Zero-Trust with Zero-Friction eBPF in Calico v3.31

Calico eBPF by default* The Road to Seamless Installation How the Operator Automates Setup High-Availability (HA) Kubernetes API Server Support Manifest-Based Installations Limitations Join the Conversation Calico has used eBPF as one of its dataplanes since version 3.13 , released more than five years ago. At the time, this was an exciting step forward, introducing a new, innovative data plane that quickly gained traction within the Calico community. Since then, there have been many changes and continued evolution, all thanks to the many adopters of the then-new data plane. However, there has been one persistent challenge in the installation process since day one: bootstrapping the eBPF data plane required a manual setup step. This extra friction point often frustrated operators and slowed adoption. With the launch of Calico v3.31, that hurdle to using the eBPF data plane has finally been removed. For many environments (see Limitations section below), you can now install Calico with eBPF enabled right out of the box with no manual setup required. Simply use the provided installation manifest ( custom-resources-bpf. yaml ), which comes preconfigured with the data plane option set to eBPF. To get started, follow the instructions in Install Calico networking and network policy for on-premises deployments to enjoy a much smoother installation experience. See Calico eBPF in action with this short demo, highlighting how version 3.31 makes setup easier and increases performance: The Calico eBPF data plane includes a kube-proxy replacement, enabling faster service implementation than the upstream version of kube-proxy for iptables and better integration with the rest of the data plane for overall superior performance. However, a kube-proxy replacement requires knowing how to reach the Kubernetes API server.