How to stop kubernetes from reporting to usage.projectcalico.org?

Question

I found that my kubernetes cluster was sending reports to usage.projectcalico.org, how can this be disabled and how exactly is it using usage.projectcalico.org?

Answer 1

Felix is the Calico component that sends usage information.

Felix can be configured to disable the usage ping.

Set the FELIX_USAGEREPORTINGENABLED environment variable can be to "false" (needs to be a string in yaml land!) in the calico-node DaemonSet

Set the UsageReportingEnabled field in the FelixConfiguration resource to false. This could be in etcd or in the Kubernetes API depending on what store you use. Both modifiable with calicoctl.

calicoctl patch felixConfiguration default \
  --patch='{"spec": {"UsageReportingEnabled": false}}'

If you happen to be using kubespray, modifying this setting is a little harder as these variables are not exposed to Ansible, other than by manually modifying templates or yaml.