# MetalLB MetalLB hooks into your Kubernetes cluster, and provides a network load-balancer implementation. It allows you to create Kubernetes services of type "LoadBalancer" in clusters that don't run on a cloud provider, and thus cannot simply hook into 3rd party products to provide load-balancers. The default operationg mode of MetalLB is in ["Layer2"](https://metallb.universe.tf/concepts/layer2/) but it can also operate in ["BGP"](https://metallb.universe.tf/concepts/bgp/) mode. ## Install You have to explicitly enable the MetalLB extension and set an IP address range from which to allocate LoadBalancer IPs. ```yaml metallb_enabled: true metallb_speaker_enabled: true metallb_ip_range: - 10.5.0.0/16 ``` By default only the MetalLB BGP speaker is allowed to run on control plane nodes. If you have a single node cluster or a cluster where control plane are also worker nodes you may need to enable tolerations for the MetalLB controller: ```yaml metallb_controller_tolerations: - key: "node-role.kubernetes.io/master" operator: "Equal" value: "" effect: "NoSchedule" - key: "node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane" operator: "Equal" value: "" effect: "NoSchedule" ``` ## BGP Mode When operating in BGP Mode MetalLB needs to have defined upstream peers: ```yaml metallb_protocol: bgp metallb_ip_range: - 10.5.0.0/16 metallb_peers: - peer_address: 192.0.2.1 peer_asn: 64512 my_asn: 4200000000 - peer_address: 192.0.2.2 peer_asn: 64513 my_asn: 4200000000 ``` When using calico >= 3.18 you can replace MetalLB speaker by calico Service LoadBalancer IP advertisement. See [calico service IPs advertisement documentation](https://docs.projectcalico.org/archive/v3.18/networking/advertise-service-ips#advertise-service-load-balancer-ip-addresses). In this scenarion you should disable the MetalLB speaker and configure the `calico_advertise_service_loadbalancer_ips` to match your `metallb_ip_range` ```yaml metallb_speaker_enabled: false metallb_ip_range: - 10.5.0.0/16 calico_advertise_service_loadbalancer_ips: "{{ metallb_ip_range }}" ``` If you have additional loadbalancer IP pool in `metallb_additional_address_pools`, ensure to add them to the list. ```yaml metallb_speaker_enabled: false metallb_ip_range: - 10.5.0.0/16 metallb_additional_address_pools: kube_service_pool_1: ip_range: - 10.6.0.0/16 protocol: "bgp" auto_assign: false kube_service_pool_2: ip_range: - 10.10.0.0/16 protocol: "bgp" auto_assign: false calico_advertise_service_loadbalancer_ips: - 10.5.0.0/16 - 10.6.0.0/16 - 10.10.0.0/16 ```