What is the nature and description of the request?

We would like to use the F5 BigIP load balancers in non tunneled mode. Which is achieved by directly connecting the LB to the multiple external gateway (MEG) as explained in the following documentation:

• OpenShift 4.12 and F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services (CIS) User-Guide for Cluster BIG-IP using OVN-Kubernetes iCNI with NO Tunnels

and be able to utilize the External IP feature in the same time.

Why does the customer need this?

This configuration has the following advantages:

• Significantly easier configuration and thus much faster adoption.
• It allows partitioning on the F5 side. It means that a central F5 can handle multiple environments and can be set up in an HA way.
• It does not require configuration of hybrid networking and allocation of additional subset for this purpose.
• EgressIP is required for pod reaching systems outside the OCP cluster like databases.

List any affected packages or components.

OVN-Kubernetes