RKE provides the following network plug-ins that are deployed as add-ons:

  • Flannel
  • Calico
  • Canal
  • Weave

Note: After you launch the cluster, you cannot change your network provider. Therefore, choose which network provider you want to use carefully, as Kubernetes doesn’t allow switching between network providers. Once a cluster is created with a network provider, changing network providers would require you tear down the entire cluster and all its applications.

By default, the network plug-in is canal. If you want to use another network plug-in, you need to specify which network plug-in to enable at the cluster level in the cluster.yml.

# Setting the flannel network plug-in
network:
  plugin: flannel

The images used for network plug-ins are under the system_images directive. For each Kubernetes version, there are default images associated with each network plug-in, but these can be overridden by changing the image tag in system_images.

Disabling Deployment of a Network Plug-in

You can disable deploying a network plug-in by specifying none to the network plugin directive in the cluster configuration.

network:
  plugin: none

Network Plug-in Options

Besides the different images that could be used to deploy network plug-ins, certain network plug-ins support additional options that can be used to customize the network plug-in.

Canal Network Plug-in Options

network:
  plugin: canal
  options:
    canal_iface: eth1
    canal_flannel_backend_type: vxlan

Canal Interface

By setting the canal_iface, you can configure the interface to use for inter-host communication. The canal_flannel_backend_type option allows you to specify the type of flannel backend to use. By default the vxlan backend is used.

Canal Network Plug-in Tolerations

Available as of v1.2.4

The configured tolerations apply to the calico-kube-controllers Deployment.

network:
  plugin: canal
  tolerations:
  - key: "node.kubernetes.io/unreachable"
    operator: "Exists"
    effect: "NoExecute"
    tolerationseconds: 300
  - key: "node.kubernetes.io/not-ready"
    operator: "Exists"
    effect: "NoExecute"
    tolerationseconds: 300

To check for applied tolerations on the calico-kube-controllers Deployment, use the following command:

kubectl -n kube-system get deploy calico-kube-controllers -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.tolerations}'

Flannel Network Plug-in Options

network:
  plugin: flannel
  options:
    flannel_iface: eth1
    flannel_backend_type: vxlan

Flannel Interface

By setting the flannel_iface, you can configure the interface to use for inter-host communication. The flannel_backend_type option allows you to specify the type of flannel backend to use. By default the vxlan backend is used.

Calico Network Plug-in Options

network:
  plugin: calico
  options:
    calico_cloud_provider: aws

Calico Cloud Provider

Calico currently only supports 2 cloud providers, AWS or GCE, which can be set using calico_cloud_provider.

Valid Options

  • aws
  • gce

Calico Network Plug-in Tolerations

Available as of v1.2.4

The configured tolerations apply to the calico-kube-controllers Deployment.

network:
  plugin: calico
  tolerations:
  - key: "node.kubernetes.io/unreachable"
    operator: "Exists"
    effect: "NoExecute"
    tolerationseconds: 300
  - key: "node.kubernetes.io/not-ready"
    operator: "Exists"
    effect: "NoExecute"
    tolerationseconds: 300

To check for applied tolerations on the calico-kube-controllers Deployment, use the following command:

kubectl -n kube-system get deploy calico-kube-controllers -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.tolerations}'

Weave Network Plug-in Options

network:
  plugin: weave
  weave_network_provider:
    password: "Q]SZOQ5wp@n$oijz"

Weave encryption

Weave encryption can be enabled by passing a string password to the network provider config.

Custom Network Plug-ins

It is possible to add a custom network plug-in by using the user-defined add-on functionality of RKE. In the addons field, you can add the add-on manifest of a cluster that has the network plugin-that you want, as shown in this example.