Netreap is a non-Kubernetes-based tool for handling Cilium across a cluster, similar to the functionality of Cilium Operator. It was originally designed just to reap orphaned Cilium Endpoints, hence the name of Netreap. But we loved the name so much we kept it even though it does more than reaping.

The current Cilium Operator only works for Kubernetes and even when we tried to fork it, Kubernetes was too deeply ingrained to just pull it out, so we created this little project. This helps clean up nodes that no longer exist from the KV store, and deletes any endpoints that no longer have services. Ideally, we will want to make this more generic and open source so other people can take advantage of this work.

Instructions for running and configuring Netreap are found below. Please note that Netreap uses leader election, so multiple copies can (and should) be run.

• A Consul cluster or server
• A running Nomad cluster
• Cilium 1.12.x or 1.13.x
  • You will also need to install the CNI plugins alongside Cilium

As of v0.2.0 Consul is no longer required for endpoint reconciliation in Cilium. You may chose to continue to use Consul as Cilum's KV store, but you can also use etcd. The install guide assumes you want to use Consul as the kvstore, since you will need it to distribute Cilium policies.

Due to the way Nomad fingerprinting currently works, you cannot run Cilium as a system job to provide the CNI plugin. This means you'll need to configure and run it yourself on every agent that you want to include in the Cilium mesh.

Make sure that iptables is properly configured on the host:

cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/iptables.conf
iptable_nat
iptable_mangle
iptable_raw
iptable_filter
ip6table_mangle
ip6table_raw
ip6table_filter
EOF

Since you can't run Cilium as a Nomad job right now, the easiest way to run it is to just use systemd. You can run and enable a job similar to the following:

[Unit]
Description=Cilium Agent
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service
After=consul.service
Wants=consul.service
Before=nomad.service

[Service]
Restart=always
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker exec %n stop
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm %n
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run --rm --name %n \
  -v /var/run/cilium:/var/run/cilium \
  -v /sys/fs/bpf:/sys/fs/bpf \
  --net=host \
  --cap-add NET_ADMIN \
  --cap-add NET_RAW \
  --cap-add IPC_LOCK \
  --cap-add SYS_MODULE \
  --cap-add SYS_ADMIN \
  --cap-add SYS_RESOURCE \
  --privileged \
  cilium/cilium:v1.13.1 \
  cilium-agent --kvstore consul --kvstore-opt consul.address=127.0.0.1:8500 \
    --enable-ipv6=false -t geneve \
    --enable-l7-proxy=false  \
    --ipv4-range 172.16.0.0/16

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note that this actually runs Cilium with Docker! The reason for this is that Cilium uses forked versions of some key libraries and needs access to a C compiler. We found that it is easier to just the container instead of installing all of Cilium's dependencies.

If you use Consul ACLs, then you will need to add a token to the Service block in the systemd unit so that Cilium can connect to the cluster.

[Service]
Environment="CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN=..."

The big thing to note is that you need to make sure that the IP CIDR you use for Cilium does not conflict with what Docker uses if you're using Docker. If it does or if you want to change Docker's IP range, take a look at the default-address-pools option in daemon.json, ex.

{
  "default-address-pools": [
    {
      "base": "192.168.0.0/24",
      "size": 24
    }
  ]
}

You will then need to make sure you have a CNI configuration for Cilium in /opt/cni/config named cilium.conflist:

{
  "name": "cilium",
  "cniVersion": "1.0.0",
  "plugins": [
     {
       "type": "cilium-cni",
       "enable-debug": false
     }
  ]
}

Ensure that the Cilium CNI binary is available in /opt/cni/bin:

sudo docker run --rm --entrypoint bash -v /tmp:/out cilium/cilium:v1.13.1 -c \
  'cp /usr/bin/cilium* /out; cp /opt/cni/bin/cilium-cni /out'
sudo mv /tmp/cilium-cni /opt/cni/bin/cilium-cni
# Optionally install the other Cilium binaries to /usr/local/bin
sudo mv /tmp/cilium* /usr/local/bin

Run Netreap as a system job in your cluster similar to the following:

job "netreap" {
  datacenters = ["dc1"]
  priority    = 100
  type        = "system"

  constraint {
    attribute = "${attr.plugins.cni.version.cilium-cni}"
    operator = "is_set"
  }

  group "netreap" {
    restart {
      interval = "10m"
      attempts = 5
      delay = "15s"
      mode = "delay"
    }
    service {
      name = "netreap"
      tags = ["netreap"]
    }

    task "netreap" {
      driver = "docker"

      config {
        image        = "ghcr.io/cosmonic/netreap:0.2.0"
        network_mode = "host"

        # You must be able to mount volumes from the host system so that
        # Netreap can use the Cilium API over a Unix socket.
        # See
        # https://developer.hashicorp.com/nomad/docs/drivers/docker#plugin-options
        # for more information.
        volumes = [
          "/var/run/cilium:/var/run/cilium"
        ]
      }

    }
  }
}

The job constraint ensures that Netreap will only run on nodes where the Cilium CNI is available.

If you use Nomad or Consul ACLs then you will need to set them in the Netreap job, ex.

      template {
        destination = "secrets/file.env"
        env         = true
        change_mode = "restart"
        data        = <<EOT
CONSUL_HTTP_TOKEN="..."
NOMAD_TOKEN="..."
EOT
      }

Note that all environment variables used to configure the Consul and Nomad API clients are available to Netreap.

Please note that to configure the Nomad, Consul and Cilium clients that Netreap uses, we leverage the well defined environment variables for Nomad, Consul and Cilium.

Right now we only allow connecting to the local Unix socket endpoint for the Cilium agent. As we determine how we are going to set things up with Cilium, we can add additional configuration options.

One of Netreap's key responsibilities is to sync Cilium policies to every node in your Cilium mesh. Normally Cilium policies are configured using Kubernetes CRDs, but we don't have that option when we're running Nomad. Normally Cilium combines all of the CRD values in to a single JSON representation which is imported by every agent. What this means is that Netreap does the same thing by watching a single Consul key that stores the complete JSON representation of all of the Cilium policies in your cluster. The official documentation has examples on how to write policies in JSON.

Whenever you want to update policies in your cluster, simply set the key in Consul:

consul kv put netreap.io/policy @policy.json

Netreap automatically picks up any updates to the value and updates the policy on every node where it is running.

Netreap is written in pure Go, no other build tools are required other than a working Go toolchain.

On the other hand, actually using it is a bit more difficult. You need the following things set up on a Linux machine:

• Consul agent running (no special configuration required, can just use -dev if you want)
• Nomad configured to use Docker volumes
• Cilium installed using the directions in Running Cilium.

Because of all of the necessary pieces described in the previous section, we don't have any automated tests in place yet. For now, here are some steps to test manually:

• Start a job and then start netreap with the --debug flag, making sure the logs say that it is labeling it
• Run cilium endpoint list and make sure the endpoint is showing a label that looks something like this: netreap:job_id=example
• Stop the job and make sure the logs note that the reap counter was incremented
• Start a job and make sure the logs note that it saw the new job. Run cilium endpoint list to make sure the endpoint was properly labeled
• Stop netreap and then start it again, making sure the logs say that it is deleting an endpoint (from the previous job you stopped). Run cilium endpoint list to make sure the endpoint was properly deleted.