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VMs on Kubernetes: extra batteries required !

Miguel Barroso

from Red Hat (Spain)

About speaker

Principal SW Engineer at Red Hat

Miguel is a Principal Software Engineer for OpenShift Virtualization at Red Hat.

His main interests are SDN / NFV, functional programming, containers, and virtualization.

About speakers company

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Abstracts

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More and more users are running virtualized, as well as container, workloads on Kubernetes. But container networking is letting them down. The main challenge users face with virtualized workloads is ensuring consistent network requirements: these workloads demand stable IP addresses (and gateway) throughout their lifecycle, including during live migrations. However, traditional CNI (Container Network Interface) plugins focus exclusively on container networking and lack awareness of VM-specific needs. This oversight hinders users from implementing the virt-aware features essential for effective VM management.

In this talk, we will discuss the need for a virt-aware CNI, introduce the OVN-Kubernetes CNI plugin, pointing out which virt-aware features it provides, and elaborate on how those are implemented, and how KubeVirt uses those. You will learn basics about CNI, virtualization requirements, networking, and how to use an SDN (software defined networking) solution to push the complexity of configuring the network away from the admin.


KubeVirt is a Kubernetes plugin designed to help users tackle the challenges of managing both containers and virtual machines (VMs) within a unified platform.

Traditional CNI (Container Network Interface) plugins operate exclusively at the container level, focusing on orchestrating networking for pods (a group of containers) without considering the underlying virtualization requirements. This creates a disconnect in scenarios where applications span both containerized and virtualized workloads.

A virtualization-aware CNI plugin, on the other hand, bridges this gap by understanding both the container and virtualization layers, enabling it to optimize networking across diverse environments. Maintaining network consistency during live migration and restarts of virtual machines (VMs) is critical. This presentation introduces a virt-aware Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin that leverages Open Virtual Network (OVN) as a software-defined networking (SDN) control plane to Open vSwitch (OVS). Our approach addresses the challenges of preserving IP addresses across the CNI implemented network topologies, ensuring seamless connectivity and minimizing service disruption.

We will explore the architecture and orchestration of the virt-aware CNI plugin, detailing how it integrates with OVN to track VM states and dynamically manage network configurations during migration processes. The plugin’s mechanisms not only enhance IP address retention throughout the VM’s lifecycle, but also optimize network performance by intelligently routing traffic and reducing traffic disruption during a live-migration.

Additionally, the virt-aware CNI plugin simplifies networking within virtualization workloads by providing DHCP and DHCPv6 services, along with Router Advertisements (RAs). This enables guest VMs to seamlessly acquire all necessary networking information - such as IP addresses, gateways, hostnames, DNS, and routes - without manual configuration, typically done via cloud-init. By automating these processes, our solution enhances operational efficiency and reduces the complexity traditionally associated with network setup in containerized environments.

Attendees will gain insights into the implementation of this solution, including practical use cases, and potential impacts on hybrid cloud environments. By showcasing our approach, we aim to empower developers and network operators to leverage advanced networking capabilities that align with the demands of modern virtualized workloads. Join us to discover how our virt-aware CNI plugin paves the way for robust, agile, and resilient network infrastructures in cloud-native ecosystems.

The Program Committee has not yet taken a decision on this talk

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