Overview¶
Service Proxy for Kubernetes (SPK) is F5’s cloud-native application traffic management solution for communication service providers building 5G networks on Red Hat OpenShift. It combines F5’s containerized Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM), an Ingress Controller, and Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) to proxy and load balance low-latency 5G application traffic.
Features¶
SPK supports the following protocols and features:
- Flexible consumption licensing bills monthly only for features used.
- TCP, UDP, SCTP, HTTP/2, NGAP, Diameter and GTP application workloads.
- OVN-Kubernetes CNI with SR-IOV interface networking.
- Multiple dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 capabilities.
- Egress request routing with NAT for internal Pods.
- Pod telemetry collection and visualization.
- Redundant data storage with persistence.
- Diagnostics with iHealth integration.
- Application health monitoring.
- Calico CNI with egress gateway.
- Centralized logging.
Components¶
The software comprises three primary components. The SPK Controller watches the Kubernetes API for updates and service endpoint changes, dynamically configuring the Service Proxy Pod and its load-balancing pools. SPK’s CRDs extend the Kubernetes API so teams can configure TMM using declarative custom resources, including protocol-specific proxies (UDP, TCP, SCTP, NGAP, Diameter) and networking elements such as self IPs and static routes. The Service Proxy Pod runs F5’s containerized TMM, with optional helper containers for dynamic routing, statistics, and debugging.
Next step¶
Continue to the 1.7.18 SPK Release Notes for software updates and bug information.