* This version is deprecated since it is no longer supported by its creator. We continue to support it, but support will be removed in the future.
Host packages are bundled and installed by kURL without the need for external package repositories except for in the case of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Rocky Linux 9, Amazon Linux 2023, and Ubuntu 24.04.
For these OSes, the following packages are required per add-on:
| Add-on | Packages |
|---|---|
| * kURL Core | curl openssl tar fio |
| Collectd | bash glibc libcurl libcurl-minimal libgcrypt libgpg-error libmnl openssl-libs rrdtool systemd systemd-libs yajl |
| Containerd | container-selinux bash libseccomp libzstd systemd |
| Kubernetes | conntrack-tools ethtool glibc iproute iptables-nft socat util-linux |
| Longhorn | iscsi-initiator-utils nfs-utils |
| OpenEBS *versions 1.x and 2.x | iscsi-initiator-utils |
| Rook | lvm2 |
| Velero | nfs-utils |
Additionally, the containerd package is required for Containerd add-on installations on Amazon Linux 2023 and Ubuntu 24.04.
In general, the latest versions of the packages listed above are recommended for installation. For instance, you do not need to match the version of the containerd package to the version of the containerd add-on.
256 GB of disk space per node is strongly recommended to accommodate growth and optimal performance. At minimum, kURL requires 100 GB of disk space per node. It is important to note that disk usage can vary based on container image sizes, ephemeral data, and specific application requirements.
Informational Note: OpenEBS is configured to allocate its Persistent Volumes within the /var/openebs/local/ directory, signifying that this specific location is utilized for the storage of data by applications that are actively running on the Kurl platform.
Rook add-on, starting from version 1.4.3, requires each node within the cluster to be equipped with an unformatted storage device, which is designated for the storage of Ceph volumes.
Comprehensive information and guidelines regarding this setup are available in the Rook Block Storage documentation.
For Rook versions 1.0.x Persistent Volumes are provisioned on /opt/replicated/rook/ directory.
We advise against configuring the system with multiple mount points.
Experience has shown that utilizing distinct partitions for directories, such as /var, often leads to unnecessary complications.
Usage of symbolic links is not recommended in any scenario.
Should it be required, the directories utilized by the selected Storage Provisioner (for example, /var/openebs/local in the case of OpenEBS) can be set up to mount from a separate partition.
This configuration should be established prior to the installation. It's important to emphasize that Storage Provisioners are not compatible with symbolic links.
The fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of any host used with kURL must be a valid DNS subdomain name, and its name records must be resolvable by DNS.
A valid DNS name must:
For more information, see DNS Subdomain Names in the Kubernetes documentation.
A host in a Kubernetes cluster must have a network interface that can be used for bridging traffic to Kubernetes pods. In order for Pod traffic to work, the host must act as a Layer 3 router to route and switch packets to the right destination. Therefore, a network interface should exist on the host (common names are eth0, enp0s1, etc.) with an IPv4 address & subnet in a publicly-routable or private network ranges, and must be non-overlapping with the subnets used by Kubernetes. It must not be a link-local address.
Note: Removing the primary network interface on a node is not a supported configuration for deploying an airgap cluster. An interface must exist for routing, so airgaps should be implemented "on the wire" - in the switch/router/VLAN configuration, by firewalls or network ACLs, or by physical disconnection.
After a host is added to a Kubernetes cluster, Kubernetes assumes that the hostname and IP address of the host will not change. If you need to change the hostname or IP address of a node, you must first remove the node from the cluster.
To change the hostname or IP address of a node in clusters that do not have three or more nodes, use snapshots to move the application to a new cluster before you attempt to remove the node. For more information about using snapshots, see Velero Add-on.
For more information about the requirements for naming nodes, see Node naming uniqueness in the Kubernetes documentation.
Kubernetes also requires exclusive use of two IP subnets (also known as CIDR ranges) for Pod-to-Pod traffic within the cluster. These subnets must not overlap with the subnets used in your local network or routing errors will result.
| Subnet | Description |
|---|---|
| 10.96.0.0/16 | Kubernetes Service IPs |
| 10.32.0.0/20 | Flannel CNI Pod IPs |
| 10.10.0.0/16 | Weave CNI (deprecated) Pod IPs |
These ranges can be customized by setting the appropriate add-on options directly in a kURL spec:
spec:
kubernetes:
serviceCIDR: "<your custom subnet>"
flannel:
podCIDR: "<your custom subnet>"
Alternatively, the ranges can be customized with a patch file.
The following domains need to be accessible from servers performing online kURL installs. IP addresses for these services can be found in replicatedhq/ips.
| Host | Description |
|---|---|
| amazonaws.com | tar.gz packages are downloaded from Amazon S3 during embedded cluster installations. The IP ranges to allowlist for accessing these can be scraped dynamically from the AWS IP Address Ranges documentation. |
| k8s.gcr.io, registry.k8s.io | Images for the Kubernetes control plane are downloaded from the Google Container Registry repository used to publish official container images for Kubernetes. Starting March 20, 2023, these requests are proxied to the new address registry.k8s.io. Both of these URLs must be allowed network traffic using firewall rules. For more information on the Kubernetes control plane components, see the Kubernetes documentation. |
| k8s.kurl.sh, s3.kurl.sh | Kubernetes cluster installation scripts and artifacts are served from kurl.sh. Bash scripts and binary executables are served from kurl.sh. This domain is owned by Replicated, Inc which is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. |
No outbound internet access is required for airgapped installations.
The kURL install script will prompt to disable firewalld. Note that firewall rules can affect communications between containers on the same machine, so it is recommended to disable these rules entirely for Kubernetes. Firewall rules can be added after or preserved during an install, but because installation parameters like pod and service CIDRs can vary based on local networking conditions, there is no general guidance available on default requirements. See Advanced Options for installer flags that can preserve these rules.
The following ports must be open between nodes for multi-node clusters:
| Protocol | Direction | Port Range | Purpose | Used By |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TCP | Inbound | 6443 | Kubernetes API server | All |
| TCP | Inbound | 2379-2380 | etcd server client API | Primary |
| TCP | Inbound | 10250 | kubelet API | Primary |
| UDP | Inbound | 8472 | Flannel VXLAN | All |
| TCP | Inbound | 6783 | Weave Net control | All |
| UDP | Inbound | 6783-6784 | Weave Net data | All |
| TCP | Inbound | 9090 | Rook CSI RBD Plugin Metrics | All |
| Protocol | Direction | Port Range | Purpose | Used By |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TCP | Inbound | 10250 | kubelet API | Primary |
| UDP | Inbound | 8472 | Flannel VXLAN | All |
| TCP | Inbound | 6783 | Weave Net control | All |
| UDP | Inbound | 6783-6784 | Weave Net data | All |
| TCP | Inbound | 9090 | Rook CSI RBD Plugin Metrics | All |
These ports are required for Kubernetes, Flannel, and Weave Net.
In addition to the ports listed above that must be open between nodes, the following ports should be available on the host for components to start TCP servers accepting local connections.
| Port | Purpose |
|---|---|
| 2381 | etcd health and metrics server |
| 6781 | weave network policy controller metrics server |
| 6782 | weave metrics server |
| 10248 | kubelet health server |
| 10249 | kube-proxy metrics server |
| 9100 | prometheus node-exporter metrics server |
| 10257 | kube-controller-manager health server |
| 10259 | kube-scheduler health server |
When using the Flannel CNI, to allow for outgoing TCP connections from pods, you must configure stateless packet filtering firewalls to allow all packets with TCP flags "ack" with destination port range 1024-65535. For more information see the Flannel Firewalls add-on documentation.
| Name | Source IP | Destination IP | Source port | Destination port | Protocol | TCP flags | Action |
| ---- | --------- | -------------- | ----------- | ---------------- | -------- | --------- | ------ |
| Allow outgoing TCP | 0.0.0.0/0 | 0.0.0.0/0 | 0-65535 | 1024-65535 | tcp | ack | accept |
In addition to the networking requirements described in the previous section, operating a cluster with high availability adds additional constraints.
To operate the Kubernetes control plane in HA mode, it is recommended to have a minimum of 3 primary nodes.
In the event that one of these nodes becomes unavailable, the remaining two will still be able to function with an etcd quorum.
As the cluster scales, dedicating these primary nodes to control-plane only workloads using the noSchedule taint should be considered.
This will affect the number of nodes that need to be provisioned.
The number of required secondary nodes is primarily a function of the desired application availability and throughput. By default, primary nodes in kURL also run application workloads. At least 2 nodes should be used for data durability for applications that use persistent storage (i.e. databases) deployed in-cluster.
Highly available cluster setups that do not leverage EKCO's internal load balancing capability require a load balancer to route requests to healthy nodes. The following requirements need to be met for load balancers used on the control plane (primary nodes):
The IP or DNS name and port of the load balancer should be provided as an argument to kURL during the HA setup. See Highly Available K8s for more install information.
For more information on configuring load balancers in the public cloud for kURL installs see Public Cloud Load Balancing.
Load balancer requirements for application workloads vary depending on workload.
The following example cloud VM instance/disk combinations are known to provide sufficient performance for etcd and will pass the write latency preflight.