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Ingress with NGINX controller on Google Kubernetes Engine

Author(s): @ameer00 , Published: 2018-02-12

Ameer Abbas | Solutions Architect | Google

Contributed by Google employees.

This guide explains how to deploy the NGINX Ingress Controller on Google Kubernetes Engine.

In Kubernetes, Ingress allows external users and client applications access to HTTP services. Ingress consists of two components. Ingress Resource is a collection of rules for the inbound traffic to reach Services. These are Layer 7 (L7) rules that allow hostnames (and optionally paths) to be directed to specific Services in Kubernetes. The second component is the Ingress Controller which acts upon the rules set by the Ingress Resource, typically through an HTTP or L7 load balancer. It is vital that both pieces are properly configured to route traffic from an outside client to a Kubernetes Service.

NGINX is a popular choice for an Ingress Controller for a variety of features:

WebSocket, which allows you to load balance Websocket applications.
SSL Services, which allows you to load balance HTTPS applications.
Rewrites, which allows you to rewrite the URI of a request before sending it to the application.
Session Persistence (NGINX Plus only), which guarantees that all the requests from the same client are always passed to the same backend container.
Support for JWTs (NGINX Plus only), which allows NGINX Plus to authenticate requests by validating JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).

The following diagram shows the architecture described above:

This tutorial illustrates how to set up a Deployment in Kubernetes with an Ingress Resource using NGINX as the Ingress Controller to route and load-balance traffic from external clients to the Deployment.

This tutorial explains how to accomplish the following:

Create a Kubernetes Deployment.
Deploy NGINX Ingress Controller with Helm.
Set up an Ingress Resource object for the Deployment.

Objectives

Deploy a simple Kubernetes web application Deployment.
Deploy NGINX Ingress Controller using the stable Helm chart.
Deploy an Ingress Resource for the application that uses NGINX Ingress as the controller.
Test NGINX Ingress functionality by accessing the Google Cloud L4 (TCP/UDP) load balancer frontend IP address and ensure that it can access the web application.

Costs

This tutorial uses billable components of Google Cloud, including the following:

Google Kubernetes Engine
Cloud Load Balancing

Use the pricing calculator to generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage.

Before you begin

Set up your environment

Open a new Cloud Shell session.

Set your project's default Compute Engine zone and create a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster:

gcloud config set compute/zone us-central1-f
gcloud container clusters create nginx-tutorial --num-nodes=2

Verify Helm in Cloud Shell

Helm is a tool that streamlines installing and managing Kubernetes applications and resources. Think of it like apt, yum, or homebrew for Kubernetes. The use of Helm charts is recommended, because they are maintained and typically kept up to date by the Kubernetes community.

Helm 3 comes pre-installed in Cloud Shell.

Verify the version of the Helm client in Cloud Shell:

helm version

The output should look like this:

version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.2.1", GitCommit:"fe51cd1e31e6a202cba7dead9552a6d418ded79a", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.13.10"}

Ensure that the version is v3.x.y.

You can install the helm client in Cloud Shell by following the instructions here.

Deploy an application in Google Kubernetes Engine

You can deploy a simple web-based application from the Google Cloud repository. You use this application as the backend for the Ingress.

From Cloud Shell, run the following command:

kubectl create deployment hello-app --image=gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0

This gives the following output:

deployment.apps/hello-app created

Expose the hello-app Deployment as a Service:

kubectl expose deployment hello-app --port=8080 --target-port=8080

This gives the following output:

service/hello-app exposed

Deploying the NGINX Ingress Controller with Helm

Kubernetes allows administrators to bring their own Ingress Controllers instead of using the cloud provider's built-in offering.

The NGINX controller, deployed as a Service, must be exposed for external access. This is done using Service type: LoadBalancer on the NGINX controller service. On Google Kubernetes Engine, this creates a Google Cloud Network (TCP/IP) load balancer with NGINX controller Service as a backend. Google Cloud also creates the appropriate firewall rules within the Service's VPC network to allow web HTTP(S) traffic to the load balancer frontend IP address.

Here is a basic flow of the NGINX ingress solution on Google Kubernetes Engine.

NGINX Ingress Controller on Google Kubernetes Engine

Deploy NGINX Ingress Controller

Before you deploy the NGINX Ingress Helm chart to the GKE cluster, add the nginx-stable Helm repository in Cloud Shell:
```
helm repo add nginx-stable https://helm.nginx.com/stable
helm repo update
```
Deploy an NGINX controller Deployment and Service by running the following command:
```
helm install nginx-ingress nginx-stable/nginx-ingress
```

Verify that the nginx-ingress-controller Deployment and Service are deployed to the GKE cluster:

kubectl get deployment nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress
kubectl get service nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress

The output should look like this:

# Deployment
NAME                          READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress   1/1     1            1           131m

# Service
NAME                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                      AGE
nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress   LoadBalancer   10.7.250.75   <pending>     80:31875/TCP,443:30172/TCP   132m

Wait a few moments while the Google Cloud L4 load balancer gets deployed, and then confirm that the nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress Service has been deployed and that you have an external IP address associated with the service:
```
kubectl get service nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress
```
You may need to run this command a few times until an EXTERNAL-IP value is present.

You should see the following:
```
NAME                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                      AGE
nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress   LoadBalancer   10.7.250.75   34.70.255.61  80:31875/TCP,443:30172/TCP   132m
```

Export the EXTERNAL-IP of the NGINX ingress controller in a variable to be used later:

export NGINX_INGRESS_IP=$(kubectl get service nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress -ojson | jq -r '.status.loadBalancer.ingress[].ip')

Ensure that you have the correct IP address value stored in the $NGINX_INGRESS_IP variable:
```
echo $NGINX_INGRESS_IP
```
The output should look like this, though the IP address may differ:
```
34.70.255.61
```

Configure Ingress Resource to use NGINX Ingress Controller

An Ingress Resource object is a collection of L7 rules for routing inbound traffic to Kubernetes Services. Multiple rules can be defined in one Ingress Resource, or they can be split up into multiple Ingress Resource manifests. The Ingress Resource also determines which controller to use to serve traffic. This can be set with an annotation, kubernetes.io/ingress.class, in the metadata section of the Ingress Resource. For the NGINX controller, use the value nginx:

annotations: kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx

On Google Kubernetes Engine, if no annotation is defined under the metadata section, the Ingress Resource uses the Google Cloud GCLB L7 load balancer to serve traffic. This method can also be forced by setting the annotation's value to gce:

annotations: kubernetes.io/ingress.class: gce

Deploying multiple Ingress controllers of different types (for example, both nginx and gce) and not specifying a class annotation will result in all controllers fighting to satisfy the Ingress, and all of them racing to update the Ingress status field in confusing ways. For more information, see Multipe Ingress controllers.

Create a simple Ingress Resource YAML file that uses the NGINX Ingress Controller and has one path rule defined:

cat <<EOF > ingress-resource.yaml
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: ingress-resource
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "nginx"
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-redirect: "false"
spec:
  rules:
  - host: ${NGINX_INGRESS_IP}.xip.io
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          serviceName: hello-app
          servicePort: 8080
        path: /hello
EOF

The kind: Ingress line dictates that this is an Ingress Resource object. This Ingress Resource defines an inbound L7 rule for path /hello to service hello-app on port 8080.

Apply the configuration:
```
kubectl apply -f ingress-resource.yaml
```
Verify that Ingress Resource has been created:
```
kubectl get ingress ingress-resource
```
The IP address for the Ingress Resource will not be defined right away, so you may need to wait a few moments for the ADDRESS field to get populated.

The output should look like the following:
```
NAME               HOSTS                ADDRESS       PORTS   AGE
ingress-resource   34.70.255.61.xip.io  34.70.255.61  80      111m
```
Note the HOSTS value in the output is set to a FQDN using xip.io domain. This host resolves the hostname with the form of [IP_ADDRESS].xio.io to [IP_ADDRESS]. NGINX Ingress Controller requires you to use a DNS name in the host specification in the Ingress resource. For the purpose of this tutorial, you use the xip.io service. In production, you can replace the host specification in the Ingress resource with you real FQDN for the Service.

Test Ingress

You should now be able to access the web application by going to the [EXTERNAL_IP]/hello address of the NGINX ingress controller (from the output of the kubectl get service nginx-ingress-nginx-ingress above).

http://external-ip-of-ingress-controller/hello

You can also access the hello-app using the curl command in Cloud Shell.

curl http://$NGINX_INGRESS_IP.xip.io/hello

The output should look like the following.

Hello, world!
Version: 1.0.0
Hostname: hello-app-5f85f64f6c-rfzkn

Clean up

From Cloud Shell, run the following commands:

Delete the Ingress Resource object:

kubectl delete -f ingress-resource.yaml

You should see the following:

ingress.extensions "ingress-resource" deleted

Delete the NGINX Ingress Helm chart:
```
helm del nginx-ingress
```
You should see the following:
```
release "nginx-ingress" uninstalled
```

Delete the app:

kubectl delete service hello-app
kubectl delete deployment hello-app

You should see the following:

service "hello-app" deleted
deployment.extensions "hello-app" deleted

Delete the Google Kubernetes Engine cluster:

gcloud container clusters delete nginx-tutorial

You should see the following:

The following clusters will be deleted.
- [nginx-tutorial] in [us-central1-f]

    Do you want to continue (Y/n)?  y

    Deleting cluster nginx-tutorial...done.
    Deleted [https://container.googleapis.com/v1/projects/ameer-1/zones/us-central1-f/clusters/nginx-tutorial].

Delete the ingress_resource.yaml file:
```
rm ingress-resource.yaml
```

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