global.prometheus.serviceMonitor.enabled operator.prometheus.serviceMonitor.enabled
operator.numReplicas operator.replicas
config.policyAuditMode policyAuditMode
agent.policyEnforcementMode policyEnforcementMode
global.pprof.enabled pprof.enabled
global.prometheus.enabled prometheus.enabled
global.prometheus.port prometheus.port
global.prometheus.serviceMonitor.enabled prometheus.serviceMonitor.enabled
global.proxy.sidecarImageRegex proxy.sidecarImageRegex
global.remoteNodeIdentity remoteNodeIdentity
agent.sleepAfterInit sleepAfterInit
global.sockops.enabled sockops.enabled
global.synchronizeK8sNodes synchronizeK8sNodes
global.tls.enabled tls.enabled
global.tls.secretsBackend tls.secretsBackend
global.tunnel tunnel
global.wellKnownIdentities.enabled wellKnownIdentities.enabled

Renamed Metrics

The following metrics have been renamed:

  • cilium_operator_ipam_ec2_resync to cilium_operator_ipam_resync
  • ipam_cilium_operator_api_duration_seconds to cilium_operator_ec2_api_duration_seconds
  • ipam_cilium_operator_api_rate_limit_duration_seconds to cilium_operator_ec2_api_rate_limit_duration_seconds

New Metrics

  • cilium_endpoint_regenerations_total counts of all endpoint regenerations that have completed, tagged by outcome.
  • cilium_k8s_client_api_calls_total is number of API calls made to kube-apiserver labeled by host, method and return code.
  • cilium_kvstore_quorum_errors_total counts the number of kvstore quorum loss errors. The label error indicates the type of error.

Deprecated Metrics/Labels

  • cilium_endpoint_regenerations is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use cilium_endpoint_regenerations_total instead.
  • cilium_k8s_client_api_calls_counter``is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use ``cilium_k8s_client_api_calls_total instead.
  • cilium_identity_count is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use cilium_identity instead.
  • cilium_policy_count is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use cilium_policy instead.
  • cilium_policy_import_errors is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use cilium_policy_import_errors_total instead.
  • Label mapName in cilium_bpf_map_ops_total is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use label map_name instead.
  • Label eventType in cilium_nodes_all_events_received_total is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use label event_type instead.
  • Label responseCode in *api_duration_seconds is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use label response_code instead.
  • Label subnetId in cilium_operator_ipam_allocation_ops is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use label subnet_id instead.
  • Label subnetId in cilium_operator_ipam_release_ops is deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use label subnet_id instead.
  • Label subnetId and availabilityZone in cilium_operator_ipam_available_ips_per_subnet are deprecated and will be removed in 1.10. Please use label subnet_id and availability_zone instead.
  • Label scope in cilium_endpoint_regeneration_time_stats_seconds had its buildDuration value renamed to total.
  • Label scope in cilium_policy_regeneration_time_stats_seconds had its buildDuration value renamed to total.

Deprecated options

  • k8s-watcher-queue-size: This option does not have any effect since 1.8 and is planned to be removed in 1.10.

Removed options

  • disable-ipv4, ipv4-cluster-cidr-mask-size, keep-bpf-templates, disable-k8s-services: These options were deprecated in Cilium 1.8 and are now removed.
  • The prometheus-serve-addr-deprecated option is now removed. Please use prometheus-serve-addr instead.
  • The hostscope-legacy option value for ipam is now removed. The ipam option now defaults to cluster-pool.
  • --tofqdns-enable-poller, --tofqdns-enable-poller-events: These option were deprecated in Cilium 1.8 and are now removed

Removed cilium-operator options

  • The options cnp-node-status-gc and ccnp-node-status-gc are now removed. Please use cnp-node-status-gc-interval=0 instead.
  • The cilium-endpoint-gc option is now removed. Please use cilium-endpoint-gc-interval=0 instead.
  • The eni-parallel-workers option is now removed. Please use parallel-alloc-workers instead.
  • The aws-client-burst option is now removed. Please use limit-ipam-api-burst instead.
  • The aws-client-qps option is now removed. Please use limit-ipam-api-qps instead.
  • The api-server-port option is now removed. Please use operator-api-serve-addr instead.
  • The metrics-address option is now removed. Please use operator-prometheus-serve-addr instead.
  • The hostscope-legacy option value for ipam is now removed. The ipam option now defaults to cluster-pool.

1.8 Upgrade Notes

IMPORTANT: Changes required before upgrading to 1.8.0

Warning

Do not upgrade to 1.8.0 before reading the following section and completing the required steps.

  • The cilium-agent container liveness and readiness probes have been replaced with a httpGet instead of an exec probe. Unfortunately, upgrading using kubectl apply does not work since the merge strategy done by Kubernetes does not remove the old probe when replacing with a new one. This causes kubectl apply command to return an error such as:

    The DaemonSet "cilium" is invalid:
* spec.template.spec.containers[0].livenessProbe.httpGet: Forbidden: may not specify more than 1 handler type
* spec.template.spec.containers[0].readinessProbe.httpGet: Forbidden: may not specify more than 1 handler type

    Existing users must either choose to keep the exec probe in the DaemonSet specification to safely upgrade or re-create the Cilium DaemonSet without the deprecated probe. It is advisable to keep the probe when doing an upgrade from v1.7.x to v1.8.x in the event of having to do a downgrade. The removal of this probe should be done after a successful upgrade.

    The Helm option agent.keepDeprecatedProbes=true will keep the exec probe in the new DaemonSet. Add this option along with any other options you would otherwise specify to Helm:

kubectl
Helm
helm template cilium --namespace=kube-system ...
--set agent.keepDeprecatedProbes=true ...
> cilium.yaml
kubectl apply -f cilium.yaml

helm upgrade cilium --namespace=kube-system --set agent.keepDeprecatedProbes=true

  • Important: The masquerading behavior has changed, depending on how you have configured masquerading you need to take action to avoid potential NetworkPolicy related drops:

    Running the default configuration (--tunnel=vxlan or --tunnel=geneve)

    No action required. The behavior remains the same as before. All traffic leaving the node that is not encapsulated is automatically masqueraded. You may use --native-routing-cidr to further restrict traffic subject to masquerading.

    Already using --native-routing-cidr and/or --egress-masquerade-interfaces

    No action required. Use of --native-routing-cidr is the preferred way of configuring masquerading.

    Running in AWS ENI mode (--ipam=eni)

    No action required. The value for --native-routing-cidr is automatically derived from the AWS API and set to the CIDR of the VPC. You may overwrite the value if needed.

    Running with --masquerade=false (all chaining configurations)

    No action required.

    Running in direct-routing configuration (--tunnel=disabled)

    The behavior has changed: Previously, the destination address range excluded from masquerading was defined by the options --ipv4-range and --ipv4-cluster-cidr-mask-size. When unspecified, this was set to the value 10.0.0.0/8. You must set the --native-routing-cidr option and set it to the CIDR for which masquerading should be omitted. This is typically the PodCIDR range of the cluster but can also be set to the IP range of the network the node is running on to avoid masquerading for directly reachable destinations outside of the cluster.

    Important: If not set, all traffic leaving the node will be masqueraded. This will result in all traffic within the cluster to be considered coming from identity remote-node instead of the true pod identity. If NetworkPolicies are in place, then this will typically result in traffic being dropped due to policy.

    For more information, see section Masquerading.

  • When all nodes in a cluster are enforcing a particular CiliumNetworkPolicy. For large clusters running CRD mode, this visibility is costly as it requires all nodes to participate. In order to ensure scalability, CiliumNetworkPolicy status visibility has been disabled for all new deployments. If you want to enable it, set the ConfigMap option disable-cnp-status-updates to false or set the Helm variable --set config.enableCnpStatusUpdates=true.

  • Prior to 1.8 release, Cilium’s eBPF-based kube-proxy replacement was not able to handle Kubernetes HostPort feature and therefore CNI chaining with the portmap plugin (global.cni.chainingMode=portmap) was necessary while turning off the kube-proxy replacement (global.kubeProxyReplacement=disabled). Starting from 1.8, CNI chaining is no longer necessary, meaning Cilium can be used natively to handle HostPort when running with Cilium’s kube-proxy replacement. That is, for global.kubeProxyReplacement=probe and global.kubeProxyReplacement=strict handling of HostPort is enabled by default. HostPort has the same system requirements as eBPF-based NodePort, so for probe the former gets enabled if also NodePort could be enabled. For more information, see section Container HostPort Support.

Upgrading from >=1.7.0 to 1.8.y

  • Since Cilium 1.5, the TCP connection tracking table size parameter bpf-ct-global-tcp-max in the daemon was set to the default value 1000000 to retain backwards compatibility with previous versions. In Cilium 1.8 the default value is set to 512K by default in order to reduce the agent memory consumption.

    If Cilium was deployed using Helm, the new default value of 512K was already effective in Cilium 1.6 or later, unless it was manually configured to a different value.

    If the table size was configured to a value different from 512K in the previous installation, ongoing connections will be disrupted during the upgrade. To avoid connection breakage, bpf-ct-global-tcp-max needs to be manually adjusted.

    To check whether any action is required the following command can be used to check the currently configured maximum number of TCP conntrack entries:

    sudo grep -R CT_MAP_SIZE_TCP /var/run/cilium/state/templates/

    If the maximum number is 524288, no action is required. If the number is different, bpf-ct-global-tcp-max needs to be adjusted in the ConfigMap to the value shown by the command above (100000 in the example below):

kubectl
Helm
helm template cilium \
--namespace=kube-system \
...
--set global.bpf.ctTcpMax=100000
...
> cilium.yaml
kubectl apply -f cilium.yaml

helm upgrade cilium --namespace=kube-system \
--set global.bpf.ctTcpMax=100000

  • The default value for the NAT table size parameter bpf-nat-global-max in the daemon is derived from the default value of the conntrack table size parameter bpf-ct-global-tcp-max. Since the latter was changed (see above), the default NAT table size decreased from ~820K to 512K.

    The NAT table is only used if either eBPF NodePort (enable-node-port parameter) or masquerading (masquerade parameter) are enabled. No action is required if neither of the parameters is enabled.

    If either of the parameters is enabled, ongoing connections will be disrupted during the upgrade. In order to avoid connection breakage, bpf-nat-global-max needs to be manually adjusted.

    To check whether any adjustment is required the following command can be used to check the currently configured maximum number of NAT table entries:

    sudo grep -R SNAT_MAPPING_IPV[46]_SIZE /var/run/cilium/state/globals/

    If the command does not return any value or if the returned maximum number is 524288, no action is required. If the number is different, bpf-nat-global-max needs to be adjusted in the ConfigMap to the value shown by the command above (841429 in the example below):

kubectl
Helm
helm template cilium \
--namespace=kube-system \
...
--set global.bpf.natMax=841429
...
> cilium.yaml
kubectl apply -f cilium.yaml

helm upgrade cilium --namespace=kube-system \
--set global.bpf.natMax=841429
  • Setting debug mode with debug: "true" no longer enables datapath debug messages which could have been read with cilium monitor -v. To enable them, add "datapath" to the debug-verbose option.

New ConfigMap Options

  • bpf-map-dynamic-size-ratio has been added to allow dynamic sizing of the largest eBPF maps: cilium_ct_{4,6}_global, cilium_ct_{4,6}_any, cilium_nodeport_neigh{4,6}, cilium_snat_v{4,6}_external and cilium_lb{4,6}_reverse_sk. This option allows to specify a ratio (0.0-1.0) of total system memory to use for these maps. On new installations, this ratio is set to 0.0025 by default, leading to 0.25% of the total system memory to be allocated for these maps. On a node with 4 GiB of total system memory this ratio corresponds approximately to the defaults used by kube-proxy, see eBPF Maps for details. A value of 0.0 will disable sizing of the eBPF maps based on system memory. Any eBPF map sizes configured manually using the bpf-ct-global-tcp-max, bpf-ct-global-any-max, bpf-nat-global-max or bpf-neigh-global-max options will take precedence over the dynamically determined value.

    On upgrades of existing installations, this option is disabled by default, i.e. it is set to 0.0. Users wanting to use this feature need to enable it explicitly in their ConfigMap, see section Rebasing a ConfigMap.

  • enable-health-check-nodeport has been added to allow to configure NodePort server health check when kube-proxy is disabled.

Deprecated options

  • keep-bpf-templates: This option no longer has any effect due to the eBPF assets not being compiled into the cilium-agent binary anymore. The option is deprecated and will be removed in Cilium 1.9.
  • --disable-k8s-services option from cilium-agent has been deprecated and will be removed in Cilium 1.9.
  • --disable-ipv4 legacy option from cilium-agent which was already hidden has now been deprecated and will be removed in Cilium 1.9.
  • --tofqdns-enable-poller: This option has been deprecated and will be removed in Cilium 1.9
  • --tofqdns-enable-poller-events: This option has been deprecated and will be removed in Cilium 1.9

New Metrics

The following metrics have been added:

  • bpf_maps_virtual_memory_max_bytes: Max memory used by eBPF maps installed in the system
  • bpf_progs_virtual_memory_max_bytes: Max memory used by eBPF programs installed in the system

Both bpf_maps_virtual_memory_max_bytes and bpf_progs_virtual_memory_max_bytes are currently reporting the system-wide memory usage of eBPF that is directly and not directly managed by Cilium. This might change in the future and only report the eBPF memory usage directly managed by Cilium.

Renamed Metrics

The following metrics have been renamed:

  • cilium_operator_eni_ips to cilium_operator_ipam_ips
  • cilium_operator_eni_allocation_ops to cilium_operator_ipam_allocation_ops
  • cilium_operator_eni_interface_creation_ops to cilium_operator_ipam_interface_creation_ops
  • cilium_operator_eni_available to cilium_operator_ipam_available
  • cilium_operator_eni_nodes_at_capacity to cilium_operator_ipam_nodes_at_capacity
  • cilium_operator_eni_resync_total to cilium_operator_ipam_resync_total
  • cilium_operator_eni_aws_api_duration_seconds to cilium_operator_ipam_api_duration_seconds
  • cilium_operator_eni_ec2_rate_limit_duration_seconds to cilium_operator_ipam_api_rate_limit_duration_seconds

Deprecated cilium-operator options

  • metrics-address: This option is being deprecated and a new flag is introduced to replace its usage. The new option is operator-prometheus-serve-addr. This old option will be removed in Cilium 1.9
  • ccnp-node-status-gc: This option is being deprecated. Disabling CCNP node status GC can be done with cnp-node-status-gc-interval=0. (Note that this is not a typo, it is meant to be cnp-node-status-gc-interval). This old option will be removed in Cilium 1.9
  • cnp-node-status-gc: This option is being deprecated. Disabling CNP node status GC can be done with cnp-node-status-gc-interval=0. This old option will be removed in Cilium 1.9
  • cilium-endpoint-gc: This option is being deprecated. Disabling cilium endpoint GC can be done with cilium-endpoint-gc-interval=0. This old option will be removed in Cilium 1.9
  • api-server-port: This option is being deprecated. The API Server address and port can be enabled with operator-api-serve-addr=127.0.0.1:9234 or operator-api-serve-addr=[::1]:9234 for IPv6-only clusters. This old option will be removed in Cilium 1.9
  • eni-parallel-workers: This option in the Operator has been renamed to parallel-alloc-workers. The obsolete option name eni-parallel-workers has been deprecated and will be removed in v1.9.
  • aws-client-burst: This option in the Operator has been renamed to limit-ipam-api-burst. The obsolete option name aws-client-burst has been deprecated and will be removed in v1.9.
  • aws-client-qps: This option in the Operator has been renamed to limit-ipam-api-qps. The obsolete option name aws-client-qps has been deprecated and will be removed in v1.9.

Removed options

  • access-log: L7 access logs have been available via Hubble since Cilium 1.6. The access-log option to log to a file has been removed.
  • enable-legacy-services: This option was deprecated in Cilium 1.6 and is now removed.
  • The options container-runtime, container-runtime-endpoint and flannel-manage-existing-containers were deprecated in Cilium 1.7 and are now removed.
  • The conntrack-garbage-collector-interval option deprecated in Cilium 1.6 is now removed. Please use conntrack-gc-interval instead.

Removed Helm options

  • operator.synchronizeK8sNodes: was removed and replaced with config.synchronizeK8sNodes

Removed resource fields

  • The fields CiliumEndpoint.Status.Status, CiliumEndpoint.Status.Spec, and EndpointIdentity.LabelsSHA256, deprecated in 1.4, have been removed.

1.7 Upgrade Notes

IMPORTANT: Changes required before upgrading to 1.7.x

Warning

Do not upgrade to 1.7.x before reading the following section and completing the required steps.

In particular, if you are using network policy and upgrading from 1.6.x or earlier to 1.7.x or later, you MUST read the 1.7 New ConfigMap Options section about the enable-remote-node-identity flag to avoid potential disruption to connectivity between host networking pods and Cilium-managed pods.

  • Cilium has bumped the minimal Kubernetes version supported to v1.11.0.

  • The kubernetes.io/cluster-service label has been removed from the Cilium DaemonSet selector. Existing users must either choose to keep this label in DaemonSet specification to safely upgrade or re-create the Cilium DaemonSet without the deprecated label. It is advisable to keep the label when doing an upgrade from v1.6.x to v1.7.x in the event of having to do a downgrade. The removal of this label should be done after a successful upgrade.

    The Helm option agent.keepDeprecatedLabels=true will keep the kubernetes.io/cluster-service label in the new DaemonSet:

kubectl
Helm
helm template cilium --namespace=kube-system ...
--set agent.keepDeprecatedLabels=true ...
> cilium.yaml
kubectl apply -f cilium.yaml

helm upgrade cilium --namespace=kube-system --set agent.keepDeprecatedLabels=true

Trying to upgrade Cilium without this option might result in the following error: The DaemonSet "cilium" is invalid: spec.selector: Invalid value: ...: field is immutable

  • If kvstore is setup with etcd and TLS is enabled, the field name ca-file will have its usage deprecated and will be removed in Cilium v1.8.0. The new field name, trusted-ca-file, can be used since Cilium v1.1.0.

    Required action:

    This field name should be changed from ca-file to trusted-ca-file.

    Example of an old etcd configuration, with the ca-file field name:

    ---
endpoints:
- https://192.168.0.1:2379
- https://192.168.0.2:2379
ca-file: '/var/lib/cilium/etcd-ca.pem'
# In case you want client to server authentication
key-file: '/var/lib/cilium/etcd-client.key'
cert-file: '/var/lib/cilium/etcd-client.crt'

    Example of new etcd configuration, with the trusted-ca-file field name:

    ---
endpoints:
- https://192.168.0.1:2379
- https://192.168.0.2:2379
trusted-ca-file: '/var/lib/cilium/etcd-ca.pem'
# In case you want client to server authentication
key-file: '/var/lib/cilium/etcd-client.key'
cert-file: '/var/lib/cilium/etcd-client.crt'

  • Due to the removal of external libraries to connect to container runtimes, Cilium no longer supports the option flannel-manage-existing-containers. Cilium will still support integration with Flannel for new containers provisioned but not for containers already running in Flannel. The options container-runtime and container-runtime-endpoint will not have any effect and the flag removal is scheduled for v1.8.0

  • The default --tofqdns-min-ttl value has been reduced to 1 hour. Specific IPs in DNS entries are no longer expired when in-use by existing connections that are allowed by policy. Prior deployments that used the default value may now experience denied new connections if endpoints reuse DNS data more than 1 hour after the initial lookup without making new lookups. Long lived connections that previously outlived DNS entries are now better supported, and will not be disconnected when the corresponding DNS entry expires.

New ConfigMap Options

  • enable-remote-node-identity has been added to enable a new identity for remote cluster nodes and to associate all IPs of a node with that new identity. This allows for network policies that distinguish between connections from host networking pods or other processes on the local Kubernetes worker node from those on remote worker nodes.

    After enabling this option, all communication to and from non-local Kubernetes nodes must be whitelisted with a toEntity or fromEntity rule listing the entity remote-node. The existing entity cluster continues to work and now includes the entity remote-node. Existing policy rules whitelisting host will only affect the local node going forward. Existing CIDR-based rules to whitelist node IPs other than the Cilium internal IP (IP assigned to the cilium_host interface), will no longer take effect.

    This is important because Kubernetes Network Policy dictates that network connectivity from the local host must always be allowed, even for pods that have a default deny rule for ingress connectivity. This is so that network liveness and readiness probes from kubelet will not be dropped by network policy. Prior to 1.7.x, Cilium achieved this by always allowing ingress host network connectivity from any host in the cluster. With 1.7 and enable-remote-node-identity=true, Cilium will only automatically allow connectivity from the local node, thereby providing a better default security posture.

    The option is enabled by default for new deployments when generated via Helm, in order to gain the benefits of improved security. The Helm option is --set global.remoteNodeIdentity. This option can be disabled in order to maintain full compatibility with Cilium 1.6.x policy enforcement. Be aware that upgrading a cluster to 1.7.x by using Helm to generate a new Cilium config that leaves enable-remote-node-identity set as the default value of true can break network connectivity.

    The reason for this is that with Cilium 1.6.x, the source identity of ANY connection from a host-networking pod or from other processes on a Kubernetes worker node would be the host identity. Thus, a Cilium 1.6.x or earlier environment with network policy enforced may be implicitly relying on the allow everything from host identity behavior to whitelist traffic from host networking to other Cilium-managed pods. With the shift to 1.7.x, if enable-remote-node-identity=true these connections will be denied by policy if they are coming from a host-networking pod or process on another Kubernetes worker node, since the source will be given the remote-node identity (which is not automatically allowed) rather than the host identity (which is automatically allowed).

    An indicator that this is happening would be drops visible in Hubble or Cilium monitor with a source identity equal to 6 (the numeric value for the new remote-node identity. For example:

    xx drop (Policy denied) flow 0x6d7b6dd0 to endpoint 1657, identity 6->51566: 172.16.9.243:47278 -> 172.16.8.21:9093 tcp SYN

    There are two ways to address this. One can set enable-remote-node-identity=false in the ConfigMap to retain the Cilium 1.6.x behavior. However, this is not ideal, as it means there is no way to prevent communication between host-networking pods and Cilium-managed pods, since all such connectivity is allowed automatically because it is from the host identity.

    The other option is to keep enable-remote-node-identity=true and create policy rules that explicitly whitelist connections between the remote-host identity and pods that should be reachable from host-networking pods or other processes that may be running on a remote Kubernetes worker node. An example of such a rule is:

    apiVersion: "cilium.io/v2"
kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: "allow-from-remote-nodes"
spec:
  endpointSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: myapp
  ingress:
  - fromEntities:
    - remote-node

    See Access to/from all nodes in the cluster for more examples of remote-node policies.

  • enable-well-known-identities has been added to control the initialization of the well-known identities. Well-known identities have initially been added to support the managed etcd concept to allow the etcd operator to bootstrap etcd while Cilium still waited on etcd to become available. Cilium now uses CRDs by default which limits the use of well-known identities to the managed etcd mode. With the addition of this option, well-known identities are disabled by default in all new deployment and only enabled if the Helm option global.etcd.managed=true is set. Consider disabling this option if you are not using the etcd operator respectively managed etcd mode to reduce the number of policy identities whitelisted for each endpoint.

  • kube-proxy-replacement has been added to control which features should be enabled for the kube-proxy eBPF replacement. The option is set to probe by default for new deployments when generated via Helm. This makes cilium-agent to probe for each feature support in a kernel, and to enable only supported features. When the option is not set via Helm, cilium-agent defaults to partial. This makes cilium-agent to enable only those features which user has explicitly enabled in their ConfigMap. See Kubernetes Without kube-proxy for more option values.

    For users who previously were running with global.nodePort.enabled=true it is recommended to set the option to strict before upgrading.

  • enable-auto-protect-node-port-range has been added to enable auto-appending of a NodePort port range to net.ipv4.ip_local_reserved_ports if it overlaps with an ephemeral port range from net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range. The option is enabled by default. See Kubernetes Without kube-proxy for the explanation why the overlap can be harmful.

Removed options

  • lb: The --lb feature has been removed. If you need load-balancing on a particular device, consider using Kubernetes Without kube-proxy.
  • docker and e: This flags has been removed as Cilium no longer requires container runtime integrations to manage containers’ networks.
  • All code associated with monitor v1.0 socket handling has been removed.

Advanced

Upgrade Impact

Upgrades are designed to have minimal impact on your running deployment. Networking connectivity, policy enforcement and load balancing will remain functional in general. The following is a list of operations that will not be available during the upgrade:

  • API aware policy rules are enforced in user space proxies and are currently running as part of the Cilium pod unless Cilium is configured to run in Istio mode. Upgrading Cilium will cause the proxy to restart which will result in a connectivity outage and connection to be reset.
  • Existing policy will remain effective but implementation of new policy rules will be postponed to after the upgrade has been completed on a particular node.
  • Monitoring components such as cilium monitor will experience a brief outage while the Cilium pod is restarting. Events are queued up and read after the upgrade. If the number of events exceeds the event buffer size, events will be lost.

Rebasing a ConfigMap

This section describes the procedure to rebase an existing ConfigMap to the template of another version.

Export the current ConfigMap

$ kubectl get configmap -n kube-system cilium-config -o yaml --export > cilium-cm-old.yaml
$ cat ./cilium-cm-old.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  clean-cilium-state: "false"
  debug: "true"
  disable-ipv4: "false"
  etcd-config: |-
    ---
    endpoints:
    - https://192.168.33.11:2379
    #
    # In case you want to use TLS in etcd, uncomment the 'trusted-ca-file' line
    # and create a kubernetes secret by following the tutorial in
    # https://cilium.link/etcd-config
    trusted-ca-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client-ca.crt'
    #
    # In case you want client to server authentication, uncomment the following
    # lines and add the certificate and key in cilium-etcd-secrets below
    key-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.key'
    cert-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.crt'
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: cilium-config
  selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/configmaps/cilium-config

In the ConfigMap above, we can verify that Cilium is using debug with true, it has a etcd endpoint running with TLS, and the etcd is set up to have client to server authentication.

Generate the latest ConfigMap

helm template cilium \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set agent.enabled=false \
  --set config.enabled=true \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  > cilium-configmap.yaml

Add new options

Add the new options manually to your old ConfigMap, and make the necessary changes.

In this example, the debug option is meant to be kept with true, the etcd-config is kept unchanged, and monitor-aggregation is a new option, but after reading the Version Specific Notes the value was kept unchanged from the default value.

After making the necessary changes, the old ConfigMap was migrated with the new options while keeping the configuration that we wanted:

$ cat ./cilium-cm-old.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  debug: "true"
  disable-ipv4: "false"
  # If you want to clean cilium state; change this value to true
  clean-cilium-state: "false"
  monitor-aggregation: "medium"
  etcd-config: |-
    ---
    endpoints:
    - https://192.168.33.11:2379
    #
    # In case you want to use TLS in etcd, uncomment the 'trusted-ca-file' line
    # and create a kubernetes secret by following the tutorial in
    # https://cilium.link/etcd-config
    trusted-ca-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client-ca.crt'
    #
    # In case you want client to server authentication, uncomment the following
    # lines and add the certificate and key in cilium-etcd-secrets below
    key-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.key'
    cert-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.crt'
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: cilium-config
  selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/configmaps/cilium-config

Apply new ConfigMap

After adding the options, manually save the file with your changes and install the ConfigMap in the kube-system namespace of your cluster.

$ kubectl apply -n kube-system -f ./cilium-cm-old.yaml

As the ConfigMap is successfully upgraded we can start upgrading Cilium DaemonSet and RBAC which will pick up the latest configuration from the ConfigMap.

Restrictions on unique prefix lengths for CIDR policy rules

The Linux kernel applies limitations on the complexity of eBPF code that is loaded into the kernel so that the code may be verified as safe to execute on packets. Over time, Linux releases become more intelligent about the verification of programs which allows more complex programs to be loaded. However, the complexity limitations affect some features in Cilium depending on the kernel version that is used with Cilium.

One such limitation affects Cilium’s configuration of CIDR policies. On Linux kernels 4.10 and earlier, this manifests as a restriction on the number of unique prefix lengths supported in CIDR policy rules.

Unique prefix lengths are counted by looking at the prefix portion of CIDR rules and considering which prefix lengths are unique. For example, in the following policy example, the toCIDR section specifies a /32, and the toCIDRSet section specifies a /8 with a /12 removed from it. In addition, three prefix lengths are always counted: the host prefix length for the protocol (IPv4: /32, IPv6: /128), the default prefix length (/0), and the cluster prefix length (default IPv4: /8, IPv6: /64). All in all, the following example counts as seven unique prefix lengths in IPv4:

  • /32 (from toCIDR, also from host prefix)
  • /12 (from toCIDRSet)
  • /11 (from toCIDRSet)
  • /10 (from toCIDRSet)
  • /9 (from toCIDRSet)
  • /8 (from cluster prefix)
  • /0 (from default prefix)
k8s YAML
JSON
apiVersion: "cilium.io/v2"
kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: "cidr-rule"
spec:
  endpointSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: myService
  egress:
  - toCIDR:
    - 20.1.1.1/32
  - toCIDRSet:
    - cidr: 10.0.0.0/8
      except:
      - 10.96.0.0/12

[{
    "labels": [{"key": "name", "value": "cidr-rule"}],
    "endpointSelector": {"matchLabels":{"app":"myService"}},
    "egress": [{
        "toCIDR": [
            "20.1.1.1/32"
        ]
    }, {
        "toCIDRSet": [{
            "cidr": "10.0.0.0/8",
            "except": [
                "10.96.0.0/12"
            ]}
        ]
    }]
}]

Affected versions

  • Any version of Cilium running on Linux 4.10 or earlier

When a CIDR policy with too many unique prefix lengths is imported, Cilium will reject the policy with a message like the following:

$ cilium policy import too_many_cidrs.json
Error: Cannot import policy: [PUT /policy][500] putPolicyFailure  Adding
specified prefixes would result in too many prefix lengths (current: 3,
result: 32, max: 18)

The supported count of unique prefix lengths may differ between Cilium minor releases, for example Cilium 1.1 supported 20 unique prefix lengths on Linux 4.10 or older, while Cilium 1.2 only supported 18 (for IPv4) or 4 (for IPv6).

Mitigation

Users may construct CIDR policies that use fewer unique prefix lengths. This can be achieved by composing or decomposing adjacent prefixes.

Solution

Upgrade the host Linux version to 4.11 or later. This step is beyond the scope of the Cilium guide.

Migrating from kvstore-backed identities to Kubernetes CRD-backed identities

Beginning with cilium 1.6, Kubernetes CRD-backed security identities can be used for smaller clusters. Along with other changes in 1.6 this allows kvstore-free operation if desired. It is possible to migrate identities from an existing kvstore deployment to CRD-backed identities. This minimizes disruptions to traffic as the update rolls out through the cluster.

Affected versions

  • Cilium 1.6 deployments using kvstore-backend identities

Mitigation

When identities change, existing connections can be disrupted while cilium initializes and synchronizes with the shared identity store. The disruption occurs when new numeric identities are used for existing pods on some instances and others are used on others. When converting to CRD-backed identities, it is possible to pre-allocate CRD identities so that the numeric identities match those in the kvstore. This allows new and old cilium instances in the rollout to agree.

The steps below show an example of such a migration. It is safe to re-run the command if desired. It will identify already allocated identities or ones that cannot be migrated. Note that identity 34815 is migrated, 17003 is already migrated, and 11730 has a conflict and a new ID allocated for those labels.

The steps below assume a stable cluster with no new identities created during the rollout. Once a cilium using CRD-backed identities is running, it may begin allocating identities in a way that conflicts with older ones in the kvstore.

The cilium preflight manifest requires etcd support and can be built with:

helm template cilium \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent.enabled=false \
  --set config.enabled=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  --set global.etcd.enabled=true \
  --set global.etcd.ssl=true \
  > cilium-preflight.yaml
kubectl create -f cilium-preflight.yaml

Example migration

$ kubectl exec -n kube-system cilium-preflight-1234 -- cilium preflight migrate-identity
INFO[0000] Setting up kvstore client
INFO[0000] Connecting to etcd server...                  config=/var/lib/cilium/etcd-config.yml endpoints="[https://192.168.33.11:2379]" subsys=kvstore
INFO[0000] Setting up kubernetes client
INFO[0000] Establishing connection to apiserver          host="https://192.168.33.11:6443" subsys=k8s
INFO[0000] Connected to apiserver                        subsys=k8s
INFO[0000] Got lease ID 29c66c67db8870c8                 subsys=kvstore
INFO[0000] Got lock lease ID 29c66c67db8870ca            subsys=kvstore
INFO[0000] Successfully verified version of etcd endpoint  config=/var/lib/cilium/etcd-config.yml endpoints="[https://192.168.33.11:2379]" etcdEndpoint="https://192.168.33.11:2379" subsys=kvstore version=3.3.13
INFO[0000] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=CiliumNetworkPolicy/v2 subsys=k8s
INFO[0000] Updating CRD (CustomResourceDefinition)...    name=v2.CiliumEndpoint subsys=k8s
INFO[0001] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=v2.CiliumEndpoint subsys=k8s
INFO[0001] Updating CRD (CustomResourceDefinition)...    name=v2.CiliumNode subsys=k8s
INFO[0002] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=v2.CiliumNode subsys=k8s
INFO[0002] Updating CRD (CustomResourceDefinition)...    name=v2.CiliumIdentity subsys=k8s
INFO[0003] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=v2.CiliumIdentity subsys=k8s
INFO[0003] Listing identities in kvstore
INFO[0003] Migrating identities to CRD
INFO[0003] Skipped non-kubernetes labels when labelling ciliumidentity. All labels will still be used in identity determination  labels="map[]" subsys=crd-allocator
INFO[0003] Skipped non-kubernetes labels when labelling ciliumidentity. All labels will still be used in identity determination  labels="map[]" subsys=crd-allocator
INFO[0003] Skipped non-kubernetes labels when labelling ciliumidentity. All labels will still be used in identity determination  labels="map[]" subsys=crd-allocator
INFO[0003] Migrated identity                             identity=34815 identityLabels="k8s:class=tiefighter;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;"
WARN[0003] ID is allocated to a different key in CRD. A new ID will be allocated for the this key  identityLabels="k8s:class=deathstar;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;" oldIdentity=11730
INFO[0003] Reusing existing global key                   key="k8s:class=deathstar;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;" subsys=allocator
INFO[0003] New ID allocated for key in CRD               identity=17281 identityLabels="k8s:class=deathstar;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;" oldIdentity=11730
INFO[0003] ID was already allocated to this key. It is already migrated  identity=17003 identityLabels="k8s:class=xwing;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=alliance;"

Note

It is also possible to use the --k8s-kubeconfig-path and --kvstore-opt cilium CLI options with the preflight command. The default is to derive the configuration as cilium-agent does.
cilium preflight migrate-identity --k8s-kubeconfig-path /var/lib/cilium/cilium.kubeconfig --kvstore etcd --kvstore-opt etcd.config=/var/lib/cilium/etcd-config.yml

Clearing CRD identities

If a migration has gone wrong, it possible to start with a clean slate. Ensure that no cilium instances are running with identity-allocation-mode crd and execute:

$ kubectl delete ciliumid --all

CNP Validation

Running the CNP Validator will make sure the policies deployed in the cluster are valid. It is important to run this validation before an upgrade so it will make sure Cilium has a correct behavior after upgrade. Avoiding doing this validation might cause Cilium from updating its NodeStatus in those invalid Network Policies as well as in the worst case scenario it might give a false sense of security to the user if a policy is badly formatted and Cilium is not enforcing that policy due a bad validation schema. This CNP Validator is automatically executed as part of the pre-flight check Running pre-flight check (Required).

Start by deployment the cilium-pre-flight-check and check if the Deployment shows READY 1/1, if it does not check the pod logs.

$ kubectl get deployment -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check -w
NAME                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
cilium-pre-flight-check   0/1     1            0           12s

$ kubectl logs -n kube-system deployment/cilium-pre-flight-check -c cnp-validator --previous
level=info msg="Setting up kubernetes client"
level=info msg="Establishing connection to apiserver" host="https://172.20.0.1:443" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Connected to apiserver" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cidr-rule': OK!
level=error msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cnp-update': unexpected validation error: spec.labels: Invalid value: \"string\": spec.labels in body must be of type object: \"string\""
level=error msg="Found invalid CiliumNetworkPolicy"

In this example, we can see the CiliumNetworkPolicy in the default namespace with the name cnp-update is not valid for the Cilium version we are trying to upgrade. In order to fix this policy we need to edit it, we can do this by saving the policy locally and modify it. For this example it seems the .spec.labels has set an array of strings which is not correct as per the official schema.

$ kubectl get cnp -n default cnp-update -o yaml > cnp-bad.yaml
$ cat cnp-bad.yaml
  apiVersion: cilium.io/v2
  kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
  [...]
  spec:
    endpointSelector:
      matchLabels:
        id: app1
    ingress:
    - fromEndpoints:
      - matchLabels:
          id: app2
      toPorts:
      - ports:
        - port: "80"
          protocol: TCP
    labels:
    - custom=true
  [...]

To fix this policy we need to set the .spec.labels with the right format and commit these changes into Kubernetes.

$ cat cnp-bad.yaml
  apiVersion: cilium.io/v2
  kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
  [...]
  spec:
    endpointSelector:
      matchLabels:
        id: app1
    ingress:
    - fromEndpoints:
      - matchLabels:
          id: app2
      toPorts:
      - ports:
        - port: "80"
          protocol: TCP
    labels:
    - key: "custom"
      value: "true"
  [...]
$
$ kubectl apply -f ./cnp-bad.yaml

After applying the fixed policy we can delete the pod that was validating the policies so that Kubernetes creates a new pod immediately to verify if the fixed policies are now valid.

$ kubectl delete pod -n kube-system -l k8s-app=cilium-pre-flight-check-deployment
pod "cilium-pre-flight-check-86dfb69668-ngbql" deleted
$ kubectl get deployment -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check
NAME                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
cilium-pre-flight-check   1/1     1            1           55m
$ kubectl logs -n kube-system deployment/cilium-pre-flight-check -c cnp-validator
level=info msg="Setting up kubernetes client"
level=info msg="Establishing connection to apiserver" host="https://172.20.0.1:443" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Connected to apiserver" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cidr-rule': OK!
level=info msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cnp-update': OK!
level=info msg="All CCNPs and CNPs valid!"

Once they are valid you can continue with the upgrade process. Clean up pre-flight check