MetalLB provides load balancer functionality for bare-metal Kubernetes clusters. On ZEDEDA EVE-K, the MetalLB operator is installed manually via kubectl. The IP pool and L2 advertisement are managed via ZedCloud GitOps (Fleet).

MetalLB must be installed manually on the cluster. Fleet cannot manage the operator directly because its manifest includes the namespace definition, which creates a bootstrap conflict with Helm.

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/v0.14.5/config/manifests/metallb-native.yaml

Verify the operator is running:

kubectl get pods -n metallb-system

Once the operator is running, Fleet deploys the IP pool and L2 advertisement automatically via the metallb-config bundle.

demo/charts/
└── infrastructure/
    └── metallb-config/       ← managed by Fleet
        ├── Chart.yaml
        ├── fleet.yaml
        ├── values.yaml
        └── templates/
            ├── ip-pool.yaml
            └── l2adv.yaml

helm:
  chart: .
  releaseName: metallb-config

ipPool:
  name: main-pool
  addresses: 172.16.8.251-172.16.8.254

l2Advertisement:
  name: main-l2

apiVersion: metallb.io/v1beta1
kind: IPAddressPool
metadata:
  name: {{ .Values.ipPool.name }}
  namespace: metallb-system
spec:
  addresses:
    - {{ .Values.ipPool.addresses }}

apiVersion: metallb.io/v1beta1
kind: L2Advertisement
metadata:
  name: {{ .Values.l2Advertisement.name }}
  namespace: metallb-system
spec:
  ipAddressPools:
    - {{ .Values.ipPool.name }}

kubectl get pods -n metallb-system
kubectl get ipaddresspool -n metallb-system
kubectl get l2advertisement -n metallb-system