Calico and usage examples
Introduction
Project Calico is an open-source project with an active development and user community. Calico Open Source was born out of this project and has grown to be the most widely adopted solution for container networking and security, powering 8M+ nodes daily across 166 countries.
What is Calico?
Calico is a networking and security solution that provides a simple, scalable, and secure network fabric for any workload across any platform. Calico uses standard routing protocols and Linux networking constructs to provide a highly scalable and secure network fabric for containerized, virtualized, and bare-metal workloads. Calico is designed to be simple, lightweight, and easy to deploy, making it an ideal solution for modern cloud-native applications.
How Does Calico Work?
Calico is built on top of standard Linux networking constructs and leverages the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to route traffic between workloads. Each workload is assigned a unique IP address, and Calico uses BGP to advertise the routes for these IP addresses to other workloads in the network. Calico also provides native support for Kubernetes, allowing it to seamlessly integrate with container orchestration platforms.
Benefits of Using Calico
Calico provides several benefits for organizations that are looking to deploy modern, cloud-native applications. Firstly, Calico is highly scalable, providing a simple and flexible network fabric that can scale to thousands of nodes. Calico also provides advanced security features, such as network policy enforcement and encryption, that can help organizations meet their compliance requirements. Finally, Calico is open source and vendor-neutral, making it an ideal solution for organizations that want to avoid vendor lock-in.
Install Calico
Install the operator on your cluster:
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.28.2/manifests/tigera-operator.yaml
Download the custom resources needed to configure Calico:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.28.2/manifests/custom-resources.yaml -O
- To customize the Calico installation, modify the downloaded custom-resources.yaml manifest locally.
-
Install Calico using the manifest:
kubectl create -f custom-resources.yaml
Verify the Calico installation in your cluster:
watch kubectl get pods -n calico-system
You should see output similar to this:
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
kube-system calico-node-txngh 1/1 Running 0 54s
https://docs.tigera.io/calico/latest/getting-started/kubernetes/quickstart
https://docs.tigera.io/calico/latest/getting-started/kubernetes/self-managed-onprem/onpremises
https://vincent0426.medium.com/setting-up-a-kubernetes-cluster-with-calico-cni-and-applying-network-policies-c196b4f25687
Conclusion
Calico is a powerful networking and security solution that provides a simple, scalable, and secure network fabric for any workload across any platform. By using standard Linux networking constructs and BGP, Calico is highly scalable and easy to deploy, making it an ideal solution for modern cloud-native applications. With its advanced security features and open-source nature, Calico is an excellent choice for organizations looking to deploy modern, cloud-native applications.
Reference
https://www.tigera.io/project-calico/
https://docs.tigera.io/calico/latest/about
https://github.com/projectcalico/calico