--- title: How to Enable the Peer-to-Peer OCI Registry Plugin for DigitalOcean Kubernetespublic description: Enable the peer-to-peer OCI registry plugin to reduce container image pull traffic across a DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster. product: Kubernetes url: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/enable-peer-to-peer-oci-registry/ last_updated: "2026-08-11" --- > **For AI agents:** The documentation index is at [https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt](https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of pages use the same URL with `index.html.md` in place of the HTML page (for example, append `index.html.md` to the directory path instead of opening the HTML document). # How to Enable the Peer-to-Peer OCI Registry Plugin for DigitalOcean Kubernetes (public) DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a Kubernetes service with a fully managed control plane, high availability, and autoscaling. DOKS integrates with standard Kubernetes toolchains and DigitalOcean’s load balancers, volumes, CPU and GPU Droplets, API, and CLI. **Note**: The peer-to-peer OCI registry plugin is in [public preview](https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/product-lifecycle/index.html.md#public-preview) and is available on new clusters running Kubernetes 1.36 or later. Existing clusters upgrading to 1.36 are not yet supported. DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) includes an optional peer-to-peer OCI registry plugin that mirrors container images across cluster nodes. The plugin uses [Spegel](https://spegel.dev/), an open-source, stateless OCI registry mirror, to let nodes pull image layers from each other instead of the origin registry every time. This reduces the number of pulls that leave the cluster, which lowers your exposure to external registries’ rate limits and speeds up image pulls on clusters that reuse the same images across many nodes. Each node runs its own Spegel instance and advertises the image layers it already has to the rest of the cluster. When a node needs to pull a layer, containerd checks whether a peer already has it before falling back to the original registry. This works transparently. You don’t need to change your image references or registry configuration to benefit from it. The plugin is disabled by default. You can [enable or disable it](#enable-or-disable-the-plugin) using `doctl`, the DigitalOcean API, Godo, or Terraform, and [verify that it’s running](#verify-the-plugin-is-running) with `kubectl`. ## Enable or Disable the Plugin In the API, the plugin is controlled through the `p2p_oci_registry_plugin` object on the Kubernetes cluster resource. Set `enabled` to `true` to turn the plugin on, or `false` to turn it off. Omitting the object from a request leaves the plugin’s current state unchanged. ### doctl To enable the plugin when [creating a cluster](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/doctl/reference/kubernetes/cluster/create/index.html.md), set the `--enable-peer-to-peer-oci-registry-plugin` flag to `true`. ```shell doctl kubernetes cluster create example-cluster --region nyc1 --version latest --enable-peer-to-peer-oci-registry-plugin=true ``` To enable or disable the plugin on an existing cluster, [update the cluster](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/doctl/reference/kubernetes/cluster/update/index.html.md) with the same flag: ```shell doctl kubernetes cluster update example-cluster --enable-peer-to-peer-oci-registry-plugin=false ``` To check whether the plugin is enabled on a cluster: ```shell doctl kubernetes cluster get example-cluster --format PeerToPeerOciRegistryPlugin ``` The output shows whether the plugin is enabled: ```text Output Peer-to-peer OCI registry Plugin true ``` ### cURL To enable the plugin when creating a cluster, send a `POST` request to `https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/kubernetes/clusters` with a request body similar to the following: ```shell curl --location 'https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/kubernetes/clusters' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \ --header "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" \ --data '{ "name": "example-cluster", "region": "nyc1", "version": "1.36.1-do.0", "node_pools": [ { "size": "s-2vcpu-4gb", "count": 3, "name": "worker-pool" } ], "p2p_oci_registry_plugin": { "enabled": true } }' ``` To enable or disable the plugin on an existing cluster, send a `PUT` request to `https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/kubernetes/clusters/{cluster_id}` with a request body similar to the following: ```shell curl --location --request PUT 'https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/kubernetes/clusters/{cluster_id}' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \ --header "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" \ --data '{ "name": "example-cluster", "p2p_oci_registry_plugin": { "enabled": false } }' ``` ### Go Go developers can use [Godo](https://github.com/digitalocean/godo), the official DigitalOcean V2 API client for Go. To enable the plugin when creating a Kubernetes cluster with Godo, use code similar to the following: ```go package main import ( "context" "fmt" "os" "github.com/digitalocean/godo" ) func main() { client := godo.NewFromToken("your-digitalocean-token") cluster, _, err := client.Kubernetes.Create(context.Background(), &godo.KubernetesClusterCreateRequest{ Name: "example-cluster", RegionSlug: "nyc1", VersionSlug: "1.36.1-do.0", NodePools: []*godo.KubernetesNodePoolCreateRequest{ { Name: "worker-pool", Count: 3, Size: "s-2vcpu-4gb", }, }, P2pOciRegistryPlugin: &godo.KubernetesP2pOciRegistry{ Enabled: godo.PtrTo(true), }, }) if err != nil { fmt.Printf("Error creating cluster: %s\n", err) os.Exit(1) } isEnabled := *cluster.P2pOciRegistryPlugin.Enabled fmt.Printf("Cluster creation successfully issued with peer-to-peer OCI registry plugin enabled=%v\n", isEnabled) } ``` To enable or disable the plugin on an existing cluster with Godo, use code similar to the following: ```go package main import ( "context" "fmt" "os" "github.com/digitalocean/godo" ) func main() { client := godo.NewFromToken("your-digitalocean-token") cluster, _, err := client.Kubernetes.Update(context.Background(), "your-cluster-id", &godo.KubernetesClusterUpdateRequest{ Name: "example-cluster", P2pOciRegistryPlugin: &godo.KubernetesP2pOciRegistry{ Enabled: godo.PtrTo(false), }, }) if err != nil { fmt.Printf("Error updating cluster: %s\n", err) os.Exit(1) } isEnabled := *cluster.P2pOciRegistryPlugin.Enabled fmt.Printf("Cluster update successfully issued with peer-to-peer OCI registry plugin enabled=%v\n", isEnabled) } ``` ### Terraform To enable the plugin, add a `p2p_oci_registry_plugin` block to the `digitalocean_kubernetes_cluster` resource: ```hcl resource "digitalocean_kubernetes_cluster" "example" { name = "example-cluster" region = "nyc1" version = "1.36.1-do.0" node_pool { name = "worker-pool" size = "s-2vcpu-4gb" node_count = 3 } p2p_oci_registry_plugin { enabled = true } } ``` To disable the plugin, set `enabled = false` in the same block. ## Verify the Plugin Is Running When the plugin is enabled, DOKS runs Spegel as a DaemonSet named `k8s-spegel` in the `kube-system` namespace, labeled `c3.doks.digitalocean.com/component=p2p-oci-registry`. To confirm it’s running on every node: ```shell kubectl get daemonset k8s-spegel -n kube-system ``` The output looks similar to the following: ```text Output NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE NODE SELECTOR AGE k8s-spegel 3 3 3 3 3 10m ``` The `DESIRED` and `READY` columns should match your node count. If they don’t, check the plugin’s pods for errors: ```shell kubectl get pods -n kube-system -l c3.doks.digitalocean.com/component=p2p-oci-registry ``` Each node should have one `k8s-spegel` pod in the `Running` state. Fewer pods than nodes, or pods stuck in another state, means the plugin isn’t running on every node yet.