How do I configure the Amazon VPC CNI plugin to use an IP address in VPC subnets with Amazon EKS?

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I want to configure the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin to use an IP address control number in VPC subnets with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS).

Short description

One of the primary components of the Amazon VPC CNI is the L-IPAM daemon that allocates IP addresses to nodes.

If a new pod is scheduled on a node, then the Container Runtime invokes the CNI binary. The CNI binary calls the L-IPAMD to get an IP address for the new pod. Then, the pod tracks the elastic network interfaces and IP addresses that are attached to the instance.

You can use certain configuration variables to control how many network interfaces and IP addresses are maintained. For more information, see WARM_ENI_TARGET, WARM_IP_TARGET and MINIMUM_IP_TARGET and WARM_PREFIX_TARGET, WARM_IP_TARGET and MINIMUM_IP_TARGET on the GitHub website.

Resolution

The following are best practices for each of the configuration variables that control the maintenance of network interfaces and IP addresses.

WARM_ENI_TARGET

Use the WARM_ENI_TARGET variable to determine how many elastic network interfaces the L-IPAMD keeps available. This is so that pods are immediately assigned an IP address when scheduled on a node.

The following are best practices for WARM_ENI_TARGET

  • Check the worker node instance type and the maximum number of network interfaces and private IPv4 addresses per interface. This prevents the depletion of the available subnet IP addresses.
  • If you expect your application to scale greatly, then use WARM_ENI_TARGET to quickly accommodate newly scheduled pods.

WARM_IP_TARGET

Use the WARM_IP_TARGET variable to make sure that you always have a defined number of available IP addresses in the L-IPAMD's warm pool.

The following are best practices for WARM_IP_TARGET

  • For clusters with low productivity, use WARM_IP_TARGET. This means that only the required number of IP addresses are assigned to the network interface.
  • Don't use this setting for large clusters, or if the cluster has high pod churn. This setting can cause additional calls to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) API and can throttle requests. It's a best practice to set a MINIMUM_IP_TARGET when you use WARM_IP_TARGET.
  • When a MINIMUM_IP_TARGET is set, it's a best practice for WARM_IP_TARGET to be greater than 0.

MINIMUM_IP_TARGET

Use the MINIMUM_IP_TARGET to make sure that a minimum number of IP addresses are assigned to a node when it's created. This variable is generally used with the WARM_IP_TARGET variable.

The following are best practices for MINIMUM_IP_TARGET

  • If you know the minimum number of pods that you want to run per node, then use MINIMUM_IP_TARGET. This makes sure that the required number of IP addresses are assigned.
  • Set this variable with WARM_IP_TARGET to make sure that there are available IP addresses on the node for future pods.

WARM_PREFIX_TARGET

Use the WARM_PREFIX_TARGET variable to make sure that you always have a defined number of prefixes (/28 CIDR blocks) added to the instance's network interface. You can use WARM_PREFIX_TARGET only for CNI version 1.9.0 or later, and you must activate the Amazon VPC CNI IP address prefix assignment capability.

The following are best practices for WARM_PREFIX_TARGET

  • If you use the IP address prefix assignment, then make sure that the WARM_PREFIX_TARGET variable is set to a value greater than or equal to 1. If it's set to 0, then you receive the following error:

    "Error: Setting WARM_PREFIX_TARGET = 0 is not supported while WARM_IP_TARGET/MINIMUM_IP_TARGET is not set. Please configure either one of the WARM_{PREFIX/IP}_TARGET or MINIMUM_IP_TARGET env variables."

  • For smaller subnets, use WARM_IP_TARGET with WARM_PREFIX_TARGET. This avoids the allocation of too many prefixes that can deplete available IP addresses.

To learn more about how these configuration variables affect IP address utilization, see CNI configuration variables on the GitHub website.

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