If you are using Cilium and would like to use hostPort on your workloads (without hostNetwork: true), then you will need to enable support via configuration.

Include inline to the container postStart lifecycle hook

We 1. tell Cilium not to drop it's own config via the CILIUM_CNI_CONF env, and 2. Update the postStart lifecycle hook where Cilium does a /cni-install.sh already, to include the writing of a CNI config enabling portmap.

kubectl edit ds cilium -n kube-system

Add this under the container env

# We drop our own CNI config with portmap enabled, so this tells
# Cilium not to write one.
- name: CILIUM_CNI_CONF
    value: /dev/null

Replace this

lifecycle:
    postStart:
    exec:
        command:
        - /cni-install.sh
    preStop:
    exec:
        command:
        - /cni-uninstall.sh

with

lifecycle:
    postStart:
    exec:
        command:
        - sh
        - -c
        - "echo '{\"cniVersion\": \"0.3.1\", \"name\": \"portmap\", \"plugins\": [{\"name\": \"cilium\", \"type\": \"cilium-cni\"}, {\"type\": \"portmap\", \"capabilities\": {\"portMappings\": true}}]}' > /host/etc/cni/net.d/05-cilium.conflist && /cni-install.sh"
    preStop:
    exec:
        command:
        - sh
        - -c
        - "/cni-uninstall.sh && rm /host/etc/cni/net.d/05-cilium.conflist"

Deploy as an initContainer (outdated)

The most reliable way to install this is as an initContainer on the existing Cilium agent Daemonset.

Add the following to the cilium DaemonSet under initContainers as the first in the list:

      - name: cilium-portmap
        image: snormore/cilium-portmap-init
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /host/etc/cni/net.d
          name: etc-cni-netd

Deploy as a DaemonSet (outdated)

You can deploy as a separate DaemonSet, but keep in mind that there can be a race condition between Cilium, our portmap DaemonSet, and any workloads/pods you deploy at the same time. If you see that your hostPort is not in effect, you may have to restart the pod for Cilium/CNI to detect it and add the necessary iptables rule.

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/snormore/cilium-portmap/master/DaemonSet/daemonset.yaml

Example (outdated)

Let's say you want to deploy a workload that looks something like this:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: hello
spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: hello
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: hello
        image: snormore/hello
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          hostPort: 8888
          protocol: TCP

Specifically notice the hostPort configuration:

        - containerPort: 80
          hostPort: 8888
          protocol: TCP

If you deploy this workload, a pod will appear on a node serving port 80 via PodIP, but when you try to hit 8888 via HostIP from another workload on another node, it doesn't work as expected. This is because you need to enable support via configuration by adding a configuration to /etc/cni/net.d/00-cilium-portmap.conflist that looks like the following:

{
    "name": "cilium-portmap",
    "plugins": [
            {
                    "type": "cilium-cni"
            },
            {
                    "type": "portmap",
                    "capabilities": { "portMappings": true }
            }
    ]
}

So let's do that by deploying our cilium-portmap DaemonSet:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/snormore/cilium-portmap/master/daemonset.yaml

After this, you should be able to hit 8888 via HostIP from another workload on another node. 🎉