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Chapter 7. Network Policy

As a user with the admin role, you can create a network policy for the netobserv namespace to secure inbound and outbound access to the Network Observability Operator.

You can set up ingress and egress network policies to control pod traffic. This enhances security and collects only the network flow data you need. This reduces noise, supports compliance, and improves visibility into network communication.

You can configure the FlowCollector custom resource (CR) to deploy an egress and ingress network policy for network observability. By default, the spec.NetworkPolicy.enable specification is set to true.

If you have installed Loki, Kafka or any exporter in a different namespace that also has a network policy, you must ensure that the network observability components can communicate with them. Consider the following about your setup:

  • Connection to Loki (as defined in the FlowCollector CR spec.loki parameter)
  • Connection to Kafka (as defined in the FlowCollector CR spec.kafka parameter)
  • Connection to any exporter (as defined in FlowCollector CR spec.exporters parameter)
  • If you are using Loki and including it in the policy target, connection to an external object storage (as defined in your LokiStack related secret)

Procedure

  1. In the web console, go to Operators Installed Operators page.
  2. Under the Provided APIs heading for Network Observability, select Flow Collector.
  3. Select cluster then select the YAML tab.

  4. Configure the FlowCollector CR. A sample configuration is as follows:

    Example FlowCollector CR for network policy

    apiVersion: flows.netobserv.io/v1beta2
kind: FlowCollector
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
  namespace: netobserv
  networkPolicy:
    enable: true
    1 
    
    additionalNamespaces: ["openshift-console", "openshift-monitoring"]
    2 
    
# ...
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    1
    By default, the enable value is true.
    2
    Default values are ["openshift-console", "openshift-monitoring"].
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