This page contains an overview of the various features an administrator can turn on or off for Antrea components. We follow the same convention as the Kubernetes feature gates.
In particular:
- a feature in the Alpha stage will be disabled by default but can be enabled by editing the appropriate
.confentry in the Antrea manifest. - a feature in the Beta stage will be enabled by default but can be disabled by editing the appropriate
.confentry in the Antrea manifest. - a feature in the GA stage will be enabled by default and cannot be disabled.
Some features are specific to the Agent, others are specific to the Controller, and some apply to both and should be
enabled / disabled consistently in both
.conf entries.
To enable / disable a feature, edit the Antrea manifest appropriately. For example, to enable FeatureGateFoo on Linux,
edit the Agent configuration in the
antrea ConfigMap as follows:
antrea-agent.conf: |
# FeatureGates is a map of feature names to bools that enable or disable experimental features.
featureGates:
# Enable the feature gate.
FeatureGateFoo: true| Feature Name | Component | Default | Stage | Alpha Release | Beta Release | GA Release | Extra Requirements | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AntreaProxy |
Agent | true |
GA | v0.8 | v0.11 | v1.14 | Yes | Must be enabled for Windows. |
EndpointSlice |
Agent | true |
GA | v0.13.0 | v1.11 | v1.14 | Yes | |
TopologyAwareHints |
Agent | true |
Beta | v1.8 | v1.12 | N/A | Yes | |
ServiceTrafficDistribution |
Agent | true |
Beta | N/A | v2.2 | N/A | Yes | |
CleanupStaleUDPSvcConntrack |
Agent | true |
Beta | v1.13 | v2.1 | N/A | Yes | |
LoadBalancerModeDSR |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.13 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
AntreaPolicy |
Agent + Controller | true |
Beta | v0.8 | v1.0 | N/A | No | Agent side config required from v0.9.0+. |
Traceflow |
Agent + Controller | true |
Beta | v0.8 | v0.11 | N/A | Yes | |
FlowExporter |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v0.9 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
NetworkPolicyStats |
Agent + Controller | true |
Beta | v0.10 | v1.2 | N/A | No | |
NodePortLocal |
Agent | true |
GA | v0.13 | v1.4 | v1.14 | Yes | Important user-facing change in v1.2.0 |
Egress |
Agent + Controller | true |
Beta | v1.0 | v1.6 | N/A | Yes | |
NodeIPAM |
Controller | true |
Beta | v1.4 | v1.12 | N/A | Yes | |
AntreaIPAM |
Agent + Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.4 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
Multicast |
Agent + Controller | true |
Beta | v1.5 | v1.12 | N/A | Yes | |
SecondaryNetwork |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.5 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
ServiceExternalIP |
Agent + Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.5 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
TrafficControl |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.7 | N/A | N/A | No | |
Multicluster |
Agent + Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.7 | N/A | N/A | Yes | Controller side feature gate added in v1.10.0 |
IPsecCertAuth |
Agent + Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.7 | N/A | N/A | No | |
ExternalNode |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.8 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
SupportBundleCollection |
Agent + Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.10 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
L7NetworkPolicy |
Agent + Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.10 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
AdminNetworkPolicy |
Controller | false |
Alpha | v1.13 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
EgressTrafficShaping |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.14 | N/A | N/A | Yes | OVS meters should be supported |
EgressSeparateSubnet |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.15 | N/A | N/A | No | |
NodeNetworkPolicy |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.15 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
L7FlowExporter |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v1.15 | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
BGPPolicy |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v2.1 | N/A | N/A | No | |
NodeLatencyMonitor |
Agent | false |
Alpha | v2.1 | N/A | N/A | No |
AntreaProxy enables Antrea Proxy which implements Service load-balancing for ClusterIP Services as part of the OVS
pipeline, as opposed to relying on kube-proxy. By default, this only applies to traffic originating from Pods, and
destined to ClusterIP Services. However, it can be configured to support all types of Services, replacing kube-proxy
entirely. Please refer to this document for extra information on Antrea Proxy and how it can be configured.
Note that this feature must be enabled for Windows. The Antrea Windows YAML manifest provided as part of releases enables this feature by default. If you edit the manifest, make sure you do not disable it, as it is needed for correct NetworkPolicy implementation for Pod-to-Service traffic.
When using the OVS built-in kernel module (which is the most common case), your kernel version must be >= 4.6 (as opposed to >= 4.4 without this feature).
EndpointSlice enables Service EndpointSlice support in Antrea Proxy. The EndpointSlice API was introduced in Kubernetes
1.16 (alpha) and it is enabled by default in Kubernetes 1.17 (beta), promoted to GA in Kubernetes 1.21. The EndpointSlice
feature will take no effect if Antrea Proxy is not enabled. Refer to this link
for more information about EndpointSlice. If this feature is enabled but the EndpointSlice v1 API is not available
(Kubernetes version is lower than 1.21), Antrea Agent will log a message and fallback to the Endpoints API.
- EndpointSlice v1 API is available (Kubernetes version >=1.21).
- Option
antreaProxy.enableis set to true.
TopologyAwareHints enables Topology Aware Routing support in Antrea Proxy. For Antrea Proxy, traffic can be routed to the
Endpoint which is closer to where it originated when this feature is enabled. Prior to Kubernetes 1.27, this feature was known as Topology Aware Hints.
Refer to this link for more information about Topology Aware Routing.
- Option
antreaProxy.enableis set to true. - EndpointSlice API version v1 is available in Kubernetes.
ServiceTrafficDistribution enables Traffic Distribution for Services in Antrea Proxy. This feature allows for more
flexible and intelligent routing decisions by considering both topology and non-topology factors. For more details,
refer to this link.
- Option
antreaProxy.enableis set to true. - EndpointSlice API version v1 is available in Kubernetes.
- Kubernetes must be version 1.30 or higher, with the
ServiceTrafficDistributionfeature gate (a Kubernetes-specific feature gate) enabled.
LoadBalancerModeDSR allows users to specify the load balancer mode as DSR (Direct Server Return). The load balancer
mode determines how external traffic destined to LoadBalancerIPs and ExternalIPs of Services is processed when it's load
balanced across Nodes. In DSR mode, external traffic is never SNAT'd and backend Pods running on Nodes that are not the
ingress Node can reply to clients directly, bypassing the ingress Node. Therefore, DSR mode can preserve client IP of
requests, and usually has lower latency and higher throughput. It's only meaningful to use this feature when Antrea Proxy
is enabled and configured to proxy external traffic (proxyAll=true). Refer to this link for more information about load balancer mode.
- Options
antreaProxy.enableandantreaProxy.proxyAllare set to true. - IPv4 only.
- Linux Nodes only.
- Encap mode only.
CleanupStaleUDPSvcConntrack enables support for cleaning up stale UDP Service conntrack connections in Antrea Proxy.
Option antreaProxy.enable is set to true.
AntreaPolicy enables Antrea ClusterNetworkPolicy and Antrea NetworkPolicy CRDs to be handled by Antrea
controller. ClusterNetworkPolicy is an Antrea-specific extension to K8s NetworkPolicies, which enables cluster admins
to define security policies which apply to the entire cluster. Antrea NetworkPolicy also complements K8s
NetworkPolicies by supporting policy priorities and rule actions. Refer to this document for
more information.
None
Traceflow enables a CRD API for Antrea that supports generating tracing requests for traffic going through the
Antrea-managed Pod network. This is useful for troubleshooting connectivity issues, e.g. determining if a NetworkPolicy
is responsible for traffic drops between two Pods. Refer to this document for more information.
Until Antrea v0.11, this feature could only be used in "encap" mode, with the Geneve tunnel type (default configuration for both Linux and Windows). In v0.11, this feature was graduated to Beta (enabled by default) and this requirement was lifted.
In order to support cluster Services as the destination for tracing requests, option antreaProxy.enable should be set
to true to enable Antrea Proxy.
Flow Exporter is a feature that runs as part of the Antrea Agent, and enables network flow visibility into a
Kubernetes cluster. Flow exporter sends IPFIX flow records that are built from observed connections in Conntrack module
to a flow collector. Refer to this document for more information.
This feature is currently only supported for Nodes running Linux. Windows support will be added in the future.
NetworkPolicyStats enables collecting NetworkPolicy statistics from antrea-agents and exposing them through Antrea
Stats API, which can be accessed by kubectl get commands, e.g. kubectl get networkpolicystats. The statistical data
includes total number of sessions, packets, and bytes allowed or denied by a NetworkPolicy. It is collected
asynchronously so there may be a delay of up to 1 minute for changes to be reflected in API responses. The feature
supports K8s NetworkPolicies and Antrea-native policies, the latter of which requires
AntreaPolicy to be enabled. Usage examples:
# List stats of all K8s NetworkPolicies.
> kubectl get networkpolicystats -A
NAMESPACE NAME SESSIONS PACKETS BYTES CREATED AT
default access-nginx 3 36 5199 2020-09-07T13:19:38Z
kube-system access-dns 1 12 1221 2020-09-07T13:22:42Z
# List stats of all Antrea ClusterNetworkPolicies.
> kubectl get antreaclusternetworkpolicystats
NAME SESSIONS PACKETS BYTES CREATED AT
cluster-deny-egress 3 36 5199 2020-09-07T13:19:38Z
cluster-access-dns 10 120 12210 2020-09-07T13:22:42Z
# List stats of all Antrea NetworkPolicies.
> kubectl get antreanetworkpolicystats -A
NAMESPACE NAME SESSIONS PACKETS BYTES CREATED AT
default access-http 3 36 5199 2020-09-07T13:19:38Z
foo bar 1 12 1221 2020-09-07T13:22:42Z
# List per-rule statistics for Antrea ClusterNetworkPolicy cluster-access-dns.
# Both Antrea NetworkPolicy and Antrea ClusterNetworkPolicy support per-rule statistics.
> kubectl get antreaclusternetworkpolicystats cluster-access-dns -o json
{
"apiVersion": "stats.antrea.io/v1alpha1",
"kind": "AntreaClusterNetworkPolicyStats",
"metadata": {
"creationTimestamp": "2022-02-24T09:04:53Z",
"name": "cluster-access-dns",
"uid": "940cf76a-d836-4e76-b773-d275370b9328"
},
"ruleTrafficStats": [
{
"name": "rule1",
"trafficStats": {
"bytes": 392,
"packets": 4,
"sessions": 1
}
},
{
"name": "rule2",
"trafficStats": {
"bytes": 111,
"packets": 2,
"sessions": 1
}
}
],
"trafficStats": {
"bytes": 503,
"packets": 6,
"sessions": 2
}
}None
NodePortLocal (NPL) is a feature that runs as part of the Antrea Agent, through which each port of a Service backend
Pod can be reached from the external network using a port of the Node on which the Pod is running. NPL enables better
integration with external Load Balancers which can take advantage of the feature: instead of relying on NodePort
Services implemented by kube-proxy, external Load-Balancers can consume NPL port mappings published by the Antrea
Agent (as K8s Pod annotations) and load-balance Service traffic directly to backend Pods. Refer to
this document for more information.
This feature is currently only supported for Nodes running Linux with IPv4 addresses. Only TCP & UDP Service ports are supported (not SCTP).
Egress enables a CRD API for Antrea that supports specifying which egress
(SNAT) IP the traffic from the selected Pods to the external network should use. When a selected Pod accesses the
external network, the egress traffic will be tunneled to the Node that hosts the egress IP if it's different from the
Node that the Pod runs on and will be SNATed to the egress IP when leaving that Node. Refer to
this document for more information.
This feature is currently only supported for Nodes running Linux and "encap" mode. The support for Windows and other traffic modes will be added in the future.
NodeIPAM runs a Node IPAM Controller similar to the one in Kubernetes that allocates Pod CIDRs for Nodes. Running Node
IPAM Controller with Antrea is useful in environments where Kubernetes Controller Manager does not run the Node IPAM
Controller, and Antrea has to handle the CIDR allocation.
This feature requires the Node IPAM Controller to be disabled in Kubernetes Controller Manager. When Antrea and Kubernetes both run Node IPAM Controller there is a risk of conflicts in CIDR allocation between the two.
AntreaIPAM feature allocates IP addresses from IPPools. It is required by bridging mode Pods. The bridging mode allows
flexible control over Pod IP addressing. The desired set of IP ranges, optionally with VLANs, are defined with IPPool
CRD. An IPPool can be annotated to Namespace, Pod and PodTemplate of StatefulSet/Deployment. Then, Antrea will manage IP
address assignment for corresponding Pods according to IPPool spec. On a Node, cross-Node/VLAN traffic of AntreaIPAM
Pods is sent to the underlay network, and forwarded/routed by the underlay network. For more information, please refer
to the
Antrea IPAM document.
This feature gate also needs to be enabled to use Antrea for IPAM when configuring secondary network interfaces with Multus, in which case Antrea works as an IPAM plugin and allocates IP addresses for Pods' secondary networks, again from the configured IPPools of a secondary network. Refer to the secondary network IPAM document to learn more information.
Both bridging mode and secondary network IPAM are supported only on Linux Nodes.
The bridging mode works only with system OVS datapath type; and noEncap,
noSNAT traffic mode. At the moment, it supports only IPv4. The IPs in an IP range without a VLAN must be in the same
underlay subnet as the Node IPs, because inter-Node traffic of AntreaIPAM Pods is forwarded by the Node network. IP
ranges with a VLAN must not overlap with other network subnets, and the underlay network router should provide the
network connectivity for these VLANs.
The Multicast feature enables forwarding multicast traffic within the cluster network (i.e., between Pods) and between
the external network and the cluster network. Refer to this document for more information.
This feature is only supported:
- on Linux Nodes
- for IPv4 traffic
- in
noEncapandencaptraffic modes
The SecondaryNetwork feature enables support for provisioning secondary network interfaces for Pods, by annotating
them appropriately.
More documentation will be coming in the future.
At the moment, Antrea can only create secondary network interfaces using SR-IOV VFs on baremetal Linux Nodes.
The ServiceExternalIP feature enables a controller which can allocate external IPs for Services with
type LoadBalancer. External IPs are allocated from an
ExternalIPPool resource and each IP gets assigned to a Node selected by the
nodeSelector of the pool automatically. That Node will receive Service traffic destined to that IP and distribute it
among the backend Endpoints for the Service (through kube-proxy). To enable external IP allocation for a
LoadBalancer Service, you need to annotate the Service with
"service.antrea.io/external-ip-pool": "<externalIPPool name>" and define the appropriate ExternalIPPool resource.
Refer to this document for more information.
This feature is currently only supported for Nodes running Linux.
TrafficControl enables a CRD API for Antrea that controls and manipulates the transmission of Pod traffic. It allows
users to mirror or redirect traffic originating from specific Pods or destined for specific Pods to a local network
device or a remote destination via a tunnel of various types. It enables a monitoring solution to get full visibility
into network traffic, including both north-south and east-west traffic. Refer to this document
for more information.
The Multicluster feature gate of Antrea Agent enables Antrea Multi-cluster Gateways
which route Multi-cluster Service and Pod traffic through tunnels across clusters, and support for
Multi-cluster NetworkPolicy ingress rules.
The Multicluster feature gate of Antrea Controller enables support for Multi-cluster NetworkPolicy.
Antrea Multi-cluster Controller must be deployed and the cluster must join a Multi-cluster ClusterSet to configure Antrea Multi-cluster features. Refer to Antrea Multi-cluster user guide for more information about Multi-cluster configuration. At the moment, Antrea Multi-cluster supports only IPv4.
This feature enables certificate-based authentication for IPSec tunnel.
The ExternalNode feature enables Antrea Agent runs on a virtual machine or a bare-metal server which is not a
Kubernetes Node, and enforces Antrea NetworkPolicy for the VM/BM. Antrea Agent supports the ExternalNode feature on
both Linux and Windows.
Refer to this document for more information.
Since Antrea Agent is running on an unmanaged VM/BM when this feature is enabled, features designed for K8s Pods are
disabled. As of now, this feature requires that AntreaPolicy and NetworkPolicyStats are also enabled.
OVS is required to be installed on the virtual machine or the bare-metal server before running Antrea Agent, and the OVS version must be >= 2.13.0.
SupportBundleCollection feature enables a CRD API for Antrea to collect support bundle files on any Node or
ExternalNode, and upload to a user defined file server.
More documentation will be coming in the future.
User should provide a file server with this feature, and store its authentication credential in a Secret. Antrea Controller is required to be configured with the permission to read the Secret.
L7NetworkPolicy enables users to protect their applications by specifying how they are allowed to communicate with
others, taking into account application context, providing fine-grained control over the network traffic beyond IP,
transport protocol, and port. Refer to this document for more information.
This feature is currently only supported for Nodes running Linux, and TX checksum offloading must be disabled. Refer to this document for more information and how it can be configured.
The AdminNetworkPolicy API (which currently includes the AdminNetworkPolicy and BaselineAdminNetworkPolicy objects)
complements the Antrea-native policies and help cluster administrators to set security postures in a portable manner.
NodeNetworkPolicy allows users to apply ClusterNetworkPolicy to Kubernetes Nodes.
This feature is only supported for Linux Nodes at the moment.
The EgressTrafficShaping feature gate of Antrea Agent enables traffic shaping of Egress, which could limit the
bandwidth for all egress traffic belonging to an Egress. Refer to this document
This feature leverages OVS meters to do the actual rate-limiting, therefore this feature requires OVS meters to be supported in the datapath.
EgressSeparateSubnet allows users to allocate Egress IPs from a different subnet from the default Node subnet.
Refer to this document for more information.
L7FlowExporter enables users to export application-layer flow data using Pod or Namespace annotations.
Refer to this document for more information.
- Linux Nodes only.
BGPPolicy allows users to initiate BGP process on selected Kubernetes Nodes and advertise Service IPs (e.g.,
ClusterIPs, ExternalIPs, LoadBalancerIPs), Pod IPs and Egress IPs to remote BGP peers, providing a flexible mechanism
for integrating Kubernetes clusters with external BGP-enabled networks.
- Linux Nodes only.
NodeLatencyMonitor enables latency measurements between all pairs of Nodes using ICMP probes,
which are generated periodically by each Antrea Agent. After enabling the feature gate, you will
need to create a NodeLatencyMonitor Custom Resource named default, after which probes will start
being generated. For example, you can apply the following YAML manifest using kubectl:
apiVersion: crd.antrea.io/v1alpha1
kind: NodeLatencyMonitor
metadata:
name: default
spec:
pingIntervalSeconds: 60You can adjust pingIntervalSeconds to any positive value that suits your needs. To stop latency
measurements, simply delete the Custom Resource with kubectl delete nodelatencymonitor/default.
Latency measurements can be queried using the NodeLatencyStats API in stats.antrea.io/v1alpha1.
This can be done with kubectl:
> kubectl get nodelatencystats
NODE NAME NUM LATENCY ENTRIES AVG LATENCY MAX LATENCY
kind-control-plane 2 7.110553ms 8.94447ms
kind-worker 2 11.177585ms 11.508751ms
kind-worker2 2 11.356675ms 15.265629msNote that it may take up to one period interval (pingIntervalSeconds) for results to become
visible. Use kubectl get nodelatencystats -o yaml or kubectl get nodelatencystats -o json to see all the
individual latency measurements. For example:
> kubectl get nodelatencystats/kind-worker -o yamlapiVersion: stats.antrea.io/v1alpha1
kind: NodeLatencyStats
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
name: kind-worker
peerNodeLatencyStats:
- nodeName: kind-control-plane
targetIPLatencyStats:
- lastMeasuredRTTNanoseconds: 5837000
lastRecvTime: "2024-07-26T22:40:03Z"
lastSendTime: "2024-07-26T22:40:33Z"
targetIP: 10.10.0.1
- nodeName: kind-worker2
targetIPLatencyStats:
- lastMeasuredRTTNanoseconds: 4704000
lastRecvTime: "2024-07-26T22:40:03Z"
lastSendTime: "2024-07-26T22:40:33Z"
targetIP: 10.10.2.1The feature supports both IPv4 and IPv6. When enabled in a dual-stack cluster, Antrea Agents will
generate both ICMP and ICMPv6 probes, and report both latency results. In general (except when
networkPolicyOnly mode is used), inter-Node latency will be measured between Antrea gateway
interfaces. Therefore, in encap mode, ICMP probes will traverse the overlay, just like regular
inter-Node Pod traffic. We believe this gives an accurate representation of the east-west latency
experienced by Pod traffic.
- Linux Nodes only - the feature has not been tested on Windows Nodes yet.