About the OAM Network

The OAM network provides for control access.

You should ensure that the following services are available on the OAM Network:

DNS Service

Needed to facilitate the name resolution of servers reachable on the OAM Network.

StarlingX can operate without a configured DNS service. However, a DNS service should be in place to ensure that links to external references in the current and future versions of the Horizon Web interface work as expected.

Docker Registry Service

A private or public Docker registry service needed to serve remote container image requests from Kubernetes and the underlying Docker service.

This remote Docker registry must hold the required StarlingX container images for the appropriate release, to fully install a StarlingX system.

NTP Service

NTP can be used by the StarlingX controller nodes to synchronize their local clocks with a reliable external time reference. StarlingX strongly recommends that this service be available to ensure that system-wide log reports present a unified view of the day-to-day operations.

The StarlingX worker nodes and storage nodes always use the controller nodes as the de-facto time server for the entire StarlingX cluster.

PTP Service

As an alternative to NTP services, PTP can be used by the StarlingX controller nodes to synchronize clocks in a network. It provides:

  • more accurate clock synchronization

  • the ability to extend the clock synchronization, not only to StarlingX hosts (controllers, workers, and storage nodes), but also to hosted applications on StarlingX hosts.

When used in conjunction with hardware support on the OAM and Management network interface cards, PTP is capable of sub-microsecond accuracy. StarlingX strongly recommends that this service, or NTP, if available, be used to ensure that system-wide log reports present a unified view of the day-to-day operations, and that other time-sensitive operations are performed accurately.

Various NICs and network switches provide the hardware support for PTP used by OAM and Management networks. This hardware provides an on-board clock that is synchronized to the PTP master. The computer’s system clock is synchronized to the PTP hardware clock on the NIC used to stamp transmitted and received PTP messages. For more information, see the IEEE 1588-2002 standard.

Note

NTP and PTP can be configured on a per host basis.