Add worker pool in different facility on Equinix Metal

Introduction

Equinix Metal (EM) supports inter-facility network connectivity. Building on that Lokomotive supports adding worker pool to a Lokomotive cluster in a different facility. The reasons to add a worker pool in a separate pool could be numerous viz. facility-wide HA, node type availability, proximity to the application users, etc.

This document provides a step by step guide on adding a worker-pool to existing Lokomotive cluster but in a different facility than the control plane.

Prerequisites

• A Lokomotive cluster accessible via kubectl deployed on a supported provider.

• Access to Equinix Metal console and permissions to edit project-level settings.

Steps

Step 1: Enable “Backend Transfer”

Go to the Equinix Metal console of your project and enable “Backend Transfer” on it, follow this document for detailed information.

Step 2: Add private CIDR of the new facility

Go to Equinix Metal console > IPs & Networks > IPs.

Now spot the “Management” IP block (CIDR) for the facility of your choice and make a note of the 10.xx.xx.xx/25 range.

Open your Lokomotive cluster’s lokocfg file and add it to the existing node_private_cidrs list.

node_private_cidrs = ["10.10.10.128/25", "10.xx.xx.xx/25"]

Step 3: Add worker pool with a different facility

Add the following snippet to your existing lokocfg file, under the cluster "equinixmetal" section:

  worker_pool "worker-new-facility" {
    count    = 1
    facility = "<new facility>"
  }

Step 4: Apply changes

Execute the following command to apply the above changes:

lokoctl cluster apply -v --skip-components

Once the above command is successfully executed, you will have a worker pool in a separate facility connected to your existing cluster.