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Choose a deployment

XLB supports two deployment paths. Choose the guide for the environment where packets will enter the load balancer; Kubernetes and bare-metal host preparation are intentionally documented separately.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes runs the same XLB container image as the bare-metal path. The supplied Helm chart is the recommended installer because it configures host networking, node placement, privileged access, health probes, and EndpointSlice RBAC consistently.

The two essential placement settings are:

  • hostNetwork: true, so XLB can attach to the node's real network interface; and
  • required Pod anti-affinity, so at most one XLB Pod from the release runs on each node.

Do not remove either setting. Select enough eligible nodes for the requested replica count, then let the chart discover ready, serving, non-terminating endpoints from the configured backend Service. The chart also declares the configured XLB ports as host ports so Kubernetes does not schedule another declared host-port workload onto the same ports.

Start on Kubernetes

Bare metal, virtual machines, or Docker

Use the container with host networking and prepare the Linux host explicitly. This path requires a non-loopback interface, routes to the backends, and sufficient privileges to load eBPF and attach XDP.

Start on bare metal

Common requirements

Both deployment paths require:

  • Linux kernel 5.10 or newer;
  • IPv4 connectivity from the XLB node or host to every backend;
  • administrative access sufficient to load eBPF and attach XDP; and
  • enough CPU, memory, and NIC capacity for the intended traffic profile.

Native XDP support is recommended. XLB automatically falls back to generic/SKB XDP when native attachment is unavailable, but the two modes have different performance characteristics.

Obtain the release artifacts

Your Neuronic support representative will provide the image details, registry access when required, matching Helm chart for Kubernetes, and release-specific notes. Each deployment guide explains how to supply those artifacts without embedding registry credentials in XLB configuration.

Next steps