Networking

MKE configures the Azure IPAM module for Kubernetes so that it can allocate IP addresses for Kubernetes Pods. Per Azure IPAM module requirements, the configuration of each Azure VM that is part of the Kubernetes cluster must include a pool of IP addresses.

You can use automatic or manual IPs provisioning for the Kubernetes cluster on Azure.

  • Automatic provisioning

    Allows for IP pool configuration and maintenance for standalone Azure virtual machines (VMs). This service runs within the calico-node daemonset and provisions 128 IP addresses for each node by default.

    Note

    If you are using a VXLAN data plane, MKE automatically uses Calico IPAM. It is not necessary to do anything specific for Azure IPAM.

    New MKE installations use Calico VXLAN as the default data plane (the MKE configuration calico_vxlan is set to true). MKE does not use Calico VXLAN if the MKE version is lower than 3.3.0 or if you upgrade MKE from lower than 3.3.0 to 3.3.0 or higher.

  • Manual provisioning

    Manual provisioning of additional IP address for each Azure VM can be done through the Azure Portal, the Azure CLI az network nic ip-config create, or an ARM template.