Help Center/ Cloud Container Engine/ User Guide (ME-Abu Dhabi Region)/ Best Practices/ Networking/ Selecting a Network Model
Updated on 2024-01-04 GMT+08:00
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Selecting a Network Model

CCE uses proprietary, high-performance container networking add-ons to support the tunnel network, Cloud Native 2.0 network, and VPC network models.

After a cluster is created, the network model cannot be changed. Exercise caution when selecting a network model.

  • Tunnel network: The container network is an overlay tunnel network on top of a VPC network and uses the VXLAN technology. This network model is applicable when there is no high requirements on performance. VXLAN encapsulates Ethernet packets as UDP packets for tunnel transmission. Though at some cost of performance, the tunnel encapsulation enables higher interoperability and compatibility with advanced features (such as network policy-based isolation), meeting the requirements of most applications.
    Figure 1 Container tunnel network
  • VPC network: The container network uses VPC routing to integrate with the underlying network. This network model is applicable to performance-intensive scenarios. The maximum number of nodes allowed in a cluster depends on the route quota in a VPC network. Each node is assigned a CIDR block of a fixed size. VPC networks are free from tunnel encapsulation overhead and outperform container tunnel networks. In addition, as VPC routing includes routes to node IP addresses and container network segment, container pods in the cluster can be directly accessed from outside the cluster.
    Figure 2 VPC network
  • Cloud Native Network 2.0: The container network deeply integrates the elastic network interface (ENI) capability of VPC, uses the VPC CIDR block to allocate container addresses, and supports passthrough networking to containers through a load balancer.
    Figure 3 Cloud Native 2.0 Network

The following table lists the differences between the network models.

Table 1 Networking model comparison

Dimension

Tunnel Network

VPC Network

Cloud Native 2.0 Network

Core technology

OVS

IPvlan and VPC route

VPC ENI/sub-ENI

Applicable Clusters

CCE cluster

CCE cluster

CCE Turbo cluster

Network isolation

Kubernetes native NetworkPolicy for pods

No

Pods support security group isolation.

IP address management
  • The container CIDR block is allocated separately.
  • CIDR blocks are divided by node and can be dynamically allocated (CIDR blocks can be dynamically added after being allocated.)
  • The container CIDR block is allocated separately.
  • CIDR blocks are divided by node and statically allocated (the CIDR block cannot be changed after a node is created).

The container CIDR block is divided from the VPC subnet and does not need to be allocated separately.

Performance

Performance loss due to VXLAN encapsulation

No tunnel encapsulation. Cross-node packets are forwarded through VPC routers, delivering performance equivalent to that of the host network.

The container network is integrated with the VPC network, eliminating performance loss.

Networking scale

A maximum of 2,000 nodes are supported.

By default, 200 nodes are supported.

Each time a node is added to the cluster, a route is added to the VPC routing table. Therefore, the cluster scale is limited by the VPC route table.

A maximum of 2,000 nodes are supported.

Application Scenarios
  • Common container services
  • Scenarios that do not have high requirements on network latency and bandwidth
  • Scenarios that have high requirements on network latency and bandwidth
  • Containers communicate with VMs using a microservice registration framework, such as Dubbo and CSE.
  • Scenarios that have high requirements on network latency, bandwidth, and performance
  • Containers communicate with VMs using a microservice registration framework, such as Dubbo and CSE.
  1. The scale of a cluster that uses the VPC network model is limited by the custom routes of the VPC. Therefore, you need to estimate the number of required nodes before creating a cluster.
  2. By default, VPC routing network supports direct communication between containers and hosts in the same VPC. If a peering connection policy is configured between the VPC and another VPC, the containers can directly communicate with hosts on the peer VPC. In addition, in hybrid networking scenarios such as Direct Connect and VPN, communication between containers and hosts on the peer end can also be achieved with proper planning.
Parent topic: Networking