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Optimizations for network policy with OVN-Kubernetes network plugin

Learn how to optimize OVN-Kubernetes network policies to reduce flow count and ensure external IP traffic is allowed when needed.

When designing your network policy, refer to the following guidelines:

For network policies with the same spec.podSelector spec, it is more efficient to use one network policy with multiple ingress or egress rules, than multiple network policies with subsets of ingress or egress rules.

Every ingress or egress rule based on the podSelector or namespaceSelector spec generates the number of OVS flows proportional to number of pods selected by network policy + number of pods selected by ingress or egress rule. Therefore, it is preferable to use the podSelector or namespaceSelector spec that can select as many pods as you need in one rule, instead of creating individual rules for every pod.

For example, the following policy contains two rules:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: test-network-policy
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  ingress:
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          role: frontend
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          role: backend

The following policy expresses those same two rules as one:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: test-network-policy
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  ingress:
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchExpressions:
        - {key: role, operator: In, values: [frontend, backend]}

The same guideline applies to the spec.podSelector spec. If you have the same ingress or egress rules for different network policies, it might be more efficient to create one network policy with a common spec.podSelector spec. For example, the following two policies have different rules:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: policy1
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      role: db
  ingress:
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          role: frontend
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: policy2
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      role: client
  ingress:
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          role: frontend

The following network policy expresses those same two rules as one:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: policy3
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchExpressions:
    - {key: role, operator: In, values: [db, client]}
  ingress:
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          role: frontend

You can apply this optimization when only multiple selectors are expressed as one. In cases where selectors are based on different labels, it may not be possible to apply this optimization. In those cases, consider applying some new labels for network policy optimization specifically.

NetworkPolicy CR and external IPs in OVN-Kubernetes