Kube-OVN 1.0 GA Release: Survey Results, Feature Demands, and Webinar Q&A

Recently, Lingque Cloud announced the 1.0 GA version of the open‑source Kubernetes network project Kube‑OVN (based on OVN) via a live webinar, and the Kube‑OVN community has begun to take shape, attracting many developers and users.

To better understand the community’s container‑network usage and needs, a survey titled "Kube‑OVN Network Component Usage Survey" was released during the webinar. Within two weeks, 158 valid questionnaires were collected; the article shares key data from the survey and includes part of the Q&A transcript from the Kube‑OVN 1.0 webinar.

Respondent Overview

Among the 158 respondents, 60% are from the Internet industry, while traditional sectors such as finance, manufacturing, and education account for 30.5%. 47.4% hold development positions, 28.9% are operations, and 21.1% are architects.

All surveyed enterprises have fully adopted containerization. 60.5% run containers on private clouds, and 36.8% on public clouds (multiple‑choice).

Current Network Solution Usage

The most popular CNI plugins are Calico (55.3%) and Flannel (47.4%). Additionally, 28.9% of users have adopted Kube‑OVN to meet specific environment and requirement gaps.

Usage of IPv6, NetworkPolicy, multi‑tenant (VPC) solutions, and integration with physical networks were also surveyed, with corresponding charts provided.

Demand for Kube‑OVN Features

The highest demand is for subnet functionality, which enables easy binding of subnets to namespaces, supports CIDR, gateway, excluded IPs, and switch names, and allows IP‑level isolation.

Future development will focus on three keywords: functionality, operability, and performance. Planned enhancements include multi‑NIC support, multi‑tenant networking, IPv4/IPv6 dual‑stack, richer network diagnostics and visualization tools, and DPDK‑based data‑plane improvements.

Kube‑OVN Webinar Q&A

Q1: What is the difference between the open‑source and commercial versions? A1: The code is identical. The commercial version will provide full technical support, prioritize generic feature development, offer custom development, and perform targeted optimizations for customer environments.

Q2: Is Kube‑OVN a customized version of the OpenStack OVN solution? A2: OVN’s control plane is built on OVS and is a generic networking component. Kube‑OVN ports mature OpenStack networking capabilities to Kubernetes.

Q3: When will IPAM be ready? Is the fixed‑IP usage the same as before? A3: IPAM will be completed in version 1.1. Fixed‑IP functionality remains largely the same, with minor changes to subnet definitions.

Q4: In which scenarios is a fixed IP needed? A4: Traditional workloads that rely on static IP‑based service discovery or cannot be containerized without a fixed IP benefit from this feature.

Q5: What is the use case for direct‑IP routing? A5: It treats containers like virtual machines, making container IPs globally reachable and fully integrated with the underlying network.

Q6: Can the gateway node be deployed separately? A6: Yes, the gateway can be a dedicated node or co‑located with the cluster, as long as it runs Kubernetes.

Q7: When will DPDK integration be finished? A7: Development is ongoing with Intel’s Ireland team; completion depends on their progress. See the PR list at https://github.com/alauda/kube-ovn/issues/104.

Q8: Isn’t distributed gateway routing a built‑in feature of OVN 2.12? A8: Kube‑OVN’s distributed gateway differs from OVN’s; it focuses on container networking, allowing containers to access external networks via the host’s NIC.

Q9: How does Kube‑OVN’s multi‑NIC solution differ from Intel’s multicro and Huawei’s approaches? A9: Kube‑OVN provides a cluster‑level IPAM for multi‑NIC, intended to work alongside other multi‑NIC plugins.

Q10: To what extent does Kube‑OVN support multi‑tenant networking? A10: Kube‑OVN aims to bring OVN’s strong multi‑tenant capabilities to Kubernetes, currently supporting subnet allocation for network isolation while the final design is still under discussion.

Q11: Will tracing expose intermediate virtual switches and gateways? A11: The goal is to visualize both logical and physical paths; the initial implementation provides end‑to‑end source‑to‑destination monitoring.

Q12: Are there cases of Kube‑OVN integrated with Intel’s multicro or with Falco? A12: A full multi‑NIC solution is being developed; early adopters and Intel have already demonstrated integration cases.

Q13: What are the differences between Kube‑OVN and OVN‑Kubernetes? A13: Kube‑OVN uses a namespace‑to‑subnet model, offering richer multi‑tenant isolation, whereas OVN‑Kubernetes binds a single IP range per host and has stability concerns. Details are in https://github.com/alauda/kube-ovn/issues/104.

Q14: Are there kernel version requirements for Kube‑OVN’s flow‑table features? A14: Yes. For CentOS 7 use the latest officially supported kernel; for Ubuntu use version 18.04 or newer.

Q15: Does Kube‑OVN support pod‑level security policies? A15: Kube‑OVN supports Kubernetes NetworkPolicy, allowing any protocol‑based rule to be enforced.

Kube‑OVN 1.0 Webinar Recap

Tips: Reply “0227” to the public account to receive the live PPT; join the community group via the assistant’s WeChat ID “fudan3070”; upcoming hands‑on training series will be announced soon.