161 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
161 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
reviewers:
|
|
- robscott
|
|
title: Topology Aware Hints
|
|
content_type: concept
|
|
weight: 45
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
<!-- overview -->
|
|
|
|
{{< feature-state for_k8s_version="v1.21" state="alpha" >}}
|
|
|
|
_Topology Aware Hints_ enable topology aware routing by including suggestions
|
|
for how clients should consume endpoints. This approach adds metadata to enable
|
|
consumers of EndpointSlice and / or and Endpoints objects, so that traffic to
|
|
those network endpoints can be routed closer to where it originated.
|
|
|
|
For example, you can route traffic within a locality to reduce
|
|
costs, or to improve network performance.
|
|
|
|
<!-- body -->
|
|
|
|
## Motivation
|
|
|
|
Kubernetes clusters are increasingly deployed in multi-zone environments.
|
|
_Topology Aware Hints_ provides a mechanism to help keep traffic within the zone
|
|
it originated from. This concept is commonly referred to as "Topology Aware
|
|
Routing". When calculating the endpoints for a {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="Service" >}},
|
|
the EndpointSlice controller considers the topology (region and zone) of each endpoint
|
|
and populates the hints field to allocate it to a zone.
|
|
Cluster components such as the {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kube-proxy" text="kube-proxy" >}}
|
|
can then consume those hints, and use them to influence how traffic to is routed
|
|
(favoring topologically closer endpoints).
|
|
|
|
## Using Topology Aware Hints
|
|
|
|
If you have [enabled](/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/enabling-topology-aware-hints) the
|
|
overall feature, you can activate Topology Aware Hints for a Service by setting the
|
|
`service.kubernetes.io/topology-aware-hints` annotation to `auto`. This tells
|
|
the EndpointSlice controller to set topology hints if it is deemed safe.
|
|
Importantly, this does not guarantee that hints will always be set.
|
|
|
|
## How it works {#implementation}
|
|
|
|
The functionality enabling this feature is split into two components: The
|
|
EndpointSlice controller and the kube-proxy. This section provides a high level overview
|
|
of how each component implements this feature.
|
|
|
|
### EndpointSlice controller {#implementation-control-plane}
|
|
|
|
The EndpointSlice controller is responsible for setting hints on EndpointSlices
|
|
when this feature is enabled. The controller allocates a proportional amount of
|
|
endpoints to each zone. This proportion is based on the
|
|
[allocatable](/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/reserve-compute-resources/#node-allocatable)
|
|
CPU cores for nodes running in that zone. For example, if one zone had 2 CPU
|
|
cores and another zone only had 1 CPU core, the controller would allocated twice
|
|
as many endpoints to the zone with 2 CPU cores.
|
|
|
|
The following example shows what an EndpointSlice looks like when hints have
|
|
been populated:
|
|
|
|
```yaml
|
|
apiVersion: discovery.k8s.io/v1
|
|
kind: EndpointSlice
|
|
metadata:
|
|
name: example-hints
|
|
labels:
|
|
kubernetes.io/service-name: example-svc
|
|
addressType: IPv4
|
|
ports:
|
|
- name: http
|
|
protocol: TCP
|
|
port: 80
|
|
endpoints:
|
|
- addresses:
|
|
- "10.1.2.3"
|
|
conditions:
|
|
ready: true
|
|
hostname: pod-1
|
|
zone: zone-a
|
|
hints:
|
|
forZones:
|
|
- name: "zone-a"
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
### kube-proxy {#implementation-kube-proxy}
|
|
|
|
The kube-proxy component filters the endpoints it routes to based on the hints set by
|
|
the EndpointSlice controller. In most cases, this means that the kube-proxy is able
|
|
to route traffic to endpoints in the same zone. Sometimes the controller allocates endpoints
|
|
from a different zone to ensure more even distribution of endpoints between zones.
|
|
This would result in some traffic being routed to other zones.
|
|
|
|
## Safeguards
|
|
|
|
The Kubernetes control plane and the kube-proxy on each node apply some
|
|
safeguard rules before using Topology Aware Hints. If these don't check out,
|
|
the kube-proxy selects endpoints from anywhere in your cluster, regardless of the
|
|
zone.
|
|
|
|
1. **Insufficient number of endpoints:** If there are less endpoints than zones
|
|
in a cluster, the controller will not assign any hints.
|
|
|
|
2. **Impossible to achieve balanced allocation:** In some cases, it will be
|
|
impossible to achieve a balanced allocation of endpoints among zones. For
|
|
example, if zone-a is twice as large as zone-b, but there are only 2
|
|
endpoints, an endpoint allocated to zone-a may receive twice as much traffic
|
|
as zone-b. The controller does not assign hints if it can't get this "expected
|
|
overload" value below an acceptable threshold for each zone. Importantly this
|
|
is not based on real-time feedback. It is still possible for individual
|
|
endpoints to become overloaded.
|
|
|
|
3. **One or more Nodes has insufficient information:** If any node does not have
|
|
a `topology.kubernetes.io/zone` label or is not reporting a value for
|
|
allocatable CPU, the control plane does not set any topology-aware endpoint
|
|
hints and so kube-proxy does not filter endpoints by zone.
|
|
|
|
4. **One or more endpoints does not have a zone hint:** When this happens,
|
|
the kube-proxy assumes that a transition from or to Topology Aware Hints is
|
|
underway. Filtering endpoints for a Service in this state would be dangerous
|
|
so the kube-proxy falls back to using all endpoints.
|
|
|
|
5. **A zone is not represented in hints:** If the kube-proxy is unable to find
|
|
at least one endpoint with a hint targeting the zone it is running in, it falls
|
|
to using endpoints from all zones. This is most likely to happen as you add
|
|
a new zone into your existing cluster.
|
|
|
|
## Constraints
|
|
|
|
* Topology Aware Hints are not used when either `externalTrafficPolicy` or
|
|
`internalTrafficPolicy` is set to `Local` on a Service. It is possible to use
|
|
both features in the same cluster on different Services, just not on the same
|
|
Service.
|
|
|
|
* This approach will not work well for Services that have a large proportion of
|
|
traffic originating from a subset of zones. Instead this assumes that incoming
|
|
traffic will be roughly proportional to the capacity of the Nodes in each
|
|
zone.
|
|
|
|
* The EndpointSlice controller ignores unready nodes as it calculates the
|
|
proportions of each zone. This could have unintended consequences if a large
|
|
portion of nodes are unready.
|
|
|
|
* The EndpointSlice controller does not take into account {{< glossary_tooltip
|
|
text="tolerations" term_id="toleration" >}} when deploying calculating the
|
|
proportions of each zone. If the Pods backing a Service are limited to a
|
|
subset of Nodes in the cluster, this will not be taken into account.
|
|
|
|
* This may not work well with autoscaling. For example, if a lot of traffic is
|
|
originating from a single zone, only the endpoints allocated to that zone will
|
|
be handling that traffic. That could result in {{< glossary_tooltip
|
|
text="Horizontal Pod Autoscaler" term_id="horizontal-pod-autoscaler" >}}
|
|
either not picking up on this event, or newly added pods starting in a
|
|
different zone.
|
|
|
|
## {{% heading "whatsnext" %}}
|
|
|
|
* Read about [enabling Topology Aware Hints](/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/enabling-topology-aware-hints/)
|
|
* Read [Connecting Applications with Services](/docs/concepts/services-networking/connect-applications-service/)
|