Overview¶
Service Proxy for Kubernetes (SPK) is a cloud-native application traffic management solution, designed for communication service provider (CoSP) 5G networks. SPK integrates F5’s containerized Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) and Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) into the OpenShift container platform, to proxy and load balance low-latency 5G workloads.
This document describes the SPK features and software components.
Features¶
SPK supports the following protocols and features:
- TCP, UDP, SCTP, NGAP and Diameter traffic management
- OVN-Kubernetes CNI with SR-IOV interface networking
- Multiple dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 capabilities
- Egress request routing for internal Pods
- Redundant data storage with persistence
- Diagnostics, statistics and debugging
- Centralized logging collection
- Pod health monitoring
Components¶
SPK software comprises three primary components:
SPK Controller¶
The SPK Controller watches the Kube-API for Custom Resource (CR) update events, and configures the Service Proxy Pod based on the update. The Controller also monitors Kubernetes Service object Endpoints, to dynamically update Service Proxy TMM’s load balancing pool member list and member status.
Custom Resource Definitions¶
Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) extend the Kubernetes API, enabling Service Proxy TMM to be configured using SPK’s Custom Resource (CR) objects. CRs configure TMM to proxy and load balance 5G workloads over UDP, TCP, SCTP, NGAP and Diameter. SPK CRs also configure TMM’s networking components such as self IP addresses and static routes.
Service Proxy¶
The Service Proxy Pod comprises F5’s containerized TMM to proxy and load balance low-latency application traffic, and optional containers to assist with dynamic routing, statistic reporting, and debugging.
Next step¶
Continue to the SPK Release Notes for recent software updates and bug information.