MetalLB

Purpose: Load balancer for bare-metal Kubernetes clusters

Version: v0.14.8 (Helm chart: metallb 1.0.0)

Namespace: metallb-system

Description

Provides network load balancing for clusters that don't run on a cloud provider with built-in load balancers. Uses Layer 2 (ARP) mode for IP address announcement.

Installation

Installed via ArgoCD from Helm chart: metallb/metallb

Configuration

Configuration file: config/dev/applications/metallb-values.yaml

controller:
  resources:
    limits:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 100Mi
    requests:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 100Mi

speaker:
  resources:
    limits:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 100Mi
    requests:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 100Mi

IP Address Pool

Defined in config/dev/resources/metallb.yaml:

apiVersion: metallb.io/v1beta1
kind: IPAddressPool
metadata:
  name: default-pool
  namespace: metallb-system
spec:
  addresses:
    - 10.0.0.210-10.0.0.250
  autoAssign: true

Pool Range: 10.0.0.210 - 10.0.0.250

L2 Advertisement

apiVersion: metallb.io/v1beta1
kind: L2Advertisement
metadata:
  name: default
  namespace: metallb-system
spec:
  ipAddressPools:
    - default-pool

Usage

Services of type LoadBalancer automatically get an IP from the pool:

kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx
# NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)
# ingress-nginx-controller   LoadBalancer   10.96.89.123   10.0.0.211   80:30081/TCP,443:30080/TCP

Components

Component	Purpose
metallb-controller	IP address allocation
metallb-speaker	ARP announcer