Case Study: CVTE achieves private-environment Kubernetes external access with CNCF OpenELB

Exposing services in private environments with Kubernetes and OpenELB

CVTE, an electronics company, faced the challenge of exposing their Kubernetes applications running on bare metal and edge clusters to external users. Their private environment made it difficult to use cloud-based load balancers, and the native Kubernetes NodePort service was limited by its port range. They sought a solution from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's project, OpenELB, to enable graceful external access.

The solution implemented by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation involved using the OpenELB project in Layer 2 mode, which provided external IPs for their LoadBalancer services. This simplified IP address pool management and enabled external access in their private infrastructure. The result was a significant reduction in operational complexity, the establishment of self-healing and enhanced monitoring capabilities, and an experience comparable to cloud-based load balancers.

CVTE

Zhenfei Pei

O&M Engineer