Working with Kubernetes clusters and xNIC DS

WHAT TO EXPECT

In this article, users will learn how to interact with the xNIC Daemonset on any of the supported clouds (AKS, EKS, OCI, or GKE).

Restarting xNIC DaemonSet

To restart the xNIC DaemonSet for K8s, run the following command:

 kubectl rollout restart ds/swx-xnic -n kube-system

Getting a shell to an xNIC DaemonSet pod

At times, it is useful to be able to get into the pod and run commands such as swx-tcpdump. To accomplish this, follow these steps:

1. Connect to a machine that has access to the Kubernetes cluster using Cloud Shell or any other means.

2. Enter the following command to get the pod name:

   kubectl get pods -l app=swx-xnic -n kube-system

   Example:

   $ kubectl get pods -l app=swx-xnic -n kube-system
   NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   swx-xnic-fc58t   1/1     Running   0          11d
   swx-xnic-kn9hg   1/1     Running   0          11d

3. Enter the following command, replacing swx-xnic-<name> with the pod name:

   kubectl exec -it pod/swx-xnic-<name> -n kube-system -- bash

   Example:

   $ kubectl exec -it pod/swx-xnic-kn9hg -n kube-system -- bash
   root@aks-nodepool1-23164585-vmss00000A:/

Users can now enter commands similar to any VM, such as ip a or sudo swx-tcpdump -i eth0. Note that the pods created in this example do not have tools such as the standard tcpdump. However, swx-tcpdump will work. For testing, see swxtch-perf under Testing cloudSwXtch. 

Switching Contexts

If users have more than one AKS Kubernetes cluster, then they may need to change the context to work on the desired instance.

Accessing xNIC Logs

Users can get xNIC logs once signed in to the pod. See How to View xNIC Logs page.

Using xNIC config

Getting to the xNIC config is available once the user has signed into the Pod. To get to the xNIC config, use the command below:

 cat /var/opt/swxtch/swxtch-xnic.conf

Exiting the Pod

To exit the pod, enter the following command:

exit