projectcalico / projectcalico/vpp-dataplane

fail to install Calico with the VPP data plane on an EKS cluster with the DPDK driver

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#762 2 comments 2 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@onong is already working on this.

Since Sep 15, 2025.

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Description

Environment

  • Calico/VPP version: 3.30
  • Kubernetes version: 1.33
  • Deployment type: EKS
  • Network configuration: Calico + VPP + DPDK

Issue description
unable to install calico VPP on EKS

To Reproduce
try to follow the steps described in the documenataion to install Install Calico with the VPP data plane on an EKS cluster with the DPDK driver (https://docs.tigera.io/calico/latest/getting-started/kubernetes/vpp/getting-started#install-calico-with-the-vpp-data-plane-on-an-eks-cluster-with-the-dpdk-driver)

Expected behavior
cluster with vpp + DPDK will be created on EKS

Additional context
It seems that the VPP dataplane for Calico on EKS has not been thoroughly tested recently, especially with the transition from Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) to Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023).

Previously, the default AL2 AMI for EKS was probably tested with Calico VPP. However, AL2 is now deprecated and will soon lose support, with newer Kubernetes versions (e.g., 1.33) already incompatible with it.

Our attempts to use AL2023 have encountered issues. While we successfully updated the YAML to use ens5 instead of eth0 for the interface, the VPP daemonset fails when executing its pre-start hooks. These hooks include commands like sudo systemctl stop network; sudo systemctl kill network, which are no longer functional in AL2023 (they return "Failed to stop network.service: Unit network.service not loaded").

Even after attempting to modify the hook command to sudo systemctl stop systemd-networkd, the pods still fail to start with the error: "Error creating uplink interface ens5: error trying to find interface with tag main-ens5)".

We are seeking assistance from anyone who has recently successfully installed Calico with VPP on EKS, particularly with AL2023, to help us resolve these integration challenges.

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