Overview of Peering

Scope

Note

This feature currently supports Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network peering in all three cloud vendors, using either direct peering or hub and spoke models, which include AWS Transit Gateway.

Peering rules let you declaratively define how you want the networks you manage to be wired up. These could be those managed by Wayfinder via NetworkFabric or external/pre-existing networks that you want to hook into.

This feature is leveraged heavily to facilitate private clusters, but is flexible enough to provide a means of wiring up external networks or backbones. If you have existing services living in external networks (such as logging, monitoring, etc.), you can transparently connect these together.

Wayfinder currently support the following types of peering:

AWS VPC Peering
AWS Transit Gateway
Azure Network Peering, direct peering or through transitive hub
Google Cloud Network Peering

Cloud Access for Peering

To enable Wayfinder to accept peering requests, create a Cloud Access to give Wayfinder access to accept peering connections in the external VPC / vNet network you wish to peer with.

Outline:

Select 'Peering' as the Access Type.
Use Wayfinder's terraform module to create the needed configuration and permissions in the target AWS account, Azure subscription or GCP project.

See the Cloud Access overview page for detailed information on the steps you need to follow.

Quick start

For a quick look at example peering rules and associated network topologies, see:

AWS Transit Gateway attachment performs a VPC attachment to a centrally managed backbone.
Management Network provides the ability to connect back directly to the control plane.
Azure Hub & Spoke connects your networks to a central control plane.

CLI Quick Reference

Instruction	CLI Command
View network fabric located in a workspace	`wf get networkfabric MANAGED-CONTROL-PLANE-NAME -w WORKSPACE-NAME`
View clould account	`wf get cloudaccount`
Switch into a profile/session that has IAM access in the target account	`wf setup roles --cloudaccount CLOUD-ACCOUNT-NAME`

How peering rules work

The PeeringRule CRD can be broken down into two parts:

The FILTER is used as the target, as network fabrics come into existence and are filtered through the rules for a match. This lets platform administrators target the networks by [stage]/wayfinder/admin/stages/stages-overview, cloud vendor, custom label, or private cluster support.

---
apiVersion: networking.appvia.io/v2beta1
kind: PeeringRule
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  # Filters are used to filter which workspaces and which networks
  # the policy can apply to. When searching for a peering policy we find the
  # most specific first.
  filters:
    # Indicates which workspaces the rule is applied
    allocation:
      type: all
    # We have the ability to select place filters on the network
    # resources and
    selectors:
      # Used to filter down in the labels on network fabric
      matchLabels: {}
      # Used to filter down on the labels on the fabric against
      # a collection of expressions
      matchExpressions: []
  filters:
    allocation:
      type: all
    selectors:
      matchLabels:
        appvia.io/provider: AWS

The DIRECTION defines the action you wish to undertake, peering or gateway attachment, and all the related details required.

apiVersion: networking.appvia.io/v1alpha1
kind: PeeringRule
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  filters: {}
  connection:
    # Union selector to force one selector or the other
    type: peering|gateway
    # Options for when using peering - by default we assume the user
    # peering "from" the management network to the remote network
    peering: {}
    # or
    gateway: {}

Peering Definition

Peering definitions support two types of networking:

An externally managed network. This could be a virtual network or a centrally managed backbone to route all traffic.
A direct connection back to the management control plane of Wayfinder. This connects back to the network fabric located in workspace admin. To get this network fabric, run: wf get networkfabric management -w admin.

note

You can also define and manage peering rules in Wayfinder's web interface.

spec:
  connection:
    peering:
      # Indicate we should use the associated cloud account to also
      # accept the peering request on the remote end. When enable the
      # cloud account should have a NetworkManager role. Without this enabled
      # we request the peering connection and wait for the connection to move
      # active
      enableAutoApproval: true
        kubernetes.io/role/internal-elb: "1"
      # Provides the ability to override the default behaviour of attaching to
      # management network and instead connects to an external network using the
      # cloud account above.
      network:
        # Provides the ability to specify the account id of the peer we are
        # connecting to
        account: <ACCOUNT_ID>
        # Provides the ability to specify the location / region of the peering account
        location: <REGION>
        # identifier is cloud agnostic to the peer. In AWS this is the vpc id
        # of the account
        identifier: <VPC_ID|VNET|NETWORK>
        # informs wayfinder about the routes which should be provisioned on the
        # source end
        routes: []
        # routeTableSelectors is used exclusively by AWS and used to identify the
        # route table to use
        routeTableSelectors: {}

Peering to external networks

An external network is any network is that is not managed by Wayfinder. For example, you might already have a monitoring or CI solution located within another account that needs access to the infrastructure provisioned by Wayfinder. The definition for the remote network is defined in spec.connection.peering.network in the peering rule.

Peering rule fields

The following are required and optional fields for your resource file of kind: peeringRule.

Field	Description
`account`	Required The account where the external network resides AWS: Account ID GCP: Project Azure: Subscription
`location`	Required A region where the external network resides, for example, `eu-west-2` For Google Cloud, define the `spec.peering.network.location` field as `global` since networks in GCP are non-regional.
`identifier`	Required A network identifier AWS: VPC ID GCP: Network selflink Azure: Resource Group + Virtual Network Identifier
`routes`	AWS only - Required The network ranges you want to route down the peer. You can be selective here, since the network details are dynamically added to the routing tables of the source network.
`routeTableSelectors`	AWS only - Required if enableAutoApproval is enabled The key values here are AWS tags, which are used to identify which routing tables need to be updated. When accepting the peering, Wayfinder finds the routing tables and adds a route down the peering connection to the CIDR range of the source network. Example: If the routing table in the external network is named `main`, you need the filter `tag:Name: main`.

Permissions for external networks

Connecting to an external network with auto approval enabled (connection.peering.enableAutoApproval) requires a cloud account with permissions to accept the peering connection.

If the network is located within the same account/project/subscription as the Wayfinder instance, you don't have to create an account. The NetworkManager role, shipped with Wayfinder, provides the required permissions. You can simply use the cloud account that was provisioned at installation. To check this, run the CLI command: wf get cloudaccount.
```
spec:
  cloudaccount:
    name: management
    namespace: ws-admin
  connection:
    type: peering
```
If the external network resides in another account/project/subscription, you must create a cloud account with permissions to accept the peering connection (see below).

Create a cloud account for an external network

This step is needed only if the external network does not reside in the same account as the Wayfinder instance.

From Wayfinder's web interface create a cloud access with Access Type as Peering.

Note

You can find working examples in each of the respective sections:

Gateway Attachment Definition

Another method to connect networks is a gateway attachment. In a peering rule, this is declared in spec.connection.type. Currently the only cloud vendor that supports this is AWS with its Transit Gateway. For more information and network topology, see AWS Transit Gateway.

The following is a breakdown of the definition.

spec:
  connection:
    type: gateway
    # Provide details when using a transit gateway in aws
    gateway:
      # identifier is cloud agnostic to the peer. In AWS this is the peer id
      # of the transit account
      identifier: <PEER_ID>
      # informs wayfinder about the routes which should be provisioned on the
      # source end
      routes:
        - <CIDR>
      # Indicates we use the cloud account to approve the attachment on
      # the other end. When enable the cloud account should have an
      # TransitGatewayManager role
      enableAutoApproval: true
      # Provides the ability to a apply cloud specific options related to
      # gateway options
      providerDetails:
        # Options for AWS specifically
        aws:
          # Indicates we enable DNS support
          # https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/API_CreateTransitGatewayVpcAttachmentRequestOptions.html
          enableDNS: <true|false>
          # Enable appliance mode (no idea)
          enableApplianceMode: <true|false>
          # EnableIPV6 indicate we enable ipv6 support
          enableIPV6: <true|false>

Scope​

Cloud Access for Peering​

Quick start​

CLI Quick Reference​

How peering rules work​

Peering Definition​

Peering to external networks​

Peering rule fields​

Permissions for external networks​

Create a cloud account for an external network​

Gateway Attachment Definition​