Deploying an NGINX App across Kubernetes Multi-clusters with F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services
This tutorial simulates orchestrating multiple clusters using a single Kubernetes control plane with separate kubeconfig contexts, the same F5 CIS configuration patterns apply to genuinely separate Kubernetes clusters across different networks, cloud regions, or data centers. The simulation approach allows configuration testing without requiring multiple physical or cloud infrastructure environments.Securing AI with F5 AI Guardrails and Nutanix Enterprise AI
Enterprises are rapidly moving from AI experimentation to production-grade deployments, using Kubernetes to deliver and scale AI services consistently across environments. As AI workloads become embedded in business-critical workflows, new risks emerge—particularly at runtime. Generative AI systems can expose sensitive data, generate responses to restricted topics, or be manipulated through prompt injection and jailbreak techniques during user interactions. The challenge is no longer just how to deploy AI models, but how to control AI behavior in real-time—without adding operational complexity or slowing innovation. F5 and Nutanix address this challenge together by combining Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI) with F5 AI Guardrails. Nutanix Enterprise AI provides a Kubernetes-based platform to deploy and operate AI models and inference services at scale, while F5 AI Guardrails enforces real-time security and policy controls on AI interactions. 🎬 Watch this demo video to see how F5 and Nutanix work together to deliver secure, trustworthy, enterprise‑ready AI—running side by side on Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) deployed on Nutanix Infrastructure. F5 AI Guardrails Overview F5 AI Guardrails provides runtime security and governance for AI applications, models, and agents by enforcing policy‑based controls on how AI interacts with users and data. It includes a broad set of out‑of‑the‑box guardrails that enable organizations to immediately begin securing and governing AI interactions from day one. These built‑in guardrails address common AI risks such as prompt injection, jailbreaks, PII exposure, restricted topics, and more. In addition to built‑in guardrails, F5 AI Guardrails supports custom guardrails, allowing teams to tailor policy enforcement to specific use cases. One option for defining custom guardrails is through natural‑language policy creation, guided by an integrated F5 AI Assistant. The AI Assistant reviews and refines guardrail definitions using F5 best practices, ensuring that descriptions are clear, concise, and consistently structured for optimal performance. AI Guardrails simplifies AI observability by providing continuous visibility and traceability across AI interactions, with audit‑ready observability, scanning, and logging to support governance and compliance. As part of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), AI Guardrails delivers runtime protection for AI models, agents, and connected data, extending F5’s application delivery, security, and observability capabilities across applications and APIs. https://www.f5.com/products/ai-guardrails Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI) Overview Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI) is a cloud‑native, Kubernetes‑based AI platform designed to help organizations run AI inference at scale. NAI is supported on CNCF‑certified Kubernetes platforms, including Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP). It enables enterprises to deploy, manage, and operate AI models, inference endpoints, and AI agents through a single, unified management experience, allowing organizations to run AI consistently wherever they operate Kubernetes while maintaining enterprise control, security, and visibility. https://www.nutanix.com/products/nutanix-enterprise-ai F5 and Nutanix: Better Together Nutanix Enterprise AI provides a Kubernetes‑based platform for deploying, managing, and operating AI models, inference endpoints, and AI agents, while F5 AI Guardrails provides runtime security and governance for AI interactions. F5 AI Guardrails can run side by side with Nutanix Enterprise AI, with both solutions deployed on the same Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP)–managed Kubernetes cluster, enabling them to operate on a common Kubernetes foundation. Together, F5 and Nutanix deliver secure, trustworthy, enterprise‑ready AI deployments by combining an enterprise AI platform with runtime AI security—enabling organizations to move fast with AI without losing control over security, compliance, and governance.
Deploying the F5 AI Security Certified OpenShift Operator: A Validated Playbook
Introduction As enterprises race to deploy Large Language Models (LLMs) in production, securing AI workloads has become as critical as securing traditional applications. The F5 AI Security Operator installs two products on your cluster — F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team — both powered by CalypsoAI. Together they provide inline prompt/response scanning, policy enforcement, and adversarial red-team testing, all running natively on your own OpenShift cluster. This article is a validated deployment runbook for F5 AI Security on OpenShift (version 4.20.14) with NVIDIA GPU nodes. It is based on the official Red Hat Operator installation baseline, in a real lab deployment on a 3×A40 GPU cluster. If you follow these steps in order, you will end up with a fully functional AI Security stack, avoiding the most common pitfalls along the way. What Gets Deployed F5 AI Security consists of four main components, each running in its own OpenShift namespace: Component Namespace Role Moderator + PostgreSQL cai-moderator Web UI, API gateway, policy management, and backing database Prefect Server + Worker prefect Workflow orchestration for scans and red-team runs AI Guardrails Scanner cai-scanner Inline scanning against your OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoint AI Red Team Worker cai-redteam GPU-backed adversarial testing; reports results to Moderator via Prefect The Moderator is CPU-only. The Scanner and Red Team Worker can leverage GPUs depending on the policies and models you configure. Infrastructure Requirements Before you begin, verify your cluster meets these minimums: CPU / Control Node 16 vCPUs, 32 GiB RAM, x86_64, 100 GiB persistent storage Worker Nodes (per GPU-enabled component) 4 vCPUs, 16 GiB RAM (32 GiB recommended for Red Team), 100 GiB storage GPU Nodes AI Guardrails: CUDA-compatible GPU, minimum 24 GB VRAM, 100 GiB storage AI Red Team: CUDA-compatible GPU, minimum 48 GB VRAM, 200 GiB storage GPU must NOT be shared with other workloads Verify your cluster: # Check nodes oc get nodes -o wide # Check GPU allocatable resources oc get node -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.name}{"\t"}{.status.allocatable.nvidia\.com/gpu}{"\n"}{end}' # Check available storage classes oc get storageclass NAME PROVISIONER RECLAIMPOLICY VOLUMEBINDINGMODE ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION AGE lvms-vg1 (default) topolvm.io Delete WaitForFirstConsumer true 15d Step 1 — Install Prerequisites 1.1 Node Feature Discovery (NFD) Operator NFD labels your nodes with hardware capabilities, which NVIDIA GPU Operator relies on to target the right nodes. OpenShift Console → Ecosystem → Software Catalog → Search Node Feature Discovery Operator → Install After installation: Installed Operators → Node Feature Discovery → Create NodeFeatureDiscovery → Accept defaults Verify: oc get pods -n openshift-nfd oc get node --show-labels | grep feature.node.kubernetes.io || true 1.2 NVIDIA GPU Operator OpenShift Console → Ecosystem → Software Catalog → Search GPU Operator → Install After installation: Installed Operators → NVIDIA GPU Operator → Create ClusterPolicy → Accept defaults Verify: oc get pods -n nvidia-gpu-operator oc describe node <gpu-node> | grep -i nvidia nvidia-smi</gpu-node> Step 2 — Install F5 AI Security Operator Prerequisites: You will need registry credentials and a valid license from the F5 AI Security team before proceeding. Contact F5 Sales: https://www.f5.com/products/get-f5 2.1 Create the Namespace and Pull Secret export DOCKER_USERNAME='<registry-username>' export DOCKER_PASSWORD='<registry-password>' export DOCKER_EMAIL='<your-email>' oc new-project f5-ai-sec oc create secret docker-registry regcred \ -n f5-ai-sec \ --docker-username=$DOCKER_USERNAME \ --docker-password=$DOCKER_PASSWORD \ --docker-email=$DOCKER_EMAIL</your-email></registry-password></registry-username> 2.2 Install from OperatorHub OpenShift Console → Ecosystem → Software Catalog → Search F5 AI Security Operator → Install into namespace f5-ai-sec Verify your F5 AI Security Operator: # Verify the controller-manager pod is Running oc -n f5-ai-sec get pods # NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE # controller-manager-6f784bd96d-z6sbh 1/1 Running 1 43s # Verify the CSV reached Succeeded phase oc -n f5-ai-sec get csv # NAME DISPLAY VERSION PHASE # f5-ai-security-operator.v0.4.3 F5 Ai Security Operator 0.4.3 Succeeded # Verify the CRD is registered oc -n f5-ai-sec get crd | grep ai.security.f5.com # securityoperators.ai.security.f5.com 2.3 Deploy the SecurityOperator Custom Resource After installation: Installed Operators → F5 AI Security Operator → Create SecurityOperator Choose YAML and copy the below Custom Resource Template in there, changing select values to match your installation. apiVersion: ai.security.f5.com/v1alpha1 kind: SecurityOperator metadata: name: security-operator-demo namespace: f5-ai-sec spec: registryAuth: existingSecret: "regcred" # Internal PostgreSQL — convenient for labs, not recommended for production postgresql: enabled: true values: postgresql: auth: password: "pass" jobManager: enabled: true moderator: enabled: true values: env: CAI_MODERATOR_BASE_URL: https://<your-hostname> secrets: CAI_MODERATOR_DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD: "pass" CAI_MODERATOR_DEFAULT_LICENSE: "<valid_license_from_f5>" scanner: enabled: true redTeam: enabled: true</valid_license_from_f5></your-hostname> Key values to customize: Field What to set CAI_MODERATOR_BASE_URL Your cluster's public hostname for the UI (e.g., https://aisec.apps.mycluster.example.com ) CAI_MODERATOR_DEFAULT_LICENSE License string provided by F5 CAI_MODERATOR_DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD DB password — must match the value set in the PostgreSQL block For external PostgreSQL (recommended for production), replace the postgresql block with: moderator: values: env: CAI_MODERATOR_DB_HOST: <my-external-db-hostname> secrets: CAI_MODERATOR_DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD: <my-external-db-password></my-external-db-password></my-external-db-hostname> Verify your F5 AI Security Operator: oc -n f5-ai-sec get securityoperator oc -n f5-ai-sec get securityoperator security-operator-demo -o yaml | sed -n '/status:/,$p' Step 3 — Required OpenShift Configuration This is where most deployments hit problems. OpenShift's default restricted Security Context Constraint (SCC) blocks these containers from running. You must explicitly grant anyuid to each service account. 3.1 Apply SCC Policies oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z cai-moderator-sa -n cai-moderator oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z default -n cai-moderator oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z default -n prefect oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z prefect-server -n prefect oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z prefect-worker -n prefect oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z cai-scanner -n cai-scanner oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z cai-redteam-worker -n cai-redteam 3.2 Force PostgreSQL to Restart (if Stuck at 0/1) If PostgreSQL was stuck before the SCC was applied, bounce it manually: oc -n cai-moderator scale sts/cai-moderator-postgres-cai-postgresql --replicas=0 oc -n cai-moderator scale sts/cai-moderator-postgres-cai-postgresql --replicas=1 3.3 Restart All Components oc -n cai-moderator rollout restart deploy oc -n prefect rollout restart deploy oc -n cai-scanner rollout restart deploy oc -n cai-redteam rollout restart deploy 3.4 Verify ➜ oc -n cai-moderator get statefulset NAME READY AGE cai-moderator-postgres-cai-postgresql 1/1 3d4h ➜ oc -n cai-moderator get pods | grep postgres cai-moderator-postgres-cai-postgresql-0 1/1 Running 0 3d4h ➜ oc -n cai-moderator get pods | grep cai-moderator cai-moderator-75c47fc9db-sl8t2 1/1 Running 0 3d4h cai-moderator-postgres-cai-postgresql-0 1/1 Running 0 3d4h ➜ oc -n cai-moderator get svc NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE cai-moderator ClusterIP 172.30.123.197 <none> 5500/TCP,8080/TCP 3d4h cai-moderator-headless ClusterIP None <none> 8080/TCP 3d4h cai-moderator-postgres-postgresql ClusterIP None <none> 5432/TCP 3d4h ➜ oc -n cai-moderator get endpoints Warning: v1 Endpoints is deprecated in v1.33+; use discovery.k8s.io/v1 EndpointSlice NAME ENDPOINTS AGE cai-moderator 10.130.0.139:8080,10.130.0.139:5500 3d4h cai-moderator-headless 10.130.0.139:8080 3d4h cai-moderator-postgres-postgresql 10.128.0.177:5432 3d4h</none></none></none> Step 4 — Create OpenShift Routes (Required for UI Access) The Moderator exposes two ports that must be routed separately: port 5500 for the UI and port 8080 for the /auth path. Skipping the auth route is the most common cause of the blank/black page issue. # UI route oc -n cai-moderator create route edge cai-moderator-ui \ --service=cai-moderator \ --port=5500 \ --hostname=<your-hostname> \ --path=/ # Auth route — required, or the UI will render blank oc -n cai-moderator create route edge cai-moderator-auth \ --service=cai-moderator \ --port=8080 \ --hostname=<your-hostname> \ --path=/auth</your-hostname></your-hostname> Verify all pods are running: oc get pods -n cai-moderator oc get pods -n cai-scanner oc get pods -n cai-redteam oc get pods -n prefect Access the UI Open https:// in a browser. Log in with the default credentials: admin / pass Log in and update the admin email address immediately. You should be able to log in successfully and see the Guardrails dashboard. Step 5 — Grant Prefect Worker Cluster-scope RBAC The Prefect worker watches Kubernetes Pods and Jobs at cluster scope to monitor scan and red-team workflow execution. Without this RBAC, prefect-worker fills its logs with 403 Forbidden errors. The Guardrails UI still loads, but scheduled workflows and Red Team runs will fail silently. # ClusterRole: allow prefect-worker to list/watch pods, jobs, and events cluster-wide oc apply -f - <<'YAML' apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRole metadata: name: prefect-worker-watch-cluster rules: - apiGroups: ["batch"] resources: ["jobs"] verbs: ["get","list","watch"] - apiGroups: [""] resources: ["pods","pods/log","events"] verbs: ["get","list","watch"] YAML # ClusterRoleBinding: bind to the prefect-worker ServiceAccount oc apply -f - <<'YAML' apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRoleBinding metadata: name: prefect-worker-watch-cluster subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: prefect-worker namespace: prefect roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: prefect-worker-watch-cluster YAML # Restart to pick up the new permissions oc -n prefect rollout restart deploy/prefect-worker Verify RBAC errors are gone: oc -n prefect logs deploy/prefect-worker --tail=200 \ | egrep -i 'forbidden|rbac|permission|denied' \ || echo "OK: no RBAC errors detected" oc get clusterrolebinding prefect-worker-watch-cluster LlamaStack Integration F5 AI Security works alongside any OpenAI-compatible LLM inference endpoint. In our lab we pair it with LlamaStack running a quantized Llama 3.2 model on the same OpenShift cluster — F5 AI Guardrails then scans every prompt and response inline before it reaches your application. A dedicated follow-up post will walk through the full LlamaStack deployment and end-to-end integration in detail. Stay tuned. Summary Deploying F5 AI Security on OpenShift is straightforward once you know the OpenShift-specific friction points: SCC policies, the dual-route requirement, and the Prefect cluster-scope RBAC. Following this runbook in sequence — prerequisites, operator install, SCC grants, routes, Prefect RBAC — gets you to a fully operational AI guardrailing stack in a single pass. If you run into anything not covered here, drop a comment below. Tested on: OpenShift 4.20.14 · F5 AI Security Operator v0.4.3 · NVIDIA A40 GPUs · LlamaStack with Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-quantized.w8a8 Additional Resources F5 AI Security Operator — Red Hat CatalogF5 Container Ingress Services (CIS) deployment using Cilium CNI and static routes
F5 Container Ingress Services (CIS) supports static route configuration to enable direct routing from F5 BIG-IP to Kubernetes/OpenShift Pods as an alternative to VXLAN tunnels. Static routes are enabled in the F5 CIS CLI/Helm yaml manifest using the argument --static-routing-mode=true. In this article, we will use Cilium as the Container Network Interface (CNI) and configure static routes for an NGINX deployment For initial configuration of the BIG-IP, including AS3 installation, please see https://clouddocs.f5.com/products/extensions/f5-appsvcs-extension/latest/userguide/installation.html and https://clouddocs.f5.com/containers/latest/userguide/kubernetes/#cis-installation The first step is to install Cilium CNI using the steps below on Linux host: 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 install --version 1.18.5 cilium status cilium status --wait root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# cilium status --wait /¯¯\ /¯¯\__/¯¯\ Cilium: OK \__/¯¯\__/ Operator: OK /¯¯\__/¯¯\ Envoy DaemonSet: OK \__/¯¯\__/ Hubble Relay: disabled \__/ ClusterMesh: disabled DaemonSet cilium Desired: 1, Ready: 1/1, Available: 1/1 DaemonSet cilium-envoy Desired: 1, Ready: 1/1, Available: 1/1 Deployment cilium-operator Desired: 1, Ready: 1/1, Available: 1/1 Containers: cilium Running: 1 cilium-envoy Running: 1 cilium-operator Running: 1 clustermesh-apiserver hubble-relay Cluster Pods: 6/6 managed by Cilium Helm chart version: 1.18.3 Image versions cilium quay.io/cilium/cilium:v1.18.3@sha256:5649db451c88d928ea585514746d50d91e6210801b300c897283ea319d68de15: 1 cilium-envoy quay.io/cilium/cilium-envoy:v1.34.10-1761014632-c360e8557eb41011dfb5210f8fb53fed6c0b3222@sha256:ca76eb4e9812d114c7f43215a742c00b8bf41200992af0d21b5561d46156fd15: 1 cilium-operator quay.io/cilium/operator-generic:v1.18.3@sha256:b5a0138e1a38e4437c5215257ff4e35373619501f4877dbaf92c89ecfad81797: 1 cilium connectivity test root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# cilium connectivity test ℹ️ Monitor aggregation detected, will skip some flow validation steps ✨ [default] Creating namespace cilium-test-1 for connectivity check... ✨ [default] Deploying echo-same-node service... ✨ [default] Deploying DNS test server configmap... ✨ [default] Deploying same-node deployment... ✨ [default] Deploying client deployment... ✨ [default] Deploying client2 deployment... ✨ [default] Deploying ccnp deployment... ⌛ [default] Waiting for deployment cilium-test-1/client to become ready... ⌛ [default] Waiting for deployment cilium-test-1/client2 to become ready... ⌛ [default] Waiting for deployment cilium-test-1/echo-same-node to become ready... ⌛ [default] Waiting for deployment cilium-test-ccnp1/client-ccnp to become ready... ⌛ [default] Waiting for deployment cilium-test-ccnp2/client-ccnp to become ready... ⌛ [default] Waiting for pod cilium-test-1/client-645b68dcf7-s5mdb to reach DNS server on cilium-test-1/echo-same-node-f5b8d454c-qkgq9 pod... ⌛ [default] Waiting for pod cilium-test-1/client2-66475877c6-cw7f5 to reach DNS server on cilium-test-1/echo-same-node-f5b8d454c-qkgq9 pod... ⌛ [default] Waiting for pod cilium-test-1/client-645b68dcf7-s5mdb to reach default/kubernetes service... ⌛ [default] Waiting for pod cilium-test-1/client2-66475877c6-cw7f5 to reach default/kubernetes service... ⌛ [default] Waiting for Service cilium-test-1/echo-same-node to become ready... ⌛ [default] Waiting for Service cilium-test-1/echo-same-node to be synchronized by Cilium pod kube-system/cilium-lxjxf ⌛ [default] Waiting for NodePort 10.69.12.2:32046 (cilium-test-1/echo-same-node) to become ready... 🔭 Enabling Hubble telescope... ⚠️ Unable to contact Hubble Relay, disabling Hubble telescope and flow validation: rpc error: code = Unavailable desc = connection error: desc = "transport: Error while dialing: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:4245: connect: connection refused" ℹ️ Expose Relay locally with: cilium hubble enable cilium hubble port-forward& ℹ️ Cilium version: 1.18.3 🏃[cilium-test-1] Running 126 tests ... [=] [cilium-test-1] Test [no-policies] [1/126] .................... [=] [cilium-test-1] Skipping test [no-policies-from-outside] [2/126] (skipped by condition) [=] [cilium-test-1] Test [no-policies-extra] [3/126] <- snip -> For this article, we will install k3s with Cilium CNI root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -s - --flannel-backend=none --disable-kube-proxy --disable servicelb --disable-network-policy --disable traefik --cluster-init --node-ip=10.69.12.2 --cluster-cidr=10.42.0.0/16 root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# mkdir -p $HOME/.kube root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# sudo cp -i /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml $HOME/.kube/config root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# echo "export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config" >> $HOME/.bashrc root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# source $HOME/.bashrc API_SERVER_IP=10.69.12.2 API_SERVER_PORT=6443 CLUSTER_ID=1 CLUSTER_NAME=`hostname` POD_CIDR="10.42.0.0/16" root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# cilium install --set cluster.id=${CLUSTER_ID} --set cluster.name=${CLUSTER_NAME} --set k8sServiceHost=${API_SERVER_IP} --set k8sServicePort=${API_SERVER_PORT} --set ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv4PodCIDRList=$POD_CIDR --set kubeProxyReplacement=true --helm-set=operator.replicas=1 root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# cilium config view | grep cluster bpf-lb-external-clusterip false cluster-id 1 cluster-name ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server cluster-pool-ipv4-cidr 10.42.0.0/16 cluster-pool-ipv4-mask-size 24 clustermesh-enable-endpoint-sync false clustermesh-enable-mcs-api false ipam cluster-pool max-connected-clusters 255 policy-default-local-cluster false root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# cilium status --wait The F5 CIS yaml manifest for deployment using Helm Note that these arguments are required for CIS to leverage static routes static-routing-mode: true orchestration-cni: cilium-k8s We will also be installing custom resources, so this argument is also required 3. custom-resource-mode: true Values yaml manifest for Helm deployment bigip_login_secret: f5-bigip-ctlr-login bigip_secret: create: false username: password: rbac: create: true serviceAccount: # Specifies whether a service account should be created create: true # The name of the service account to use. # If not set and create is true, a name is generated using the fullname template name: k8s-bigip-ctlr # This namespace is where the Controller lives; namespace: kube-system ingressClass: create: true ingressClassName: f5 isDefaultIngressController: true args: # See https://clouddocs.f5.com/containers/latest/userguide/config-parameters.html # NOTE: helm has difficulty with values using `-`; `_` are used for naming # and are replaced with `-` during rendering. # REQUIRED Params bigip_url: X.X.X.S bigip_partition: <BIG-IP_PARTITION> # OPTIONAL PARAMS -- uncomment and provide values for those you wish to use. static-routing-mode: true orchestration-cni: cilium-k8s # verify_interval: # node-poll_interval: # log_level: DEBUG # python_basedir: ~ # VXLAN # openshift_sdn_name: # flannel_name: cilium-vxlan # KUBERNETES # default_ingress_ip: # kubeconfig: # namespaces: ["foo", "bar"] # namespace_label: # node_label_selector: pool_member_type: cluster # resolve_ingress_names: # running_in_cluster: # use_node_internal: # use_secrets: insecure: true custom-resource-mode: true log-as3-response: true as3-validation: true # gtm-bigip-password # gtm-bigip-url # gtm-bigip-username # ipam : true image: # Use the tag to target a specific version of the Controller user: f5networks repo: k8s-bigip-ctlr pullPolicy: Always version: latest # affinity: # nodeAffinity: # requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution: # nodeSelectorTerms: # - matchExpressions: # - key: kubernetes.io/arch # operator: Exists # securityContext: # runAsUser: 1000 # runAsGroup: 3000 # fsGroup: 2000 # If you want to specify resources, uncomment the following # limits_cpu: 100m # limits_memory: 512Mi # requests_cpu: 100m # requests_memory: 512Mi # Set podSecurityContext for Pod Security Admission and Pod Security Standards # podSecurityContext: # runAsUser: 1000 # runAsGroup: 1000 # privileged: true Installation steps for deploying F5 CIS using helm can be found in this link https://clouddocs.f5.com/containers/latest/userguide/kubernetes/ Once F5 CIS is validated to be up and running, we can now deploy the following application example root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# cat application.yaml apiVersion: cis.f5.com/v1 kind: VirtualServer metadata: labels: f5cr: "true" name: goblin-virtual-server namespace: nsgoblin spec: host: goblin.com pools: - path: /green service: svc-nodeport servicePort: 80 - path: /harry service: svc-nodeport servicePort: 80 virtualServerAddress: X.X.X.X --- apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: goblin-backend namespace: nsgoblin spec: replicas: 2 selector: matchLabels: app: goblin-backend template: metadata: labels: app: goblin-backend spec: containers: - name: goblin-backend image: nginx:latest ports: - containerPort: 80 --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: svc-nodeport namespace: nsgoblin spec: selector: app: goblin-backend ports: - port: 80 targetPort: 80 type: ClusterIP k apply -f application.yaml We can now verify the k8s pods are created. Then we will create a sample html page to test access to the backend NGINX pod root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# k -n nsgoblin get po -owide NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE IP NODE NOMINATED NODE READINESS GATES goblin-backend-7485b6dcdf-d5t48 1/1 Running 0 6d2h 10.42.0.70 ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server <none> <none> goblin-backend-7485b6dcdf-pt7hx 1/1 Running 0 6d2h 10.42.0.97 ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server <none> <none> root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# k -n nsgoblin exec -it po/goblin-backend-7485b6dcdf-pt7hx -- /bin/sh # cat > green <<'EOF' <!DOCTYPE html> > > <html> > <head> <title>Green Goblin</title> <style> body { background-color: #4CAF50; color: white; text-align: center; padding: 50px; } h1 { font-size: 3em; } > > > > > </style> </head> <body> <h1>I am the green goblin!</h1> <p>Access me at /green</p> </body> </html> > > > > > > > EOF root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# k -n nsgoblin exec -it goblin-backend-7485b6dcdf-d5t48 -- /bin/sh # cat > green <<'EOF' > <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Green Goblin</title> <style> body { background-color: #4CAF50; color: white; text-align: center; padding: 50px; } h1 { font-size: 3em; } </style> > </head> <body> <h1>I am the green goblin!</h1> <p>Access me at /green</p> </body> </html> EOF> > > > > > > > > > > > > We can now validate the pools are created on the F5 BIG-IP root@(ciliumk8s-bigip)(cfg-sync Standalone)(Active)(/kubernetes/Shared)(tmos)# list ltm pool all ltm pool svc_nodeport_80_nsgoblin_goblin_com_green { description "crd_10_69_12_40_80 loadbalances this pool" members { /kubernetes/10.42.0.70:http { address 10.42.0.70 } /kubernetes/10.42.0.97:http { address 10.42.0.97 } } min-active-members 1 partition kubernetes } ltm pool svc_nodeport_80_nsgoblin_goblin_com_harry { description "crd_10_69_12_40_80 loadbalances this pool" members { /kubernetes/10.42.0.70:http { address 10.42.0.70 } /kubernetes/10.42.0.97:http { address 10.42.0.97 } } min-active-members 1 partition kubernetes } root@(ciliumk8s-bigip)(cfg-sync Standalone)(Active)(/kubernetes/Shared)(tmos)# list ltm virtual crd_10_69_12_40_80 ltm virtual crd_10_69_12_40_80 { creation-time 2025-12-22:10:10:37 description Shared destination /kubernetes/10.69.12.40:http ip-protocol tcp last-modified-time 2025-12-22:10:10:37 mask 255.255.255.255 partition kubernetes persist { /Common/cookie { default yes } } policies { crd_10_69_12_40_80_goblin_com_policy { } } profiles { /Common/f5-tcp-progressive { } /Common/http { } } serverssl-use-sni disabled source 0.0.0.0/0 source-address-translation { type automap } translate-address enabled translate-port enabled vs-index 2 } CIS log output 2025/12/22 18:10:25 [INFO] [Request: 1] cluster local requested CREATE in VIRTUALSERVER nsgoblin/goblin-virtual-server 2025/12/22 18:10:25 [INFO] [Request: 1][AS3] creating a new AS3 manifest 2025/12/22 18:10:25 [INFO] [Request: 1][AS3][BigIP] posting request to https://10.69.12.1 for tenants 2025/12/22 18:10:26 [INFO] [Request: 2] cluster local requested UPDATE in ENDPOINTS nsgoblin/svc-nodeport 2025/12/22 18:10:26 [INFO] [Request: 3] cluster local requested UPDATE in ENDPOINTS nsgoblin/svc-nodeport 2025/12/22 18:10:43 [INFO] [Request: 1][AS3][BigIP] post resulted in SUCCESS 2025/12/22 18:10:43 [INFO] [AS3][POST] SUCCESS: code: 200 --- tenant:kubernetes --- message: success 2025/12/22 18:10:43 [INFO] [Request: 3][AS3] Processing request 2025/12/22 18:10:43 [INFO] [Request: 3][AS3] creating a new AS3 manifest 2025/12/22 18:10:43 [INFO] [Request: 3][AS3][BigIP] posting request to https://10.69.12.1 for tenants 2025/12/22 18:10:43 [INFO] Successfully updated status of VirtualServer:nsgoblin/goblin-virtual-server in Cluster W1222 18:10:49.238444 1 warnings.go:70] v1 Endpoints is deprecated in v1.33+; use discovery.k8s.io/v1 EndpointSlice 2025/12/22 18:10:52 [INFO] [Request: 3][AS3][BigIP] post resulted in SUCCESS 2025/12/22 18:10:52 [INFO] [AS3][POST] SUCCESS: code: 200 --- tenant:kubernetes --- message: success 2025/12/22 18:10:52 [INFO] Successfully updated status of VirtualServer:nsgoblin/goblin-virtual-server in Cluster Troubleshooting: 1. If static routes are not added, the first step is to inspect CIS logs for entries similar to these: Cilium annotation warning logs 2025/12/22 17:44:45 [WARNING] Cilium node podCIDR annotation not found on node ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server, node has spec.podCIDR ? 2025/12/22 17:46:41 [WARNING] Cilium node podCIDR annotation not found on node ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server, node has spec.podCIDR ? 2025/12/22 17:46:42 [WARNING] Cilium node podCIDR annotation not found on node ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server, node has spec.podCIDR ? 2025/12/22 17:46:43 [WARNING] Cilium node podCIDR annotation not found on node ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server, node has spec.podCIDR ? 2. These are resolved by adding annotations to the node using the reference: https://clouddocs.f5.com/containers/latest/userguide/static-route-support.html Cilium annotation for node root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# k annotate node ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server io.cilium.network.ipv4-pod-cidr=10.42.0.0/16 root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# k describe node | grep -E "Annotations:|PodCIDR:|^\s+.*pod-cidr" Annotations: alpha.kubernetes.io/provided-node-ip: 10.69.12.2 io.cilium.network.ipv4-pod-cidr: 10.42.0.0/16 PodCIDR: 10.42.0.0/24 3. Verify a static route has been created and test connectivity to k8s pods root@(ciliumk8s-bigip)(cfg-sync Standalone)(Active)(/kubernetes)(tmos)# list net route net route k8s-ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server-10.69.12.2 { description 10.69.12.1 gw 10.69.12.2 network 10.42.0.0/16 partition kubernetes } Using pup (command line HTML parser) -> https://commandmasters.com/commands/pup-common/ root@ciliumk8s-ubuntu-server:~# curl -s http://goblin.com/green | pup 'body text{}' I am the green goblin! Access me at /green 1 0.000000 10.69.12.34 ? 10.69.12.40 TCP 78 34294 ? 80 [SYN] Seq=0 Win=64240 Len=0 MSS=1460 SACK_PERM TSval=2984295232 TSecr=0 WS=128 2 0.000045 10.69.12.40 ? 10.69.12.34 TCP 78 80 ? 34294 [SYN, ACK] Seq=0 Ack=1 Win=23360 Len=0 MSS=1460 WS=512 SACK_PERM TSval=1809316303 TSecr=2984295232 3 0.001134 10.69.12.34 ? 10.69.12.40 TCP 70 34294 ? 80 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=1 Win=64256 Len=0 TSval=2984295234 TSecr=1809316303 4 0.001151 10.69.12.34 ? 10.69.12.40 HTTP 149 GET /green HTTP/1.1 5 0.001343 10.69.12.40 ? 10.69.12.34 TCP 70 80 ? 34294 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=80 Win=23040 Len=0 TSval=1809316304 TSecr=2984295234 6 0.002497 10.69.12.1 ? 10.42.0.97 TCP 78 33707 ? 80 [SYN] Seq=0 Win=23360 Len=0 MSS=1460 WS=512 SACK_PERM TSval=1809316304 TSecr=0 7 0.003614 10.42.0.97 ? 10.69.12.1 TCP 78 80 ? 33707 [SYN, ACK] Seq=0 Ack=1 Win=64308 Len=0 MSS=1410 SACK_PERM TSval=1012609408 TSecr=1809316304 WS=128 8 0.003636 10.69.12.1 ? 10.42.0.97 TCP 70 33707 ? 80 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=1 Win=23040 Len=0 TSval=1809316307 TSecr=1012609408 9 0.003680 10.69.12.1 ? 10.42.0.97 HTTP 149 GET /green HTTP/1.1 10 0.004774 10.42.0.97 ? 10.69.12.1 TCP 70 80 ? 33707 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=80 Win=64256 Len=0 TSval=1012609409 TSecr=1809316307 11 0.004790 10.42.0.97 ? 10.69.12.1 TCP 323 HTTP/1.1 200 OK [TCP segment of a reassembled PDU] 12 0.004796 10.42.0.97 ? 10.69.12.1 HTTP 384 HTTP/1.1 200 OK 13 0.004820 10.69.12.40 ? 10.69.12.34 TCP 448 HTTP/1.1 200 OK [TCP segment of a reassembled PDU] 14 0.004838 10.69.12.1 ? 10.42.0.97 TCP 70 33707 ? 80 [ACK] Seq=80 Ack=254 Win=23552 Len=0 TSval=1809316308 TSecr=1012609410 15 0.004854 10.69.12.40 ? 10.69.12.34 HTTP 384 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Summary: There we have it, we have successfully deployed an NGINX application on a Kubernetes cluster managed by F5 CIS using static routes to forward traffic to the kubernetes podsThe Ingress NGINX Alternative: F5 NGINX Ingress Controller for the Long Term
The Kubernetes community recently announced that Ingress NGINX will be retired in March 2026. After that date, there won’t be any more new updates, bugfixes, or security patches. ingress-nginx is no longer a viable enterprise solution for the long-term, and organizations using it in production should move quickly to explore alternatives and plan to shift their workloads to Kubernetes ingress solutions that are continuing development. Your Options (And Why We Hope You’ll Consider NGINX) There are several good Ingress controllers available—Traefik, HAProxy, Kong, Envoy-based options, and Gateway API implementations. The Kubernetes docs list many of them, and they all have their strengths. Security start-up Chainguard is maintaining a status-quo version of ingress-nginx and applying basic safety patches as part of their EmeritOSS program. But this program is designed as a stopgap to keep users safe while they transition to a different ingress solution. F5 maintains an OSS permissively licensed NGINX Ingress Controller. The project is open source, Apache 2.0 licensed, and will stay that way. There is a team of dedicated engineers working on it with a slate of upcoming upgrades. If you’re already comfortable with NGINX and just want something that works without a significant learning curve, we believe that the F5 NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes is your smoothest path forward. The benefits of adopting NGINX Ingress Controller open source include: Genuinely open source: Apache 2.0 licensed with 150+ contributors from diverse organizations, not just F5. All development happens publicly on GitHub, and F5 has committed to keeping it open source forever. Plus community calls every 2 weeks. Minimal learning curve: Uses the same NGINX engine you already know. Most Ingress NGINX annotations have direct equivalents, and the migration guide provides clear mappings for your existing configurations. Supported annotations include popular ones such as nginx.org/client-body-buffer-size mirrors nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/client-body-buffer-size (sets the maximum size of the client request body buffer). Also available in VirtualServer and ConfigMap. nginx.org/rewrite-target mirrors nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target (sets a replacement path for URI rewrites) nginx.org/ssl-ciphers mirrors nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-ciphers (configures enabled TLS cipher suites) nginx.org/ssl-prefer-server-cipher mirrors nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-prefer-server-ciphers (controls server-side cipher preference during the TLS handshake) Optional enterprise-grade capabilities: While the OSS version is robust, NGINX Plus integration is available for enterprises needing high availability, authentication and authorization, session persistence, advanced security and commercial support Sustainable maintenance: A dedicated full-time team at F5 ensures regular security updates, bug fixes, and feature development. Production-tested at scale: NGINX Ingress Controller powers approximately 40% of Kubernetes Ingress deployments with over 10 million downloads. It’s battle-tested in real production environments. Kubernetes-native design: Custom Resource Definitions (VirtualServer, Policy, TransportServer) provide cleaner configuration than annotation overload, with built-in validation to prevent errors. Advanced capabilities when you need them: Support for canary deployments, A/B testing, traffic splitting, JWT validation, rate limiting, mTLS, and more—available in the open source version. Future-proof architecture: Active development of NGINX Gateway Fabric provides a clear migration path when you’re ready to move to Gateway API. NGINX Gateway Fabric is a conformant Gateway API solution under CNCF conformance criteria and it is one of the most widely used open source Gateway API solutions. Moving to NGINX Ingress Controller Here’s a rough migration guide. You can also check our more detailed migration guide on our documentation site. Phase 1: Take Stock See what you have: Document your current Ingress resources, annotations, and ConfigMaps Check for snippets: Identify any annotations like: nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/configuration-snippet Confirm you're using it: Run kubectl get pods --all-namespaces --selector app.kubernetes.io/name=ingress-nginx Set it up alongside: Install NGINX Ingress Controller in a separate namespace while keeping your current setup running Phase 2: Translate Your Config Convert annotations: Most of your existing annotations have equivalents in NGINX Ingress Controller - there's a comprehensive migration guide that maps them out Consider VirtualServer resources: These custom resources are cleaner than annotation-heavy Ingress, and give you more control, but it's your choice Or keep using Ingress: If you want minimal changes, it works fine with standard Kubernetes Ingress resources Handle edge cases: For anything that doesn't map directly, you can use snippets or Policy resources Phase 3: Test Everything Try it with test apps: Create some test Ingress rules pointing to NGINX Ingress Controller Run both side-by-side: Keep both controllers running and route test traffic through the new one Verify functionality: Check routing, SSL, rate limiting, CORS, auth—whatever you're using Check performance: Verify it handles your traffic the way you need Phase 4: Move Over Gradually Start small: Migrate your less-critical applications first Shift traffic slowly: Update DNS/routing bit by bit Watch closely: Keep an eye on logs and metrics as you go Keep an escape hatch: Make sure you can roll back if something goes wrong Phase 5: Finish Up Complete the migration: Move your remaining workloads Clean up the old controller: Uninstall community Ingress NGINX once everything's moved Tidy up: Remove old ConfigMaps and resources you don't need anymore Enterprise-grade capabilities and support Once an ingress layer becomes mission-critical, enterprise features become necessary. High availability, predictable failover, and supportability matter as much as features. Enterprise-grade capabilities available for NGINX Ingress Controller Plus include high availability, authentication and authorization, commercial support, and more. These ensure production traffic remains fast, secure, and reliable. Capabilities include: Commercial support Backed by vendor commercial support (SLAs, escalation paths) for production incidents Access to tested releases, patches, and security fixes suitable for regulated/enterprise environments Guidance for production architecture (HA patterns, upgrade strategies, performance tuning) Helps organizations standardize on a supported ingress layer for platform engineering at scale Dynamic Reconfiguration Upstream configuration updates via API without process reloads Eliminates memory bloat and connection timeouts as upstream server lists and variables are updated in real time when pods scale or configurations change Authentication & Authorization Built-in authentication support for OAuth 2.0 / OIDC, JWT validation, and basic auth External identity provider integration (e.g., Okta, Azure AD, Keycloak) via auth request patterns JWT validation at the edge, including signature verification, claims inspection, and token expiry enforcement Fine-grained access control based on headers, claims, paths, methods, or user identity Optional Web Application Firewall Native integration with F5 WAF for NGINX for OWASP Top 10 protection, gRPC schema validation, and OpenAPI enforcement DDoS mitigation capabilities when combined with F5 security solutions Centralized policy enforcement across multiple ingress resources High availability (HA) Designed to run as multiple Ingress Controller replicas in Kubernetes for redundancy and scale State sharing: Maintains session persistence, rate limits, and key-value stores for seamless uptime. Here’s the full list of differences between NGINX Open Source and NGINX One – a package that includes NGINX Plus Ingress Controller, NGINX Gateway Fabric, F5 WAF for NGINX, and NGINX One Console for managing NGINX Plus Ingress Controllers at scale. Get Started Today Ready to begin your migration? Here's what you need: 📚 Read the full documentation: NGINX Ingress Controller Docs 💻 Clone the repository: github.com/nginx/kubernetes-ingress 🐳 Pull the image: Docker Hub - nginx/nginx-ingress 🔄 Follow the migration guide: Migrate from Ingress-NGINX to NGINX Ingress Controller Interested in the enterprise version? Try NGINX One for free and give it a whirl The NGINX Ingress Controller community is responsive and full of passionate builders -- join the conversation in the GitHub Discussions or the NGINX Community Forum. You’ve got time to plan this migration right, but don’t wait until March 2026 to start.F5 Distributed Cloud Kubernetes Integration: Securing Services with Direct Pod Connectivity
Introduction As organizations embrace Kubernetes for container orchestration, they face critical challenges in exposing services securely to external consumers while maintaining granular control over traffic management and security policies. Traditional approaches using NodePort services or basic ingress controllers often fall short in providing the advanced application delivery and security features required for production workloads. F5 Distributed Cloud (F5 XC) addresses these challenges by offering enterprise-grade application delivery and security services through its Customer Edge (CE) nodes. By establishing direct connectivity to Kubernetes pods, F5 XC can provide sophisticated load balancing, WAF protection, API security, and multi-cloud connectivity without the limitations of NodePort-based architectures. This article demonstrates how to architect and implement F5 XC CE integration with Kubernetes clusters to expose and secure services effectively, covering both managed Kubernetes platforms (AWS EKS, Azure AKS, Google GKE) and self-managed clusters using K3S with Cilium CNI. Understanding F5 XC Kubernetes Service Discovery F5 Distributed Cloud includes a native Kubernetes service discovery feature that communicates directly with Kubernetes API servers to retrieve information about services and their associated pods. This capability operates in two distinct modes: Isolated Mode In this mode, F5 XC CE nodes are isolated from the Kubernetes cluster pods and can only reach services exposed as NodePort services. While the discovery mechanism can retrieve all services, connectivity is limited to NodePort-exposed endpoints with the inherent NodePort limitations: Port Range Restrictions: Limited to ports 30000-32767 Security Concerns: Exposes services on all node IPs Performance Overhead: Additional network hops through kube-proxy Limited Load Balancing: Basic round-robin without advanced health checks Non-Isolated Mode, Direct Pod Connectivity (and why it matters) This is the focus of our implementation. In non-isolated mode, F5 XC CE nodes can reach Kubernetes pods directly using their pod IP addresses. This provides several advantages: Simplified Architecture: Eliminate NodePort complexity and port management limitation Enhanced Security: Apply WAF, DDoS protection, and API security directly at the pod level Advanced Load Balancing: Sophisticated algorithms, circuit breaking, and retry logic Architectural Patterns for Pod IP Accessibility To enable direct pod connectivity from external components like F5 XC CEs, the pod IP addresses must be routable outside the Kubernetes cluster. The implementation approach varies based on your infrastructure: Cloud Provider Managed Kubernetes Cloud providers typically handle pod IP routing through their native Container Network Interfaces (CNIs): Figure 1: Cloud providers' K8S CNI routes PODs IPs to the Cloud Provider Private Cloud Routing Table AWS EKS: Uses Amazon VPC CNI, which assigns VPC IP addresses directly to pods Azure AKS: Traditional CNI mode allocates Azure VNET IPs to pods Google GKE: VPC-native clusters provide direct pod IP routing In these environments, the cloud provider's CNI automatically updates routing tables to make pod IPs accessible within the VPC/VNET. Self-Managed Kubernetes Clusters For self-managed clusters, you need an advanced CNI that can expose the Kubernetes overlay network. The most common solutions are: Cilium: Provides eBPF-based networking with BGP support Calico: Offers flexible networking policies with BGP peering capabilities and eBPF support as well These CNIs typically use BGP to advertise pod subnets to external routers, making them accessible from outside the cluster. Figure 2: Self-managed K8S clusters use advanced CNI with BGP to expose the overlay subnet Cloud Provider Implementations AWS EKS Architecture Figure 3: AWS EKS with F5 XC CE integration using VPC CNI With AWS EKS, the VPC CNI plugin assigns real VPC IP addresses to pods, making them directly routable within the VPC without additional configuration. Azure AKS Traditional CNI Figure 4: Azure AKS with traditional CNI mode for direct pod connectivity Azure's traditional CNI mode allocates IP addresses from the VNET subnet directly to pods, enabling native Azure networking features. Google GKE VPC-Native Figure 5: Google GKE VPC-native clusters with alias IP ranges for pods GKE's VPC-native mode uses alias IP ranges to provide pods with routable IP addresses within the Google Cloud VPC. Deeper dive into the implementation Implementation Example 1: AWS EKS Integration Let's walk through a complete implementation using AWS EKS as our Kubernetes platform. Prerequisites and Architecture Network Configuration: VPC CIDR: 10.154.0.0/16 Three private subnets (one per availability zone) F5 XC CE deployed in Private Subnet 1 EKS worker nodes distributed across all three subnets Figure 6: Complete EKS implementation architecture with F5 XC CE integration Kubernetes Configuration: EKS cluster with AWS VPC CNI Sample application: microbot (simple HTTP service) Three replicas distributed across nodes What is running inside the K8S cluster? The PODs We have three PODs in the default namespace. Figure 7: The running PODs in the EKS cluster One running with POD IP 10.154.125.116, another one with POD IP 10.154.76.183 and one running with POD IP 10.154.69.183. microbot POD is a simple HTTP application that is returning the full name of the POD and an image. Figure 8: The microbot app The services Figure 9: The services running in the EKS cluster Configure F5 XC Kubernetes Service Discovery Create a K8S service discovery object. Figure 10: Kubernetes service discovery configuration In the “Access Credentials” activate the “Show Advanced Fields” slider. This is the key! Figure 11: The "advanced fields" slider Then provide the Kubeconfig file of the K8S cluster and select “Kubernetes POD reachable”. Figure 12: Kubernetes POD network reachability Then the K8S should be displayed in the “Service Discoveries”. Figure 13: The discovered PODs IPs One can see that the services are discovered by the F5 XC node and more interestingly, the PODs IPs. Are the pods reachable from the F5XC CE? Figure 14: Testing connectivity to pod 10.154.125.116 Figure 15: Testing connectivity to pod 10.154.76.183 Figure 16: Testing connectivity to pod 10.154.69.183 Yes, they are! Create Origin Pool with K8S Service Create an origin pool that references your Kubernetes service: Figure 17: Creating origin pool with Kubernetes service type Create an HTTPS Load-Balancer and test the service Just create a regular F5 XC HTTPS Load-Balancer and use the origin pool created above. Figure 18: Traffic load-balanced across the three PODs The result shows traffic being load-balanced across all EKS pods. Implementation Example 2: Self-Managed K3S with Cilium CNI One infrastructure subnet (10.154.1.0/24) in which the following components are going to be deployed: F5 XC CE single node (10.154.1.100) Two Linux Ubuntu nodes (10.154.1.10 & 10.154.1.11) On the Linux Ubuntu nodes, a Kubernetes cluster is going to be deployed using K3S (www.k3s.io) with the following specifications: PODs overlay subnet: 10.160.0.0/16 Services overlay subnet: 10.161.0.0/16 Default K3S CNI (flannel) will be disabled K3S CNI will be replaced by Cilium CNI to expose directly the PODs overlay subnet to the “external world” Figure 19: Self-managed K3S cluster with Cilium CNI and BGP peering to F5 XC CE What is running inside the K8S cluster? The PODs We have two PODs in the default namespace. Figure 20: The running PODs in the K8S cluster One running on node “k3s-1” with POD IP 10.160.0.203 and the other one running on node “k3s-2” with POD IP 10.160.1.208. microbot POD is a simple HTTP application that is returning the full name of the POD and an image. The services Figure 21: The services running in the K8S cluster Different Kubernetes services are created to expose the microbot PODs, one of type Cluster IP and the other one of type LoadBalancer. The type of service doesn’t really matter for F5XC because we are working in a full routed mode between the CE and the K8S cluster. F5XC only needs to “know” the PODs IPs, which will be discovered through the services. Configure F5 XC Kubernetes Service Discovery Steps are identical regarding what we did for EKS. And once done, services and PODs IPs are discovered by F5XC. Figure 22: The discovered PODs IPs Configure the BGP peering on F5XC CE In this example topology, BGP peerings are established directly between the K8S nodes and the F5 XC CE. Other implementations are possible, for instance, with an intermediate router. Figure 23: BGP peerings Check if the peerings are established. Figure 24: Verification of the BGP peerings Are the pods reachable from the F5XC CE? Figure 25: PODs reachability test They are! Create Origin Pool with K8S Service As we did for the EKS configuration, create an origin pool that references your Kubernetes service. Create an HTTPS Load-Balancer and test the service Just create a regular F5 XC HTTPS Load-Balancer and use the origin pool created above. Figure 26: Traffic load-balanced across the two PODs Scaling up? Let’s add another POD to the deployment to see how F5XC will handle the load-balancing after. Figure 27: Scaling up the Microbot PODs And it’s working! Load is spread automatically as soon as new PODs instances are available for the given service. Figure 28: Traffic load-balanced across the three PODs Appendix - K3S and Cilium deployment example Step 1: Install K3S without Default CNI On the master node: curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" \ INSTALL_K3S_EXEC="--flannel-backend=none \ --disable-network-policy \ --disable=traefik \ --disable servicelb \ --cluster-cidr=10.160.0.0/16 \ --service-cidr=10.161.0.0/16" sh - # Export kubeconfig export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml # Get token for worker nodes sudo cat /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token On worker nodes: IP_MASTER=10.154.1.10 K3S_TOKEN=<token-from-master> curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_URL=https://${IP_MASTER}:6443 K3S_TOKEN=${K3S_TOKEN} sh - Step 2: Install and Configure Cilium On the K3S master node, please perform the following: Install Helm and Cilium CLI: # Install Helm sudo snap install helm --classic # Download Cilium CLI CILIUM_CLI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium-cli/main/stable.txt) CLI_ARCH=amd64 curl -L --fail --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/download/${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 Install Cilium with BGP support: helm repo add cilium https://helm.cilium.io/ helm install cilium cilium/cilium --version 1.16.5 \ --set=ipam.operator.clusterPoolIPv4PodCIDRList="10.160.0.0/16" \ --set kubeProxyReplacement=true \ --set k8sServiceHost=10.154.1.10 \ --set k8sServicePort=6443 \ --set bgpControlPlane.enabled=true \ --namespace kube-system \ --set bpf.hostLegacyRouting=false \ --set bpf.masquerade=true # Monitor installation cilium status --wait Step 3: Configure BGP Peering Label nodes for BGP: kubectl label nodes k3s-1 bgp=true kubectl label nodes k3s-2 bgp=true Create BGP configuration: # BGP Cluster Config apiVersion: cilium.io/v2alpha1 kind: CiliumBGPClusterConfig metadata: name: cilium-bgp spec: nodeSelector: matchLabels: bgp: "true" bgpInstances: - name: "k3s-instance" localASN: 65001 peers: - name: "f5xc-ce" peerASN: 65002 peerAddress: 10.154.1.100 peerConfigRef: name: "cilium-peer" --- # BGP Peer Config apiVersion: cilium.io/v2alpha1 kind: CiliumBGPPeerConfig metadata: name: cilium-peer spec: timers: holdTimeSeconds: 9 keepAliveTimeSeconds: 3 gracefulRestart: enabled: true restartTimeSeconds: 15 families: - afi: ipv4 safi: unicast advertisements: matchLabels: advertise: "bgp" --- # BGP Advertisement apiVersion: cilium.io/v2alpha1 kind: CiliumBGPAdvertisement metadata: name: bgp-advertisements labels: advertise: bgp spec: advertisements: - advertisementType: "PodCIDR"Announcing F5 NGINX Gateway Fabric 2.0.0 with a New Distributed Architecture
Gateway Fabric 2.0 marks our transition into a distributed architecture that is highly scalable, secure, and flexible. This architecture also easily enables more advanced capabilities and prepares us for integration for observability and fleet management with F5 NGINX One. Here are the big highlights for this major release: Control and Data Plane Separation Multiple Gateway Support HTTP Request Mirror Listener Isolation As always, bug fixesAnnouncing F5 NGINX Gateway Fabric 2.0.0 with a New Distributed Architecture
Today, F5 NGINX Gateway Fabric is reaching an important milestone. The release of NGINX Gateway Fabric 2.0 marks our transition into a distributed architecture that is highly scalable, secure, and flexible. This architecture also easily enables more advanced capabilities and prepares us for integration for observability and fleet management with F5 NGINX One. Here are the big highlights for this major release: Control and Data Plane Separation Multiple Gateway Support HTTP Request Mirror Listener Isolation As always, bug fixes Data and Control Plane Separation Before 2.0, NGINX Gateway Fabric contained both the “control plane,” the container responsible for reading and applying configuration, and the “data plane,” the NGINX container where all traffic flows through, within the same pod. This meant if you scaled the NGINX Gateway Fabric pod, you would be forced to scale the data and control plane together. Now with our distributed architecture, the data plane deploys in a separate pod from the control plane. This allows us to enable more flexible use cases such as multiple gateways per control plane, a highly available control plane, and directly scaling NGINX replicas per Gateway. This makes NGINX Gateway Fabric much more resource efficient at scale. This change also improves NGINX Gateway Fabric’s security posture by limiting how much is accessible if a single pod is compromised. While NGINX Gateway Fabric and NGINX have always been secure by default, this architecture enables a two-tier defense against potential attacks: any security intrusion on the control plane has no way to directly access traffic, nor can the data plane directly access control plane interfaces. Multiple Gateways NGINX Gateway Fabric has historically been limited to a single Gateway object. We first chose this architecture for the short term because Routes are a good way to separate routing and access control for developers and cluster operators. As our product matures, we know that more advanced use cases require the isolation of infrastructure for separate teams, customers, or SLAs. Our new architecture enables you to do just that: In NGINX Gateway Fabric 2.0, every time you define a Gateway object, the control plane will provision an NGINX deployment, which can then be independently scaled by adding more replicas if needed. With this pattern, it’s easy to create a second, third, or many more Gateways. You can choose to give each customer or team in your cluster their own Gateway so they can each own their own infrastructure. Or you may want to separate infrastructure to apply separate policies based on hostname or product group. Each Gateway can also be scaled independently for varying levels of traffic, all managed by a single control plane. HTTP Request Mirrors Request mirrors are often useful when you want to mirror traffic to analyze traffic for security issues or to test a new version of an application with production traffic without impacting current users. All request responses to a mirrored location are ignored, so request mirrors serve as another useful tool for testing and analysis. These mirrors are added using a filter on the route rule. They will only affect a small group of traffic you choose. If you need more, you can add as many as you need. Listener Isolation We decided to also include the concept of listener isolation in this release to make advanced configurations more intuitive to work with and guard against accidental misconfiguration. Listener isolation means that any request should match at most one Listener within a Gateway. The Gateway API lists this example below: If Listeners are defined for "foo.example.com" and "*.example.com", a request to "foo.example.com" SHOULD only be routed using routes attached to the "foo.example.com" Listener and NOT the "*.example.com" Listener. The alternative is that request may match against multiple listeners unintentionally, which can become a problem when different policies are applied to the other listeners, or the request is routed to the wrong location. Now, NGINX Gateway Fabric will ensure that a Route will only match the most specific Listener on the Gateway it is attached to. What’s Next Our next release will be primarily focused around delivering more extended features from the Gateway API in an effort to support all extended features at the extended support level. If you are unfamiliar, the Gateway API has three separate support levels for every feature in the specification: Core: Portable features that all implementations should support. Extended: Portable features that are not universally supported across implementations. Implementations that support the feature should have the same behavior and semantics. Some extended features may eventually move to core. Implementation-specific: These features are not portable and vendor-specific. These features are far less defined in API and schema. You can see the full description of support levels here. So far, NGINX Gateway Fabric has supported all core features since 1.0 and has slowly been adding extended features over the past few releases. For 2.1, we will have a greater focus on these features to enable more advanced use cases. We plan to have all extended features available in NGINX Gateway Fabric by 2.2. For F5 NGINX Plus users, 2.1 will bring connection to the F5 NGINX One Console with basic fleet management capabilities. We plan on expanding these capabilities to include Observability for all NGINX deployments in your organization in the near future. 2.1 will also include support for F5 NGINX App Protect Web Application Firewall to protect your applications from any incoming malicious traffic. Specifically, NGINX Gateway Fabric will be implementing support for v5, with a new configuration experience coming later this year. Resources For the complete changelog for NGINX Gateway Fabric 2.0.0, see the Release Notes. To try NGINX Gateway Fabric for Kubernetes with NGINX Plus, start your free 30-day trial today or contact us to discuss your use cases. If you would like to get involved, see what is coming next, or see the source code for NGINX Gateway Fabric, check out our repository on GitHub! We have weekly community meetings on Tuesdays at 9:30AM Pacific/12:30PM Eastern/5:30PM GMT. Meeting links, updates, agenda, and notes are on the NGINX Gateway Fabric Meeting Calendar. Links are also always available from our GitHub readme.Kubernetes architecture options with F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Summary F5 Distributed Cloud Services (F5 XC) can both integrate with your existing Kubernetes (K8s) clusters and/or host a K8s workload itself. Within these distinctions, we have multiple architecture options. This article explores four major architectures in ascending order of sophistication and advantages. Architecture #1: External Load Balancer (Secure K8s Gateway) Architecture #2: CE as a pod (K8s site) Architecture #3: Managed Namespace (vK8s) Architecture #4: Managed K8s (mK8s) Kubernetes Architecture Options As K8s continues to grow, options for how we run K8s and integrate with existing K8s platforms continue to grow. F5 XC can both integrate with your existing K8s clusters and/or run a managed K8s platform itself. Multiple architectures exist within these offerings too, so I was thoroughly confused when I first heard about these possibilities. A colleague recently laid it out for me in a conversation: "Michael, listen up: XC can either integrate with your K8s platform, run inside your K8s platform, host virtual K8s (Namespace-aaS), or run a K8s platform in your environment." I replied, "That's great. Now I have a mental model for differentiating between architecture options." This article will overview these architectures and provide 101-level context: when, how, and why would you implement these options? Side note 1: F5 XC concepts and terms F5 XC is a global platform that can provide networking and app delivery services, as well as compute (K8s workloads). We call each of our global PoP's a Regional Edge (RE). RE's are highly meshed to form the backbone of the global platform. They connect your sites, they can expose your services to the Internet, and they can run workloads. This platform is extensible into your data center by running one or more XC Nodes in your network, also called a Customer Edge (CE). A CE is a compute node in your network that registers to our global control plane and is then managed by a customer as SaaS. The registration of one or more CE's creates a customer site in F5 XC. A CE can run on a hypervisor (VMWare/KVM/Etc), a Hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc), baremetal, or even as a k8s pod, and can be deployed in HA clusters. XC Mesh functionality provides connectivity between sites, security services, and observability. Optionally, in addition, XC App Stack functionality allows a large and arbitrary number of managed clusters to be logically grouped into a virtual site with a single K8s mgmt interface. So where Mesh services provide the networking, App Stack services provide the Kubernetes compute mgmt. Our first 2 architectures require Mesh services only, and our last two require App Stack. Side note 2: Service-to-service communication I'm often asked how to allow services between clusters to communicate with each other. This is possible and easy with XC. Each site can publish services to every other site, including K8s sites. This means that any K8s service can be reachable from other sites you choose. And this can be true in any of the architectures below, although more granular controls are possible with the more sophisticated architectures. I'll explore this common question more in a separate article. Architecture 1: External Load Balancer (Secure K8s Gateway) In a Secure Kubernetes Gateway architecture, you have integration with your existing K8s platform, using the XC node as the external load balancer for your K8s cluster. In this scenario, you create a ServiceAccount and kubeconfig file to configure XC. The XC node then performs service discovery against your K8s API server. I've covered this process in a previous article, but the advantage is that you can integrate with existing K8s platforms. This allows exposing both NodePort and ClusterIP services via the XC node. XC is not hosting any workloads in this architecture, but it is exposing your services to your local network, or remote sites, or the Internet. In the diagram above, I show a web application being accesssed from a remote site (and/or the Internet) where the origin pool is a NodePort service discovered in a K8s cluster. Architecture 2: Run a site within a K8s cluster (K8s site type) Creating a K8s site is easy - just deploy a single manifest found here. This file deploys multiple resources in your cluster, and together these resources work to provide the services of a CE, and create a customer site. I've heard this referred to as "running a CE inside of K8s" or "running your CE as a pod". However, when I say "CE node" I'm usually referring to a discreet compute node like a VM or piece of hardware; this architecture is actually a group of pods and related resources that run within K8s to create a XC customer site. With XC running inside your existing cluster, you can expose services within the cluster by DNS name because the site will resolve these from within the cluster. Your service can then be exposed anywhere by the F5 XC platform. This is similar to Architecture 1 above, but with this model, your site is simply a group of pods within K8s. An advantage here is the ability to expose services of other types (e.g. ClusterIP). A site deployed into a K8s cluster will only support Mesh functionality and does not support AppStack functionality (i.e., you cannot run a cluster within your cluster). In this architecture, XC acts as a K8s ingress controller with built-in application security. It also enables Mesh features, such as publishing of other sites' services on this site, and publishing of this site's discovered services on other sites. Architecture 3: vK8s (Namespace-as-a-Service) If the services you use include AppStack capabilities, then architectures #3 and #4 are possible for you. In these scenarios, our XC node actually runs your K8s on your workloads. We are no longer integrating XC with your existing K8s platform. XC is the platform. A simple way to run K8s workloads is to use a virtual k8s (vK8s) architecture. This could be referred to as a "managed Namespace" because by creating a vK8s object in XC you get a single namespace in a virtual cluster. Your Namespace can be fully hosted (deployed to RE's) or run on your VM's (CE's), or both. Your kubeconfig file will allow access to your Namespace via the hosted API server. Via your regular kubectl CLI (or via the web console) you can create/delete/manage K8s resources (Deployments, Services, Secrets, ServiceAccounts, etc) and view application resource metrics. This is great if you have workloads that you want to deploy to remote regions where you do not have infrastructure and would prefer to run in F5's RE's, or if you have disparate clusters across multiple sites and you'd like to manage multiple K8s clusters via a single centralized, virtual cluster. Best practice guard rails for vK8s With a vK8s architecture, you don't have your own cluster, but rather a managed Namespace. So there are some restrictions (for example, you cannot run a container as root, bind to a privileged port, or to the Host network). You cannot create CRD's, ClusterRoles, PodSecurityPolicies, or Namespaces, so K8s operators are not supported. In short, you don't have a managed cluster, but a managed Namespace on a virtual cluster. Architecture 4: mK8s (Managed K8s) In managed k8s (mk8s, also known as physical K8s or pk8s) deployment, we have an enterprise-level K8s distribution that is run at your site. This means you can use XC to deploy/manage/upgrade K8s infrastructure, but you manage the Kubernetes resources. The benefits include what is typical for 3rd-party K8s mgmt solutions, but also some key differentiators: multi-cloud, with automation for Azure, AWS, and GCP environments consumed by you as SaaS enterprise-level traffic control natively allows a large and arbitrary number of managed clusters to be logically managed with a single K8s mgmt interface You can enable kubectl access against your local cluster and disable the hosted API server, so your kubeconfig file can point to a global URL or a local endpoint on-prem. Another benefit of mK8s is that you are running a full K8s cluster at your site, not just a Namespace in a virtual cluster. The restrictions that apply to vK8s (see above) do not apply to mK8s, so you could run privileged pods if required, use Operators that make use of ClusterRoles and CRDs, and perform other tasks that require cluster-wide access. Traffic management controls with mK8s Because your workloads run in a cluster managed by XC, we can apply more sophisticated and native policies to K8s traffic than non-managed clusters in earlier architectures: Service isolation can be enforced within the cluster, so that pods in a given namespace cannot communicate with services outside of that namespace, by default. More service-to-service controls exist so that you can decide which services can reach with other services with more granularity. Egress control can be natively enforced for outbound traffic from the cluster, by namespace, labels, IP ranges, or other methods. E.g.: Svc A can reach myapi.example.com but no other Internet service. WAF policies, bot defense, L3/4 policies, etc—all of these policies that you have typically applied with network firewalls, WAF's, etc—can be applied natively within the platform. This architecture took me a long time to understand, and longer to fully appreciate. But once you have run your workloads natively on a managed K8s platform that is connected to a global backbone and capable of performing network and application delivery within the platform, the security and traffic mgmt benefits become very compelling. Conclusion: As K8s continues to expand, management solutions of your clusters make it possible to secure your K8s services, whether they are managed by XC or exist in disparate clusters. With F5 XC as a global platform consumed as a service—not a discreet installation managed by you—the available architectures here are unique and therefore can accommodate the diverse (and changing!) ways we see K8s run today. Related Articles Securely connecting Kubernetes Microservices with F5 Distributed Cloud Multi-cluster Multi-cloud Networking for K8s with F5 Distributed Cloud - Architecture Pattern Multiple Kubernetes Clusters and Path-Based Routing with F5 Distributed Cloud
