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Deploying Antrea on Windows

Table of Contents

Overview

Antrea supports Windows worker Node. On Windows Node, Antrea sets up an overlay network to forward packets between Nodes and implements NetworkPolicies. Currently Geneve, VXLAN, and STT tunnels are supported.

This page shows how to install antrea-agent on Windows Nodes and register the Node to an existing Kubernetes cluster.

For the detailed design of how antrea-agent works on Windows, please refer to the design doc.

Components that run on Windows

The following components should be configured and run on the Windows Node.

antrea-agent and kube-proxy run as processes on host and are managed by management Pods. It is recommended to run OVS daemons as Windows services. We also support running OVS processes inside a container. If you don’t want to run antrea-agent and kube-proxy from the management Pods Antrea also provides scripts which help to install and run these two components directly without Pod. Please see Manually run kube-proxy and antrea-agent on Windows worker Nodes section for details.

Antrea Windows demo

Watch this demo video of running Antrea in a Kubernetes cluster with both Linux and Windows Nodes. The demo also shows the Antrea OVS bridge configuration on a Windows Node, and NetworkPolicy enforcement for Windows Pods. Note, OVS driver and daemons are pre-installed on the Windows Nodes in the demo.

Deploying Antrea on Windows Worker Node

Prerequisites

  • Obtain a Windows Server 2019 license (or higher) in order to configure the Windows Node that hosts Windows containers. And install the latest Windows updates.
  • Deploy a Linux-based Kubernetes cluster.
  • Install Hyper-V with management tools. If your Nodes do not have the virtualization capabilities required by Hyper-V, you could try the workaround described in the Known issues section.
  • Install Docker.
  • Install OVS and configure the daemons as Windows service.
  • Some manifests are from sig-windows-tool repo. Release version v0.1.5 has been verified.

Installation as a Service (containerd based runtimes)

First install Antrea (v0.13.0+ is required for containerd). The following command deploys Antrea with the version specified by <TAG>:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea/releases/download/<TAG>/antrea.yml

Then, you can run the following commands. nssm will install Antrea as a Windows service. Please ensure nssm is on your machine, which is a handy tool to manage services on Windows. NOTE: <KubernetesVersion>, <KubeconfigPath> and <KubeletKubeconfigPath> should be set by you. <KubeProxyKubeconfigPath> is an optional parameter that is specific to kube-proxy mode. E.g.

$InstallKubeProxy=$false # Only for kube-proxy mode
$KubernetesVersion="v1.23.5"
$KubeConfig="C:/Users/Administrator/.kube/config" # admin kubeconfig
$KubeletKubeconfigPath="C:/etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf"
if ($InstallKubeProxy) { $KubeProxyKubeconfigPath="C:/Users/Administrator/kubeproxy.conf" }

$TAG="v1.13.0"
$KubernetesVersion="<KubernetesVersion>"
$KubeConfig="<KubeconfigPath>"
$KubeletKubeconfigPath="<KubeletKubeconfigPath>"
if ($InstallKubeProxy) { $KubeProxyKubeconfigPath="<KubeProxyKubeconfigPath>" }
$KubernetesHome="c:/k"
$AntreaHome="c:/k/antrea"
$KubeProxyLogPath="c:/var/log/kube-proxy"

curl.exe -LO "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/${TAG}/hack/windows/Helper.psm1"
Import-Module ./Helper.psm1

Install-AntreaAgent -KubernetesVersion "$KubernetesVersion" -KubernetesHome "$KubernetesHome" -KubeConfig "$KubeConfig" -AntreaVersion "$TAG" -AntreaHome "$AntreaHome"
New-KubeProxyServiceInterface

New-DirectoryIfNotExist "${AntreaHome}/logs"
New-DirectoryIfNotExist "${KubeProxyLogPath}"
# Install kube-proxy service
if ($InstallKubeProxy) { nssm install kube-proxy "${KubernetesHome}/kube-proxy.exe" "--proxy-mode=userspace --kubeconfig=${KubeProxyKubeconfigPath} --log-dir=${KubeProxyLogPath} --logtostderr=false --alsologtostderr" }
nssm install antrea-agent "${AntreaHome}/bin/antrea-agent.exe" "--config=${AntreaHome}/etc/antrea-agent.conf --logtostderr=false --log_dir=${AntreaHome}/logs --alsologtostderr --log_file_max_size=100 --log_file_max_num=4"

nssm set antrea-agent DependOnService ovs-vswitchd
if ($InstallKubeProxy) { nssm set antrea-agent DependOnService kube-proxy ovs-vswitchd }
nssm set antrea-agent Start SERVICE_DELAYED_AUTO_START

if ($InstallKubeProxy) { Start-Service kube-proxy }
Start-Service antrea-agent

Installation as a Pod (Docker/containerd based runtimes)

Starting with Antrea v1.13, Antrea will take over all the responsibilities of kube-proxy for Windows nodes by default. Since Kubernetes 1.26, kube-proxy should not be deployed on Windows Nodes with Antrea, as kube-proxy userspace mode is deprecated. For Kubernetes versions prior to 1.26, Antrea can work with userspace kube-proxy on Windows Nodes. For more information refer to section Add Windows kube-proxy DaemonSet (only for Kubernetes versions prior to 1.26)

Installing Antrea using wins gives you a lot of flexibility to manage it as a Pod if you are using Docker on Windows, this is how you can run Antrea in a Pod.

Download & Configure Antrea for Linux

Deploy Antrea for Linux on the control-plane Node following Getting started document. The following command deploys Antrea with the version specified by <TAG>:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea/releases/download/<TAG>/antrea.yml

Add Windows antrea-agent DaemonSet

Starting from Antrea 1.13, you need to manually set the kubeAPIServerOverride field in the YAML configuration file as the Antrea Proxy proxyAll mode is enabled by default.

    # Provide the address of Kubernetes apiserver, to override any value provided in kubeconfig or InClusterConfig.
    # Defaults to "". It must be a host string, a host:port pair, or a URL to the base of the apiserver.
    kubeAPIServerOverride: "10.10.1.1:6443"

    # Option antreaProxy contains AntreaProxy related configuration options.
    antreaProxy:
      # ProxyAll tells antrea-agent to proxy ClusterIP Service traffic, regardless of where they come from.
      # Therefore, running kube-proxy is no longer required. This requires the AntreaProxy feature to be enabled.
      # Note that this option is experimental. If kube-proxy is removed, option kubeAPIServerOverride must be used to access
      # apiserver directly.
      proxyAll: true

An example command that downloads the antrea-agent manifest, sets kubeAPIServerOverride, and deploys the antrea-agent DaemonSet with Docker runtime is like below:

KUBE_APISERVER=$(kubectl config view -o jsonpath='{.clusters[0].cluster.server}') && \
curl -sL https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea/releases/download/<TAG>/antrea-windows.yml | \
sed "s|.*kubeAPIServerOverride: \"\"|    kubeAPIServerOverride: \"${KUBE_APISERVER}\"|g" | \
kubectl apply -f -

Since Antrea 1.10, you can also deploy antrea-agent Windows DaemonSet with containerd runtime by applying file antrea-windows-containerd.yml. The following commands downloads the antrea-agent manifest, sets kubeAPIServerOverride, and deploys the antrea-agent DaemonSet with containerd runtime:

KUBE_APISERVER=$(kubectl config view -o jsonpath='{.clusters[0].cluster.server}') && \
curl -sL https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea/releases/download/<TAG>/antrea-windows-containerd.yml | \
sed "s|.*kubeAPIServerOverride: \"\"|    kubeAPIServerOverride: \"${KUBE_APISERVER}\"|g" | \
kubectl apply -f -

Since Antrea 1.13, you can deploy both antrea-agent and antrea-ovs Windows DaemonSets with containerd runtime by applying file antrea-windows-containerd-with-ovs.yml. The following commands download the manifest, set kubeAPIServerOverride, and deploy the antrea-agent and antrea-ovs Windows DaemonSets with containerd runtime:

KUBE_APISERVER=$(kubectl config view -o jsonpath='{.clusters[0].cluster.server}') && \
curl -sL https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea/releases/download/<TAG>/antrea-windows-containerd-with-ovs.yml | \
sed "s|.*kubeAPIServerOverride: \"\"|    kubeAPIServerOverride: \"${KUBE_APISERVER}\"|g" | \
kubectl apply -f -

Join Windows worker Nodes

1. (Optional) Install OVS (provided by Antrea or your own)

Antrea supports running OVS on Windows as native services or inside a host-process container. If you have an OVS package with a signed kernel driver and want to run OVS inside container, you can skip this step.

Antrea provides a pre-built OVS package which contains test-signed OVS kernel driver. If you don’t have a self-signed OVS package and just want to try the Antrea on Windows, this package can be used for testing. We also provide a helper script Install-OVS.ps1 to install the OVS driver and register userspace binaries as services.

If you want to containerize OVS with an unsigned kernel driver, you must pre-install the driver on the worker node before joining cluster. Hence, you need to run the Install-OVS.ps1 script to install only the driver like this:

.\Install-OVS.ps1 -InstallUserspace $false

If you want to run OVS as Windows native services, you can run the script like this,

Install-OVS.ps1 -ImportCertificate $false -Local -LocalFile <PathToOVSPackage>

[Test-only] First, if you are using test-signed driver (such as the one provided with Antrea), please make sure to enable test-signed

Bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON
Restart-Computer

Then, install the OVS using the script.

curl.exe -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/main/hack/windows/Install-OVS.ps1
.\Install-OVS.ps1 # Test-only
.\Install-OVS.ps1 -ImportCertificate $false -Local -LocalFile <PathToOVSPackage> # Production

Verify the OVS services are installed.

get-service ovsdb-server
get-service ovs-vswitchd
2. Disable Windows Firewall
Set-NetFirewallProfile -Profile Domain,Public,Private -Enabled False
3. Install wins, kubelet, kubeadm and configure kubelet startup params

Firstly, install wins, kubelet, kubeadm using script PrepareNode.ps1 provided by kubernetes. The third component wins is used to run kube-proxy and antrea-agent on Windows host inside the Windows container. Specify the Node IP, Kubernetes Version and container runtime while running the script. If you do not specify any container runtime, it will be containerd by default. The following command downloads and executes Prepare-Node.ps1:

# Example:
curl.exe -LO "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/main/hack/windows/Prepare-Node.ps1"
.\Prepare-Node.ps1 -KubernetesVersion v1.27.0 -NodeIP 192.168.1.10

You can specify the ContainerRuntime parameter as docker if you want to run kubelet using docker runtime on the node. (Note: Docker has been deprecated since k8s version 1.24).

# Example:
curl.exe -LO "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/main/hack/windows/Prepare-Node.ps1"
.\Prepare-Node.ps1 -KubernetesVersion v1.23.5 -NodeIP 192.168.1.10 -ContainerRuntime
docker

You can specify the InstallKubeProxy parameter as true if you want to install kube-proxy on the node. The default value of the parameter is false. (Note: since k8s version 1.26 kube-proxy kernel datapath has been deprecated on windows and antrea can only run with proxyAll enabled)


.\Prepare-Node.ps1 -KubernetesVersion v1.25.0 -InstallKubeProxy:$true -NodeIP 192.168.1.10
4. Prepare Node environment needed by antrea-agent

Run the following commands to prepare the Node environment needed by antrea-agent:

mkdir c:\k\antrea
cd c:\k\antrea
$TAG="v1.13.0"
curl.exe -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/${TAG}/hack/windows/Clean-AntreaNetwork.ps1
curl.exe -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/${TAG}/hack/windows/Prepare-ServiceInterface.ps1
curl.exe -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antrea-io/antrea/${TAG}/hack/windows/Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1
.\Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1

The script Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1 performs following tasks:

  • Prepare network adapter for kube-proxy (for Kubernetes versions prior to 1.26).

    kube-proxy needs a network adapter to configure Kubernetes Services IPs and uses the adapter for proxying connections to Service. Use following script to create the network adapter. The adapter will be deleted automatically by Windows after the Windows Node reboots.

    Starting from Kubernetes 1.26, the kube-proxy userspace mode is no longer supported. For clusters running a version higher than 1.26, you should skip the preparation of the kube-proxy network adapter by executing the command .\Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1 -InstallKubeProxy $false.

  • Remove stale network resources created by antrea-agent.

    After the Windows Node reboots, there will be stale network resources which need to be cleaned before starting antrea-agent.

  • Ensure OVS services are running.

    This script starts OVS services on the Node if they are not running. This step needs to be skipped in case of OVS containerization. Hence, you need to specify the parameter RunOVSServices as false.

    & C:\k\antrea\Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1 -RunOVSServices $false

As you know from the task details from above, the script must be executed every time you restart the Node to prepare the environment for antrea-agent.

You could make the script be executed automatically after Windows startup by using different methods. Here’re two examples for your reference:

  • Example1: Update kubelet service.

Insert following line in kubelet service script c:\k\StartKubelet.ps1 to invoke Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1 when starting kubelet service:

& C:\k\antrea\Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1
  • Example2: Create a ScheduledJob that runs at startup.
$trigger = New-JobTrigger -AtStartup -RandomDelay 00:00:30 
$options = New-ScheduledJobOption -RunElevated
Register-ScheduledJob -Name PrepareAntreaAgent -Trigger $trigger  -ScriptBlock { Invoke-Expression C:\k\antrea\Prepare-AntreaAgent.ps1 } -ScheduledJobOption $options
5. Run kubeadm to join the Node

On Windows Node, run the kubeadm join command to join the cluster. The token is provided by the control-plane Node. If you forgot the token, or the token has expired, you can run kubeadm token create --print-join-command (on the control-plane Node) to generate a new token and join command. An example kubeadm join command is like below:

kubeadm join 192.168.101.5:6443 --token tdp0jt.rshv3uobkuoobb4v  --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:84a163e57bf470f18565e44eaa2a657bed4da9748b441e9643ac856a274a30b9

Then, set the Node IP used by kubelet. Open file /var/lib/kubelet/kubeadm-flags.env:

KUBELET_KUBEADM_ARGS="--network-plugin=cni --pod-infra-container-image=mcr.microsoft.com/oss/kubernetes/pause:1.3.0"

Append --node-ip=$NODE_IP at the end of params. Replace $NODE_IP with the address for kubelet. It should look like:

KUBELET_KUBEADM_ARGS="--network-plugin=cni --pod-infra-container-image=mcr.microsoft.com/oss/kubernetes/pause:1.3.0 --node-ip=$NODE_IP"

Restart kubelet service for changes to take effect.

restart-service kubelet
Verify your installation

There will be temporary network interruption on Windows worker Node on the first startup of antrea-agent. It’s because antrea-agent will set the OVS to take over the host network. After that you should be able to view the Windows Nodes and Pods in your cluster by running:

# Show Nodes
kubectl get nodes -o wide -n kube-system
NAME                           STATUS   ROLES                  AGE   VERSION   INTERNAL-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE                                  KERNEL-VERSION     CONTAINER-RUNTIME
control-plane                  Ready    control-plane,master   1h    v1.23.5   10.176.27.168   <none>        Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS                        5.11.0-1022-generic   docker://20.10.14
win-5akrf2tpq91                Ready    <none>                 1h    v1.23.5   10.176.27.150   <none>        Windows Server 2019 Standard Evaluation   10.0.17763.2686       docker://20.10.9
win-5akrf2tpq92                Ready    <none>                 1h    v1.23.5   10.176.27.197   <none>        Windows Server 2019 Standard Evaluation   10.0.17763.2686       docker://20.10.9

# Show antrea-agent and kube-proxy Pods
kubectl get pods -o wide -n kube-system | grep windows
antrea-agent-windows-6hvkw                             1/1     Running     0          100s
kube-proxy-windows-2d45w                               1/1     Running     0          102s

Add Windows kube-proxy DaemonSet (only for Kubernetes versions prior to 1.26)

Starting from Kubernetes 1.26, Antrea will no longer support Windows kube-proxy because kube-proxy userspace mode is deprecated and kernelspace mode does not work with Antrea. For a cluster with Kubernetes version 1.26 or later, please refer to Deploying Antrea on Windows Worker Node

First, deploy a Windows-compatible version of kube-proxy. You can download kube-proxy.yaml from the Kubernetes github repository to deploy kube-proxy. The kube-proxy version in the YAML file must be set to a Windows compatible version. The following command downloads and applies kube-proxy.yml:

curl -L "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-tools/releases/download/v0.1.5/kube-proxy.yml" | sed 's/VERSION-nanoserver/v1.20.0/g' > kube-proxy.yml

Replace the content of run-script.ps1 in the kube-proxy-windows ConfigMap with following:

apiVersion: v1
data:
  run-script.ps1: |-
    $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop";
    mkdir -force /host/var/lib/kube-proxy/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount
    mkdir -force /host/k/kube-proxy

    cp -force /k/kube-proxy/* /host/k/kube-proxy
    cp -force /var/lib/kube-proxy/* /host/var/lib/kube-proxy
    cp -force /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/* /host/var/lib/kube-proxy/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount

    wins cli process run --path /k/kube-proxy/kube-proxy.exe --args "--v=3 --config=/var/lib/kube-proxy/config.conf --proxy-mode=userspace --hostname-override=$env:NODE_NAME"    

kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  labels:
    app: kube-proxy
  name: kube-proxy-windows
  namespace: kube-system

For containerd runtime, replace the content of run-script.ps1 with following:

apiVersion: v1
data:
  run-script.ps1: |-
    $mountPath = $env:CONTAINER_SANDBOX_MOUNT_POINT
    $mountPath =  ($mountPath.Replace('\', '/')).TrimEnd('/') 
    New-Item -Path "c:/var/lib" -Name "kube-proxy" -ItemType "directory" -Force
    ((Get-Content -path $mountPath/var/lib/kube-proxy/kubeconfig.conf -Raw) -replace '/var',"$($mountPath)/var") | Set-Content -Path /var/lib/kube-proxy/kubeconfig.conf
    ((Get-Content -path /var/lib/kube-proxy/kubeconfig.conf -Raw) -replace '\/',"/") | Set-Content -Path /var/lib/kube-proxy/kubeconfig.conf
    sed -i 's/mode: iptables/mode: \"\"/g' $mountPath/var/lib/kube-proxy/config.conf
    & "$mountPath/k/kube-proxy/kube-proxy.exe" --config=$mountPath/var/lib/kube-proxy/config.conf --v=10 --proxy-mode=userspace --hostname-override=$env:NODE_NAME    
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  labels:
    app: kube-proxy
  name: kube-proxy-windows
  namespace: kube-system

Set the hostNetwork option to true in spec of kube-proxy-windows DaemonSet spec.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  labels:
    k8s-app: kube-proxy
  name: kube-proxy-windows
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      k8s-app: kube-proxy-windows
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        k8s-app: kube-proxy-windows
    spec:
      hostNetwork: true

For containerd runtime, also add the following to the kube-proxy-windows DaemonSet spec.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  labels:
    k8s-app: kube-proxy
  name: kube-proxy-windows
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      k8s-app: kube-proxy-windows
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        k8s-app: kube-proxy-windows
    spec:
      securityContext:
        windowsOptions:
          hostProcess: true
          runAsUserName: "NT AUTHORITY\\SYSTEM"
      hostNetwork: true
      serviceAccountName: kube-proxy
      containers:
      - command:
        - pwsh
        args:
        - -file
        - $env:CONTAINER_SANDBOX_MOUNT_POINT/var/lib/kube-proxy-windows/run-script.ps1

Then apply the kube-proxy.yml.

kubectl apply -f kube-proxy.yml

Manually run kube-proxy and antrea-agent on Windows worker Nodes

Aside from starting kube-proxy and antrea-agent from the management Pods, Antrea also provides powershell scripts which help install and run these two components directly without Pod. Please complete the steps in Installation section, skip Add Windows kube-proxy DaemonSet and Add Windows antrea-agent DaemonSet steps. And then run the following commands in powershell.

mkdir c:\k\antrea
cd c:\k\antrea
curl.exe -LO https://github.com/antrea-io/antrea/releases/download/<TAG>/Start-AntreaAgent.ps1
# Run antrea-agent without kube-proxy
# $KubeConfigPath is the path of kubeconfig file
./Start-AntreaAgent.ps1 -kubeconfig $KubeConfigPath -StartKubeProxy $false
# Run Antrea-Agent with kube-proxy (deprecated since Kubernetes 1.26)
# ./Start-AntreaAgent.ps1 -kubeconfig $KubeConfigPath -StartKubeProxy $true

Note: Some features such as supportbundle collection are not supported in this way. It’s recommended to start kube-proxy and antrea-agent through management Pods.

Known issues

  1. HNS Network is not persistent on Windows. So after the Windows Node reboots, the HNS Network created by antrea-agent is removed, and the Open vSwitch Extension is disabled by default. In this case, the stale OVS bridge and ports should be removed. A help script Clean-AntreaNetwork.ps1 can be used to clean the OVS bridge.

    # If OVS userspace processes were running as a Service on Windows host
./Clean-AntreaNetwork.ps1 -OVSRunMode "service"
# If OVS userspace processes were running inside container in antrea-agent Pod
./Clean-AntreaNetwork.ps1 -OVSRunMode "container"

  2. Hyper-V feature cannot be installed on Windows Node due to the processor not having the required virtualization capabilities.

    If the processor of the Windows Node does not have the required virtualization capabilities. The installation of Hyper-V feature will fail with the following error:

    PS C:\Users\Administrator> Install-WindowsFeature Hyper-V

Success Restart Needed Exit Code      Feature Result
------- -------------- ---------      --------------
False   Maybe          Failed         {}
Install-WindowsFeature : A prerequisite check for the Hyper-V feature failed.
1. Hyper-V cannot be installed: The processor does not have required virtualization capabilities.
At line:1 char:1
+ Install-WindowsFeature hyper-v
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (Hyper-V:ServerComponentWrapper) [Install-WindowsFeature], Exception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Alteration_PrerequisiteCheck_Failed,Microsoft.Windows.ServerManager.Commands.AddWindowsF
   eatureCommand

    The capabilities are required by the Hyper-V hypervisor components to support Hyper-V isolation. If you only need Process Isolation on the Nodes. You could apply the following workaround to skip CPU check for Hyper-V feature installation.

    # 1. Install containers feature
Install-WindowsFeature containers

# 2. Install Hyper-V management powershell module
Install-WindowsFeature Hyper-V-Powershell

# 3. Install Hyper-V feature without CPU check and disable the "hypervisor"
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V /all /NoRestart
dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V-Online /NoRestart

# 4. Restart-Computer to take effect
Restart-Computer

Getting Started

To help you get started, see the documentation.

Documentation