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Configuring BGP Peers

This document describes the commands available in calicoctl for managing BGP. It is intended primarily for users who are running on private cloud and would like to peer Calico with their underlying infrastructure.

This document covers configuration of:

Global default node AS Number
The full node-to-node mesh
Global BGP Peers
Node-specific BGP peers

Concepts

Autonomous system (AS) number

The global default node AS number is the AS number used by the BGP agent on a Calico node when it has not been explicitly specified. Setting this value simplifies configuration when your network topology allows all of your Calico nodes to use the same AS number.

Node-to-node mesh

The full node-to-node mesh option provides a mechanism to automatically configure peering between all Calico nodes. When enabled, each Calico node automatically sets up a BGP peering with every other Calico node in the network. By default this is enabled.

The full node-to-node mesh provides a simple mechanism for auto-configuring the BGP network in small scale deployments (say 50 nodes—although this limit is not set in stone and Calico has been deployed with over 100 nodes in a full mesh topology).

For large-scale deployments, or for deployments where you require a more specific BGP topology (e.g., peering with ToR switches) the full node-to-node mesh should be disabled and explicit BGP peers configured for your Calico nodes. A BGP peer may be configured in your Calico network as a global BGP peer or a per-node BGP peer.

Global BGP peers

A global BGP peer is a BGP agent that peers with every Calico node in the network. A typical use case for a global peer might be a mid-scale deployment where all of the Calico nodes are on the same L2 network and are each peering with the same route reflector (or set of route reflectors).

Per-node BGP peers

At scale, different network topologies come in to play. For example, in the AS per Rack model discussed in the reference material, each Calico node peers with a route reflector in the Top of Rack (ToR) switch. In this case the BGP peerings are configured on a per-node basis (i.e., these are node-specific peers). In the AS-per-rack model, each Calico node in a rack will be configured with a node-specific peering to the ToR route reflector.

Configuring the default node AS number

When creating a Calico node, you can optionally specify an AS number to use for the node. If no AS number if specified, the node will use the global default value.

See Example to set the global default AS number. to set the global default AS number. If no value is configured, the default AS number is 64512.

If all of your Calico nodes are within the same AS, but you require a different AS number to be used (e.g because you are peering with a border router), changing the default AS number to the value you require eliminates the need to explicitly set it on a per Calico node basis. For more complicated topologies where you are explicitly setting the AS number on each node, the default value will not be used and therefore using this command is not necessary.

Note: Prior to version 2.0.0, calicoctl and calico/node set the global default AS number to 64511. Updating your deployment from a pre-2.0.0 version to use the 2.0.0+ calicoctl and calico/node container images will not affect the global value that was previously set.

Disabling the full node-to-node BGP mesh

If you are explicitly configuring the BGP topology for your Calico network, you may wish to disable the full node-to-node mesh. See Example for instructions to change the nodeToNodeMeshEnabled global BGP setting.

If you are building your network from scratch and do not need the full node-to-node mesh we recommend turning off the mesh before configuring your nodes. If you are updating your network from a full-mesh topology to a different topology (e.g. to start using a cluster of route reflectors to increase scaling), configure the appropriate peers before disabling the mesh to ensure continuity of service.

Example

Prerequisite: calicoctl installed and configured.

To turn off the full BGP node-to-node mesh or to modify the global AS number, complete the following steps.

Issue the following command to determine if you have a default BGP configuration resource.
```
 calicoctl get bgpconfig default
```
If the resource does exist, skip to step 3. Otherwise, use the following command to create the resource. Before issuing the command, adjust the nodeToNodeMeshEnabled and asNumber lines and values as desired. Refer to BGP Configuration Resource for details about these settings.
```
 cat << EOF | calicoctl create -f -
 apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
 kind: BGPConfiguration
 metadata:
   name: default
 spec:
   logSeverityScreen: Info
   nodeToNodeMeshEnabled: false
   asNumber: 63400
```
You’re done!
If the resource does exist, use the following command to retrieve it and save it to a file.
```
 calicoctl get bgpconfig default -o yaml > bgp.yaml
```
Open the bgpconfig settings file in your favorite editor, modify the nodeToNodeMeshEnabled or asNumber as desired, and save the file. Refer to BGP Configuration Resource for details about these settings.
```
 vim bgp.yaml
```
Replace the existing BGP configuration settings.
```
 calicoctl replace -f bgp.yaml
```

Configuring a global BGP peer

If your network topology includes BGP speakers that will be peered with every Calico node in your deployment, you can use the calicoctl resource management commands to set up the peering on your Calico nodes. We refer to these types of peer as global peers because they are configured in Calico once (globally) and Calico will peer every Calico node with these peers.

Two situations where global BGP peer configuration is useful are (1) when adding a border router that is peering into a full node-to-node mesh, or (2) configuring a Calico network that uses one or two route reflectors to provide moderate scale-out capabilities. In the latter case, each Calico node would peer to each of the route reflectors and the full node-to-node mesh would be disabled.

Example

To add a global BGP peer at IP address 192.20.30.40 with AS number 64567 run the following command on any node:

cat << EOF | calicoctl create -f -
apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: BGPPeer
metadata:
  name: bgppeer-global-3040
spec:
  peerIP: 192.20.30.40
  asNumber: 64567
EOF

To view the current list of BGP peers run the following command.

calicoctl get bgpPeer

It should return something like the following.

NAME                  PEERIP         NODE      ASN
bgppeer-global-3040   192.20.30.40   (global)  64567

To remove the global BGP peer that you just created run the following command.

calicoctl delete bgppeer bgppeer-global-3040

Configuring a node-specific BGP peer

If your network topology requires specific peerings for each Calico node, you can use the calicoctl resource management commands to set up the peers specific to a Calico node. We refer to these as node-specific peers.

Configuring node-specific peers is necessary when the BGP topology is more complicated and requires different peerings on different nodes. For example, the AS per Rack model or AS per Compute Server model described in the reference material.

Example

To add a BGP peer at IP address aa:bb::ff with AS number 64514, peering with Calico node “node1”, run the following command on any node:

cat << EOF | calicoctl create -f -
apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: BGPPeer
metadata:
  name: bgppeer-node-aabbff
spec:
  peerIP: aa:bb::ff
  node: node1
  asNumber: 64514
EOF

To view the BGP peer resource that you just created, issue the following command.

calicoctl get bgpPeer bgppeer-node-aabbff

You should see your new BGP peer resource listed in the response.

NAME                 PEERIP      NODE    ASN
bgppeer-node-aabbff  aa:bb::ff   node1   64514

To remove the BGP peer run the following command.

calicoctl delete bgppeer bgppeer-node-aabbff

Checking the status of the BGP peers

To display the status of all BGP peerings for a specific node, use the calicoctl node status command. This displays the status of all BGP peers for that node—this includes the peers that are automatically configured as part of the full node-to-node mesh and the explicitly configured global peers and node specific peers.

Understanding the status of the BGP peerings is a useful first step in diagnosing why routes may not be advertised across your network resulting in incorrect connectivity between your workloads.

Example

To check the status of the peerings on Calico node "node1", SSH into "node1" and run the following command.

sudo calicoctl node status

It should return something like the following.

Calico process is running.

IPv4 BGP status
+--------------+-------------------+-------+----------+-------------+
| PEER ADDRESS |     PEER TYPE     | STATE |  SINCE   |    INFO     |
+--------------+-------------------+-------+----------+-------------+
| 172.17.8.102 | node-to-node mesh | up    | 23:30:04 | Established |
| 10.20.30.40  |       global      | start | 16:28:38 |   Connect   |
|  192.10.0.0  |   node specific   | start | 16:28:57 |   Connect   |
+--------------+-------------------+-------+----------+-------------+

IPv6 BGP status
+--------------+-------------------+-------+----------+-------------+
| PEER ADDRESS |     PEER TYPE     | STATE |  SINCE   |    INFO     |
+--------------+-------------------+-------+----------+-------------+
| aa:bb::ff    | node-to-node mesh | up    | 16:17:26 | Established |
+--------------+-------------------+-------+----------+-------------+

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