Key Features

KubeSlice makes Kubernetes simple at scale for multi cluster/multi-tenant/ multi-region/multi-cloud application deployments. It is a platform that combines network, application, Kubernetes, and deployment services to bring uniformity across clusters for multi-cluster applications, thus dramatically increasing development velocity for platform and product teams.

KubeSlice bundles the following services into its architecture:

Main Feature	Sub Feature	Description
Application Management	Namespace Sameness	Ensures namespace sameness across clusters or cloud. Allows applications to be deployed with namespace parity for simplified management and portability.
	Service Exports and Service Imports	Automatically discovers and exposes services across cluster boundaries, enabling cross-cluster service connectivity without manual configuration.
	Isolation	Allows isolation by association of application namespaces with a slice.
Network	East-West Cluster Communication	Establishes secure, per-slice tunnels between clusters, forming an overlay Layer 3 network for seamless communication. Supports ingress and egress gateways for East–West traffic.
	Eliminate IP Address Conflicts	Uses a non-overlapping RFC1918 address space to remove the complexity of overlapping CNI CIDRs across cloud, data center, and edge environments.
	QoS Profiling	Defines Quality of Service (QoS) profiles per slice, allowing granular traffic control and prioritization for inter-cluster network traffic.
Security and Governance	Multi-Cluster Multi-Tenancy Security	Provides secure isolation and encrypted connectivity between tenants across clusters, enforcing slice-level security boundaries.
	Multi-Cluster RBAC Policies	Propagates Role-Based Access Control configurations consistently across all clusters and slices in a workspace.
	Resource Quotas and Policy Management	Applies and enforces CPU, memory, and storage quotas along with policies across clusters for fair resource allocation.
Multi-Tenancy	Multi-Cluster, Multi-Cloud, and On-Prem Support	Enables consistent multi-tenancy across clusters spanning cloud, on-premises, and edge environments, providing unified management and isolation.
	Application and Namespace Isolation	Segregates applications and namespaces across slices for tenant isolation and resource governance.
Multi-Cluster Networking	Layer 3 (L3) Pod-to-Pod Connectivity	Provides flat, cross-cluster Layer 3 connectivity between pods using a secure overlay network.
	Multi-Cluster Service Mesh	Integrates service mesh capabilities across clusters for consistent service discovery, routing, and observability.
	Overlay East–West Gateways (Envoy Gateways)	Uses Envoy-based gateways to enable east–west inter-cluster traffic routing and policy enforcement.
	Multi-Cluster Routes and GLB Integration	Supports Global Load Balancer (GLB) with external DNS for unified ingress and intelligent traffic routing across clusters.
	North–South and VPC Egress Connectivity (KubeAccess)	Enables secure north–south connectivity and overlay VPC egress gateways to access external cloud services or on-prem VM workloads.
Slice Overlay Network	No-Network Overlay	Provides no overlay network, enabling cluster isolation while supporting RBAC, resource quota management, and node affinity. Switching to single/multi-network overlay is allowed only if all clusters have networking enabled; switching back is unsupported.
	Single-Network Overlay	Creates a single, flat L3 overlay network across clusters with pod-to-pod connectivity. Service discovery is handled through slice DNS.
	Multi-Network Overlay	Uses ingress or egress gateways managed through Gateway API for inter-cluster connectivity at L7 (HTTP/HTTPS). No flat L3 network; service discovery uses local cluster IP services.
Service Discovery	Auto Discovery of Services	Enables automatic service discovery across clusters participating in a slice, simplifying cross-cluster communication.
	DNS Entry Management	When a service is exported within a slice, the Slice Operator creates and distributes DNS entries across all participating clusters, ensuring seamless and consistent service resolution.

IP Address Management

IP Address Management (IPAM) is a method of planning, tracking, and managing the IP address space used in a network. On the KubeSlice Manager, the Maximum Clusters parameter of the slice creation page helps with IPAM. The corresponding YAML parameter is maxClusters.

This parameter sets the maximum number of worker clusters that you can connect to a slice. The maximum number of worker clusters affects the subnet calculation of a worker cluster. The subnet in turn determines the number of host addresses a worker cluster gets for its application pods.

For example, if the slice subnet is 10.1.0.0/16 and the maximum number of clusters is 16, then each cluster gets a subnet of 10.1.x.0/20, where x = 0, 16, or 32.

This is a significant parameter that can only be configured during slice creation. If this parameter is not set, it defaults to 16.

caution

The subnet of a worker cluster determines the number of host addresses that are available to that cluster. Hence, you must be prudent and cautious when you set the maximum worker clusters. The value of the maximum number of clusters set remains constant for the entire life of a slice, and it is immutable after a slice is created.

The fewer the clusters, the more IP addresses are available for the application pods of every worker cluster that is part of a slice. By default, the value of the Maximum Clusters parameter is 16. The supported value range is 2 to 32 clusters.

Dynamic IPAM

KubeSlice supports dynamic IP Address Management (IPAM) for efficient utilization of IP address space across multiple clusters. With dynamic IPAM, subnets are allocated on-demand when clusters join a slice, rather than being pre-allocated during slice creation. This approach optimizes IP address usage and simplifies network management in multi-cluster environments.

KubeSlice offers two IPAM modes:

• Static IPAM: Pre-allocates all 256 subnets at the time of slice creation, resulting in significant inefficiency.
• Dynamic IPAM: Allocates subnets only when clusters join the slice, achieving near 0% IP waste and ensuring optimal utilization of the IP pool. Dynamic IPAM eliminates IP address waste while preserving full backward compatibility for existing Static IPAM–based slices.

info

KubeSlice uses Static IPAM by default. You must set the sliceIPAMType parameter to Dynamic in the slice configuration to use the dynamic IPAM feature.

Connectivity to Clusters in Private VPCs

In addition to connecting public clusters, KubeSlice can also be used to connect clusters that are enclosed within a private VPC. Such clusters are accessed through network or application Load Balancer that are provisioned and managed by the cloud provider. KubeSlice relies on network Load Balancers to setup the inter-cluster connectivity to private clusters.

The following picture illustrates the inter-cluster connectivity set up by KubeSlice using a network Load Balancer (LB).

Users can specify the type of connectivity for a cluster. If the cluster is in a private VPC, the user can utilize the LoadBalancer connectivity type to connect it to other clusters. The default value is NodePort. The user can also configure the gateway protocol while configuring the gateway type. The value can be TCP or UDP. The default value is UDP.