In MCP, MetalLB is a Kubernetes add-on that provides a network load balancer for bare metal Calico-based Kubernetes clusters using standard routing protocols.
MetalLB support is available starting Kubernetes 1.9.0 on clusters that do not have the network load balancing implemented yet.
Since MetalLB provides a standard network load balancer functionality, it is compatible with several Kubernetes networking add-ons.
In MCP, MetalLB supports only the layer-2 mode. For details, see: MetalLB in layer-2 mode. MetalLB in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) mode is not supported yet.
In an MCP Kubernetes cluster, MetalLB runs in pods on the Kubernetes Nodes.
When using MetalLB, you can also enable the NGINX Ingress controller to provide an external access to Kubernetes services.