Get Started with Cilium: Read Our eBook

Cilium, an open source tool that provides management, security, and observability in Kubernetes ecosystems, was first released in April 2018. Since then it has become a popular solution for providing basic networking necessities for Kubernetes.

In our eBook, we explain Cilium’s various components and benefits, how it works, and how it can help your organization with service mesh, layer 7 traffic management, encryption, tracing and observability, load balancing, and network policy implementation.

Download the eBook “Getting Started with Cilium” here. Read on for more of an overview of Cilium.

Cilium and eBPF

Cilium takes a novel approach to container network interface (CNI) via eBPF, and can be extended to work as a service mesh and also work in kube-proxy-less mode. eBPF allows for fast, powerful, and sophisticated operations that give Cilium a distinct advantage as a CNI.

A Breakdown of Cilium

Cilium has many optimization and management features as a single package. It consists of multiple default components that provide valuable features:

• Agent: Talks to container runtime and Kubernetes APIs with the help of plugins to set up networking and security implementation for containers running on the local hosts.
• Operator: Is responsible for installation and configuration of the different components of Cilium.
• Cilium CLI client: Provides ways to interact with the Cilium daemon APIs using the command line interface.
• CNI plugin: Implements the container network interface to provide functionalities to dynamically configure the network resources.
• eBPF maps: Serve as the data structure that can be used to store and share the information collected.

Along with these components, users can also install Hubble:

• Hubble: Serves as a distributed security and networking observability platform to enable better visibility in cloud native workloads.

Cilium and Other Technologies

Users can also make use of Cilium capabilities with other technologies, allowing for further streamlining of services. These technologies include CNI chaining support with AWS, layer 3 and layer 4 visibility, Kubernetes Network Policy, and Istio.

Get Started with Cilium Today

Download our eBook to learn more about getting started with Cilium. We’ll walk you through the different ways to install Cilium, some of its supporting features, and its use cases.