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title: Ingress with NGINX controller on Google Kubernetes Engine description: Learn how to deploy the NGINX Ingress Controller on Google Kubernetes Engine using Helm. author: ameer00 tags: Google Kubernetes Engine, Kubernetes, Ingress, NGINX, NGINX Ingress Controller, Helm date_published: 2018-02-12

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 via 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/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 via 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 and ensure it can access the web application

Costs

This tutorial uses billable components of Cloud Platform, including:

Kubernetes Engine
Google Cloud Load Balancing

Use the Pricing Calculator to generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage.

Before You Begin

Create or select a GCP project. GO TO THE PROJECTS PAGE
Enable billing for your project. ENABLE BILLING
Enable the Kubernetes Engine API. ENABLE APIs

Set up your environment

In this section you configure the infrastructure and identities required to complete the tutorial.

Create a Kubernetes Engine cluster using Cloud Shell

You can use Cloud Shell to complete this tutorial. To use Cloud Shell, perform the following steps: OPEN A NEW CLOUD SHELL SESSION

Set your project's default compute zone and create a cluster by running the following commands:

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

Install Helm in Cloud Shell

If you already have Helm client and Tiller installed on your cluster, you can skip to the next section.

Helm is a tool that streamlines installing and managing Kubernetes applications and resources. Think of it like apt/yum/homebrew for Kubernetes. Use of helm charts is recommended since they are maintained and typically kept up-to-date by the Kubernetes community.

Helm has two parts: a client (helm) and a server (tiller)
Tiller runs inside of your Kubernetes cluster, and manages releases (installations) of your helm charts.
Helm runs on your laptop, CI/CD, or in our case, the Cloud Shell.

You can install the helm client in Cloud Shell using the following commands:

curl -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/helm/master/scripts/get
chmod +x get_helm.sh
./get_helm.sh

The script above fetches the latest version of helm client and installs it locally in Cloud Shell.

Downloading https://kubernetes-helm.storage.googleapis.com/helm-v2.8.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Preparing to install into /usr/local/bin
helm installed into /usr/local/bin/helm
Run 'helm init' to configure helm.

Installing Tiller with RBAC enabled

Starting with Kubernetes v1.8+, RBAC is enabled by default. Prior to installing tiller we need to ensure we have the correct ServiceAccount and ClusterRoleBinding configured for the tiller service. This allows tiller to be able to install services in the default namespace. Run the following command to install the server side tiller to the Kubernetes cluster with RBAC enabled.

kubectl create serviceaccount --namespace kube-system tiller
kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-rule --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller
kubectl patch deploy --namespace kube-system tiller-deploy -p '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"serviceAccount":"tiller"}}}}'      
helm init --service-account tiller --upgrade

Installing Tiller with RBAC disabled

If you do not have RBAC enabled on your Kubernetes installation, you can simply run the following command to install tiller on your cluster.

helm init

The output below confirms tiller is running.

Creating /home/ameer00/.helm
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/repository
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/repository/cache
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/repository/local
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/plugins
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/starters
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/cache/archive
Creating /home/ameer00/.helm/repository/repositories.yaml
Adding stable repo with URL: https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com
Adding local repo with URL: http://127.0.0.1:8879/charts
$HELM_HOME has been configured at /home/ameer00/.helm.

Tiller (the Helm server-side component) has been installed into your Kubernetes Cluster.
Happy Helming!

You can also confirm that tiller is running by checking for the tiller_deploy Deployment in the kube-system namespace. Run the following command:

kubectl get deployments -n kube-system

The output should have a tiller_deploy Deployment as shown below:

NAME                    DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
event-exporter-v0.1.7   1         1         1            1           13m
heapster-v1.4.3         1         1         1            1           13m
kube-dns                2         2         2            2           13m
kube-dns-autoscaler     1         1         1            1           13m
kubernetes-dashboard    1         1         1            1           13m
l7-default-backend      1         1         1            1           13m
tiller-deploy           1         1         1            1           4m

Deploy an application in 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 the Cloud Shell, run the following command:

kubectl run hello-app --image=gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0 --port=8080

deployment "hello-app" created

Expose the hello-app Deployment as a Service by running the following command:

kubectl expose deployment hello-app

service "hello-app" exposed

Deploying the NGINX Ingress Controller via Helm

Kubernetes platform allows for 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 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 to allow web HTTP(S) traffic to the load balancer frontend IP address. Here is a basic flow of the NGINX ingress solution on Kubernetes Engine.

NGINX Ingress Controller on Kubernetes Engine

Deploy NGINX Ingress Controller with RBAC enabled

If your Kubernetes cluster has RBAC enabled, from the Cloud Shell, deploy an NGINX controller Deployment and Service by running the following command:

helm install --name nginx-ingress stable/nginx-ingress --set rbac.create=true

Deploy NGINX Ingress Controller with RBAC disabled

If your Kubernetes cluster has RBAC disabled, from the Cloud Shell, deploy an NGINX controller Deployment and Service by running the following command:

helm install --name nginx-ingress stable/nginx-ingress

In the ouput under RESOURCES, you should see the following:

==> v1/Service
NAME                           TYPE          CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP  PORT(S)                     AGE
nginx-ingress-controller       LoadBalancer  10.7.248.226  pending      80:30890/TCP,443:30258/TCP  1s
nginx-ingress-default-backend  ClusterIP     10.7.245.75   none         80/TCP                      1s

Wait a few moments while the GCP L4 Load Balancer gets deployed. Confirm that the nginx-ingress-controller Service has been deployed and that you have an external IP address associated with the service. Run the following command:

kubectl get service nginx-ingress-controller

NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                      AGE
nginx-ingress-controller   LoadBalancer   10.7.248.226   35.226.162.176   80:30890/TCP,443:30258/TCP   3m

Notice the second service, nginx-ingress-default-backend. The default backend is a Service which handles all URL paths and hosts the NGINX controller doesn't understand (i.e., all the requests that are not mapped with an Ingress Resource). The default backend exposes two URLs:

/healthz that returns 200
/ that returns 404

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 utilize 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 as shown below:

annotations: kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx

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

annotations: kubernetes.io/ingress.class: gce

Lets create a simple Ingress Resource YAML file which uses the NGINX Ingress Controller and has one path rule defined by typing the following commands:

touch ingress-resource.yaml
nano ingress-resource.yaml

Copy the contents of ingress-resource.yaml into the editor, then press Ctrl-X, then press y, then press Enter to save the file.

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

From the Cloud Shell, run the following command:

kubectl apply -f ingress-resource.yaml

Verify that Ingress Resource has been created. Please note that the IP address for the Ingress Resource will not be defined right away (wait a few moments for the ADDRESS field to get populated):

kubectl get ingress ingress-resource

NAME               HOSTS     ADDRESS   PORTS     AGE
ingress-resource   *                   80        `

Test Ingress and default backend

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-controller above).

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

To check if the default-backend service is working properly, access any path (other than the path /hello defined in the Ingress Resource) and ensure you receive a 404 message. For example:

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

You should get the following message:

Clean Up

From the Cloud Shell, run the following commands:

Delete the Ingress Resource object.

kubectl delete -f ingress-resource.yaml

ingress "demo-ingress" deleted

Delete the NGINX Ingress helm chart.

helm del --purge nginx-ingress

release "nginx-ingress" deleted

Delete the app.

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

service "hello-app" deleted
deployment "hello-app" deleted

Delete the Kubernetes Engine cluster by running the following command:

gcloud container clusters delete nginx-tutorial

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 by running the following command:

rm ingress-resource.yaml

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