constellation/dev-docs/howto/vpn/helm

Constellation VPN

This Helm chart deploys a VPN server to your Constellation cluster.

Prerequisites

• Constellation >= v2.14.0
• A publicly routable VPN endpoint on premises that supports IPSec in IKEv2 tunnel mode with NAT traversal enabled.
• A list of on-prem CIDRs that should be reachable from Constellation.

Setup

1. Configure Cilium to route services for the VPN (see Architecture for details).

   • Edit the Cilium config: kubectl -n kube-system edit configmap cilium-config.
   • Set the config item enable-sctp: "true".
   • Restart the Cilium agents: kubectl -n kube-system rollout restart daemonset/cilium.

2. Create the Constellation VPN configuration file.

   helm inspect values . >config.yaml
   

3. Populate the Constellation VPN configuration file. At least the following need to be configured:

   • The list of on-prem CIDRs (peerCIDRs).
   • The ipsec subsection.

4. Install the Helm chart.

   helm install -f config.yaml vpn . 
   

5. Configure the on-prem gateway with Constellation's pod and service CIDR (see config.yaml).

Things to try

Ask CoreDNS about its own service IP:

dig +notcp @10.96.0.10 kube-dns.kube-system.svc.cluster.local

Ask the Kubernetes API server about its wellbeing:

curl --insecure https://10.96.0.1:6443/healthz

Ping a pod:

ping $(kubectl get pods vpn-frontend-0 -o go-template --template '{{ .status.podIP }}')

Architecture

The VPN server is deployed as a StatefulSet to the cluster. It hosts the VPN frontend component, which is responsible for relaying traffic between the pod and the on-prem network over an IPSec tunnel.

The VPN frontend is exposed with a public LoadBalancer so that it becomes accessible from the on-prem network.

An init container sets up IP routes on the frontend host and inside the frontend pod. All routes are bound to the frontend pod's lxc interface and thus deleted together with it.

A VPN operator deployment is added that configures the CiliumEndpoint with on-prem IP ranges, thus configuring routes on non-frontend hosts. The endpoint shares the frontend pod's lifecycle.

In Cilium's default configuration, service endpoints are resolved in cgroup eBPF hooks that are not applicable to VPN traffic. We force Cilium to apply service NAT at the LXC interface by enabling SCTP support.

Limitations

• VPN traffic is handled by a single pod, which may become a bottleneck.
• Frontend pod restarts / migrations invalidate IPSec connections.
• Only pre-shared key authentication is supported.