Slice Operations

An application slice is a logical grouping of Kubernetes namespaces across multiple clusters. It provides a way to manage the lifecycle of a set of related microservices or applications deployed on multiple clusters as a single entity.

With application slices, you can deploy and manage your applications consistently across multiple clusters, and perform operations such as scaling, monitoring, and upgrading as a group. The slice abstraction allows you to maintain a consistent view of your applications and their dependencies across clusters, regardless of the underlying infrastructure or deployment details.

Create a Slice

Add Slice

To create a slice:

1. Go to Slices on the left sidebar.

2. On the Slices page, click the Add Slice button.

   

3. In the Details section, enter the following information:

   • Enter the name of the slice only in lowercase in the Name text box. The value is case-sensitive.

   • Enter the slice subnet in the Subnet text box.

   • Select the QoS profile from the drop-down list. For Default QoS, the QoS Dscp Class is AF11, and the QoS Bandwidth ceiling is 10000000 Kbps (10Gbps). The default values are not editable. For Custom QoS, you must enter the QoS Dscp Class and QoS Bandwidth ceiling values in the Show advanced options section.

   • Add the description to define the slice in the Description text box.

     

4. In the Show advanced options section, enter the following information:

   • Enter the maximum number of clusters to connect to this slice in the Maximum Clusters text box. The minimum value is 2, and the maximum value is 32. The default value is 16.

   • For Custom QoS, enter DSCP class for the slice traffic in the QoS Dscp Class text box.

   • For Custom QoS, enter the maximum bandwidth in Kbps allowed for the slice traffic in the QoS Bandwidth ceiling text box.

     

5. Click Next to connect clusters to the slice.

Choose Clusters to Connect

6. Under All Clusters, click the plus icon next to each worker cluster in the list to connect to the slice. You can also search for the available worker clusters in the search box.

   

7. Under Slice Clusters, you see the list of selected clusters that will be part of a slice. You can enable ingress and egress external gateways if Istio is already installed on your worker cluster. To install Istio, see Install Istio.

   

8. Click Create Slice.

   The following figure illustrates the Slice creation process is in progress.

   

View a Slice

To view a slice:

1. On the Slices page, click the arrow icon to the right of the slice.

   

Slice Configuration

2. The Slice Info tab shows the slice information and health of the slice components.

   

   The slice health details are available as pie charts with equally distributed segments representing components. To the right, you see the slice information. For more, information on components, see KubeSlice Components.

   The following components affect the slice health:

   • DNS
   • Slice Router
   • Slice VPN Gateway
   • Ingress (Istio)
   • Egress (Istio)
   • Gateway Tunnel

   When all of the components are operational, the corresponding pie chart shows that the health is Normal. If the slice components are not operational, the corresponding pie chart displays a Warning. To fix the issue in each component, see slice and cluster health issues.

3. Go to the Gateways tab to view the slice VPN gateways information.

   

4. Go to the Services tab to view the service exports or imports on the worker clusters. To configure service export using YAML, see Manage Service Exports.

   

5. Go to the Clusters tab to view the clusters that are connected to a slice.

   

6. Go to the Namespaces tab to view the onboarded namespaces. To onboard namespaces, see Manage Namespaces.

   

Edit a Slice

To edit a slice:

1. On the Slices page, click the arrow icon at the right for the slice to edit.

   

2. Click the edit icon on the top right.

   

3. In the Details section, you can only edit the QoS profile. For the Custom profile, edit the values for QoS Dscp Class and QoS Bandwidth Ceiling in the Show advanced options section.

   

4. Click the Edit Slice button.

5. In the Connect Clusters section, you can perform the following:

   • Under All Clusters, to connect more clusters to the slice, click the plus icon next to each worker cluster in the list.

   • Under Slice Clusters, select or unselect the external gateway configuration: Ingress with Istio or Egress with Istio for worker clusters.

   • Under Slice Clusters, unselect the cluster to detach it from the slice. Click the minus icon against a worker cluster to detach it from the slice, enter the text DETACH to confirm, and click the Detach Cluster button.

     

6. Click the Edit Slice button to save the changes.

Delete a Slice

To delete a slice:

1. On the Slices page, click the arrow icon at the right for the slice to delete.

   

2. Click the delete icon on the top right.

   

3. Enter DELETE to confirm and click the Delete Slice button.

   

   The following figure illustrates that the Deletion of slice is in progress. You can close the window while the deletion is in progress.

   

   The following figure illustrates that the slice deletion is in progress and that you cannot perform any actions on it.

   

   After the slice deletion is completed, on the Slices page, you see that the slice is removed from the list.