Configure NCP Logging

This topic describes how to define network profiles for logging NCP configurations for VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition (TKGI) provisioned Kubernetes clusters.

About Logging for NCP Configurations

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition provides network profile parameters for logging ncp.ini configurations.

Parameters for NCP Logging

The parameter cni_configurations is a map with two keys: type and parameters. The following table shows the parameters for configuring NCP:

The following table describes the Ingress Controller configuration parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
name	String	User-defined name of the network profile.
description	String	User-defined description for the network profile.
parameters	Map	Map containing one or more key-value pairs.
cni_configurations	Map	Map containing type and parameters key-value pairs for configuring NCP.
type	Constant String	Values: “nsxt”.
parameters	Map	Map containing one or more key-value pairs for NCP settings.
log_settings	Map	Map containing one or more key-value pairs for configuring NCP logging.
log_level	String	The logging level. Values: “INFO”, “WARNING”, “DEBUG”, “ERROR”, “CRITICAL”.
log_dropped_traffic	Boolean	Log dropped firewall traffic. Values: true, false. Default: false.

The nsx_lb parameter is used to control the TCP layer 4 virtual server that is provisioned for each Kubernetes service of type: LoadBalancer.

When you configure an NSX Load Balancer as your Kubernetes cluster ingress resource, NCP instructs the NSX Load Balancer to provision two layer 7 virtual services (HTTP and HTTPS) as the cluster Ingress Controller:

nsx_lb setting	Description
nsx_lb: true	Use an NSX Layer 4 LoadBalancer and NCP-provisioned Layer 7 Ingress Controller.
nsx_lb: false	Use a third-party load balancer and a third-party ingress controller, such as NGINX.

Example Network Profile for NCP Logging

The following network profile is an example that illustrates the parameters exposed for NCP logging.

{
  "name": "ncp_network_profile",
  "description": "Example network profile for NCP logging and error handling",
  "parameters" : {
     "cni_configurations": {
         "type": "nsxt",
         "parameters": {
           "log_settings": {           
             "log_level": "WARNING",
             "log_dropped_traffic": true 
         	}
       	}
   		}
   	}
}

Log Settings

The parameter log_settings is a map that supports two keys: log_level and log_dropped_traffic.

Log Level

The log_level parameter type is a string. The log_level value is an enumeration that supports the following values:

• “INFO”
• “WARNING”
• “DEBUG”
• “ERROR”
• “CRITICAL”

Any other value results in an error.

The value is set for three ncp.ini keys: coe.nsxlib_loglevel, coe.loglevel, and k8s.loglevel. The default log levels for these keys are as follows:

ncp.ini key	Default log level
coe.nsxlib_loglevel	INFO
coe.loglevel	NONE
k8s.loglevel	NONE

Log Dropped Traffic

The log_dropped_traffic type is a Boolean: true or false. Any other type is rejected, such as “true”. Missing entry is accepted. Enabling this parameter is used in distributed firewall configurations to log the traffic for dropped rules.

Example network profile for logging:

{
  "name": "example-network-profile",
  "description": "log_settings",
  "parameters" : {
     "cni_configurations": {
         "type": "nsxt",
         "parameters": {
           "log_settings": {
             "log_level": "DEBUG",
             "log_dropped_traffic": true        
           }
         }
     }
  }
}

enable_err_crd

The enable_err_crd parameter provides a mechanism of reporting NSX backend errors to Kubernetes cluster using a custom resource definition (CRD).

The Kubernetes resource “NSXError” is defined to hold error information. For each kubernetes resource object that has NSX backend failures, one “NSXError” object is generated with error information. There is a ‘common error object’ containing all cluster-wide errors.

The enable_err_crd data type is a Boolean: true or false. Missing entry is accepted. If enable_err_crd is set to true, you define a CRD to handle the “NSXError” common error object.

Example: network profile for enable_err_crd:

{
  "name": "example_network_profile",
  "description": "enable_err_crd",
  "parameters" : {
     "cni_configurations": {
         "type": "nsxt",
         "parameters": {
           "enable_err_crd": true
         }
     }
  }
}