• Architecture
  • Network Path
• Prerequisites
• Installation
  • Installation using Operator via subctl
  • Installation using Helm
  • Validate Submariner is Working
• Building and Testing
• Known Issues/Notes
  • OpenShift Notes
• Contributing

Submariner is a tool built to connect overlay networks of different Kubernetes clusters. While most testing is performed against Kubernetes clusters that have enabled Flannel/Calico/Canal/Weave/OpenShiftSDN, Submariner should be compatible with any CNI cluster network provider, as it utilizes off-the-shelf components to establish encrypted tunnels between each Kubernetes cluster.

Note that Submariner is in the pre-alpha stage, and should not be used for production purposes. While we welcome usage and experimentation, it is quite possible that you could run into bugs.

Submariner is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation sandbox project.

See the Architecture section on Submariner's website.

The network path of Submariner varies depending on the origin/destination of the IP traffic. In all cases, traffic between two clusters will transit between the leader elected (in each cluster) gateway nodes, through ip xfrm rules. Each gateway node has a running Charon daemon which will perform IPsec keying and policy management.

When the source Pod is on a worker node that is not the elected gateway node, the traffic destined for the remote cluster will transit through the submariner VXLAN tunnel (vx-submariner) to the local cluster gateway node. On the gateway node, traffic is encapsulated in an IPsec tunnel and forwarded to the remote cluster. Once the traffic reaches the destination gateway node, it is routed in one of two ways, depending on the destination CIDR. If the destination CIDR is a Pod network, the traffic is routed via CNI-programmed network. If the destination CIDR is a Service network, then traffic is routed through the facility configured via kube-proxy on the destination gateway node.

See the Prerequisites docs on Submariner's website.

Submariner is deployed and manged by its Operator. The Operator can be deployed directly, or by using Submariner's Helm Charts, or by using Submariner's subctl CLI helper utility. subctl is the recommended deployment method because it has the most refined deployment user experience and additionally provides testing and bug-diagnosing capabilities.

Submariner provides the subctl CLI utility to simplify the deployment and maintenance of Submariner across your clusters.

See the subctl docs on Submariner's website.

See the Helm section on Submariner's website.

See the subctl verify docs on Submariner's website.

See the Building and Testing docs on Submariner's website.

When running in OpenShift, Submariner needs to grant the appropriate security context for the service accounts (SAs):

oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged system:serviceaccount:submariner:submariner-routeagent
oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged system:serviceaccount:submariner:submariner-gateway

See the For Developers section on Submariner's website.