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Using a MAC address pool for virtual machines

The KubeMacPool component provides a MAC address pool service for virtual machine NICs in a namespace.

About KubeMacPool

KubeMacPool provides a MAC address pool per namespace and allocates MAC addresses for virtual machine NICs from the pool. This ensures that the NIC is assigned a unique MAC address that does not conflict with the MAC address of another virtual machine.

Virtual machine instances created from that virtual machine retain the assigned MAC address across reboots.

KubeMacPool does not handle virtual machine instances created independently from a virtual machine.

KubeMacPool is enabled by default when you install OpenShift Virtualization. You can disable a MAC address pool for a namespace by adding the mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io=ignore label to the namespace. Re-enable KubeMacPool for the namespace by removing the label.

Disabling a MAC address pool for a namespace in the CLI

Disable a MAC address pool for virtual machines in a namespace by adding the mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io=ignore label to the namespace.

Procedure

  • Add the mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io=ignore label to the namespace. The following example disables KubeMacPool for two namespaces, <namespace1> and <namespace2>:

    $ oc label namespace <namespace1> <namespace2> mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io=ignore

Re-enabling a MAC address pool for a namespace in the CLI

If you disabled KubeMacPool for a namespace and want to re-enable it, remove the mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io=ignore label from the namespace.

Earlier versions of OpenShift Virtualization used the label mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io=allocate to enable KubeMacPool for a namespace. This is still supported but redundant as KubeMacPool is now enabled by default.
Procedure

  • Remove the KubeMacPool label from the namespace. The following example re-enables KubeMacPool for two namespaces, <namespace1> and <namespace2>:

    $ oc label namespace <namespace1> <namespace2> mutatevirtualmachines.kubemacpool.io-