Overview of F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services

Note

CIS is sometimes referred to as Controller in previous versions of the documentation and on GitHub. These terms are interchangeable.

F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services (CIS) lets you manage your F5 BIG-IP device from Kubernetes or OpenShift using either environment’s native CLI/API.

The F5 BIG-IP CIS (k8s-bigip-ctlr) is a cloud-native connector that can use either Kubernetes or OpenShift as a BIG-IP orchestration platform.

CIS watches the Kubernetes API for specially formatted resources, and updates the BIG-IP system configuration accordingly.

Features:

• Dynamically create, and manage BIG-IP objects.
• Forward traffic from the BIG-IP device to Kubernetes clusters via NodePort or ClusterIP.
• Support F5 AS3 Extension declarations.

Releases and Versioning

This documentation set applies to the following versions of each F5 Container Integrations component:

Component	Version
CIS for Kubernetes	v1.14.x, v2.0.x-v2.17.1
CIS for OpenShift	v1.14.x, v2.0.x-v2.17.1

For more details, see the Release Notes.

Container Ingress Service compatibility

The tables below show the versions used in development testing. The F5 Container Ingress Service may work with versions not shown here; F5 has not verified functionality in those versions.

BIG-IP Controller/Platform compatibility

Connector	Version(s)	Platform	Version(s)	BIG-IP version(s)	AS3
CIS for Kubernetes	v1.14.1, v2.0.x-v2.17.1	Kubernetes	v1.13-v1.31	v12.x-v17.x	v3.13-v3.50
CIS for OpenShift	v1.14.1, v2.0.x-v2.17.1	OpenShift	v3.11-v4.15*	v12.x-v17.x	v3.13-v3.50
CIS using CCCL	v1.14	OpenShift	v3.11-v4.9	v12.x-v13.x	N/A

Important

• * For OCP version 4.12, CIS is compatible with IPv4 and dual stack IPv4.
• F5 Networks is a Red Hat Certified Container Partner. Please see the Red Hat Container Catalog for more information.

CIS Configuration Overview

• CIS Installation
  • Overview
  • Prerequisites
  • Installing CIS Using Helm Charts
    • Chart parameters
    • Uninstalling Helm Chart
  • Installing CIS Manually
  • Installing CIS using Operators on OpenShift Cluster
  • Creating VXLAN Tunnels
    • Creating VXLAN Tunnels on Kubernetes Cluster
    • Creating VXLAN Tunnels on Openshift Cluster
• Deployment Options
  • NodePort
  • ClusterIP
  • NodePortLocal
  • Auto
• Configuration Parameters
  • General
  • Logging
  • BIG-IP system
  • GTM BIG-IP system
  • VXLAN
  • Kubernetes
  • OpenShift Routes
  • NextGen Routes
  • OpenShift Routes and Kubernetes
    • AS3 Parameters
    • AS3 Response code handling in CIS
    • CIS Health Checks
    • Prometheus Metrics
  • Rest Methods with CIS
• StaticRouteSupport
  • Configuration
  • Calico CNI
  • Parameters for StaticRoutingMode
  • cis-deployment-ovn-k8s.yaml
  • BIG-IP Config
  • Troubleshooting
  • Troubleshooting for CALICO CNI
• Configuring Calico
  • Prerequisites
  • BIG-IP Calico Setup
  • Kubernetes Calico Setup
  • Troubleshooting
• Configuring Cilium CNI
  • Prerequisites
  • Creating VXLAN Tunnels on Kubernetes Cluster for Cilium CNI
  • Creating Geneve Tunnels on Kubernetes Cluster for Cilium CNI
  • Enable Cilium VXLAN Tunnel Endpoint (VTEP) integration
    • Cilium CLI
    • Helm
    • ConfigMap
  • Verify VTEP Configuration
  • Configure CIS to enable Cilium CNI
    • References:
• Upgrading CIS
  • Upgrading ConfigMap from 1.X to 2.X
    • Steps
    • Behavioral Changes

Note

To provide feedback on Container Ingress Services or this documentation, please file a GitHub Issue.