Heavy Networking 699: Connecting Multicloud Kubernetes Clusters With Virtual Application Networks

Virtual Application Networks, or VANs, are today’s Heavy Networking topic. Our guest is Ted Ross, an open source developer and motive force behind the Skupper.io project. Skupper creates VANs largely in the context of multi-cluster Kubernetes. That is, install Skupper in multiple K8s clusters, do a little plumbing, and you’ve built a Virtual Application Network that’s conceptually like a VLAN or VPN, except that all the magic is happening up at layer 7. Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of L3 and L4 stuff happening. Skupper is an mTLS overlay, after all. But the interesting things keeping the applications connected are up above the network transport layer where many network engineers dwell. Skupper’s architecture is instead focused on application connectivity. If you’re wondering how that works, I’ll give you a hint. Skupper is based on a protocol called Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP). That’s right. Skupper is effectively a message bus used to interconnect application messages inside of mTLS tunnels running on top of whatever L3 network is available. If you’re confused at this point, don’t be. Ted and I are going to talk through all of this in some detail and hopefully make it all clear. If you think you don’t care because Kubernetes isn’t part of your world, I challenge you to listen anyway. I promise you that you’ll run into an application handling messaging in its own way that’s outside of the behavior you’re used to if you only think in terms of TCP, UDP, and QUIC. And you’ll be asked to troubleshoot it. An episode like this will help you get a head start on the thinking required to work that out. Sponsor: Paessler You probably don’t think about infrastructure monitoring often, but it’s one of your most important decisions as an IT professional. Get your monitoring hosted in the cloud with Paessler PRTG Hosted Monitor, now with 50% off monthly subscriptions for new customers for the first three months. Go to Prtg.com and use the promo code “packetpushers.” Show Links: AMPQ As A Network Protocol – NetProtoTalk Virtual Application Networks for Hybrid Cloud Interconnect – NetProtoTalk Skupper.io Skupper.io Docs Skupper on YouTube Skupper on GitHub @tedross1 – Ted Ross on Twitter