Deploying multi-cluster Gateways

Standard

---

Preview

The GKE Gateway controller for multi-cluster networking, multi-cluster Gateways, and the new GatewayClasses gke-l7-global-external-managed and gke-l7-global-external-managed-mc are currently in the Preview launch stage which carries no SLA or technical support. If you have questions about multi-cluster Gateways, Global external HTTP(S) load balancer with the GKE Gateway controller or feedback you want to share, contact [e-mail].

This page describes how to deploy Kubernetes Gateway resources for load balancing across multiple Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters. Before deploying multi-cluster Gateways, see Enabling multi-cluster Gateways to prepare your environment. For deploying Gateways to just a single GKE cluster, see Deploying Gateways.

Multi-cluster Gateways

A multi-cluster Gateway is a Gateway resource that load balances traffic across multiple Kubernetes clusters. In GKE the gke-l7-gxlb-mc, gke-l7-global-external-managed-mc and gke-l7-rilb-mc GatewayClasses deploy multi-cluster Gateways that provide HTTP routing, traffic splitting, traffic mirroring, health-based failover, and more across different GKE clusters, Kubernetes Namespaces, and across different regions. Multi-cluster Gateways make managing application networking across many clusters and teams easy, secure, and scalable for infrastructure administrators.

This page introduces three examples to teach you how to deploy multi-cluster Gateways using the GKE Gateway controller:

• Example 1: An external, multi-cluster Gateway providing load balancing across two GKE clusters for internet traffic.
• Example 2: Blue-green, weight-based traffic splitting and traffic mirroring across two GKE clusters for internal VPC traffic.

Each of the examples will use the same store and site applications to model a real-world scenario where an online shopping service and a website service are owned and operated by separate teams and deployed across a fleet of shared GKE clusters. Each of the examples highlights different topologies and use cases enabled by multi-cluster Gateways.

Multi-cluster Gateways require some environmental preparation before they can be deployed. Before proceeding, follow the steps in Enabling multi-cluster Gateways:

1. Deploy GKE clusters.

2. Register your clusters to a fleet.

3. Enable the multi-cluster Service and multi-cluster Gateway controllers.

Lastly, review the GKE Gateway controller Preview limitations and known issues before using it in your environment.

Multi-cluster, multi-region, external Gateway

In this tutorial, you will create an external multi-cluster Gateway that serves external traffic across an application running in two GKE clusters.

In the following steps you:

1. Deploy the sample store application to the gke-west-1 and gke-east-1 clusters.
2. Configure ServiceExport resources on each cluster to export the Services into your fleet.
3. Deploy a gke-l7-gxlb-mc Gateway and an HTTPRoute to your config cluster, gke-west-1. You could use a gke-l7-global-external-managed Gateway as an alternative to benefit from all the advanced traffic management capabilities of the global external HTTP(S) load balancer.

After the application and Gateway resources are deployed, you can control traffic across the two GKE clusters using path-based routing:

• Requests to /west are routed to store Pods in the gke-west-1 cluster.
• Requests to /east are routed to store Pods in thegke-east-1 cluster.
• Requests to any other path are routed to either cluster, according to its health, capacity, and proximity to the requesting client.

Deploying the demo application

1. Create the store Deployment and Namespace in all three of the clusters that were deployed in Enabling multi-cluster Gateways:

   kubectl apply --context gke-west-1 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/main/gateway/gke-gateway-controller/multi-cluster-gateway/store.yaml
   kubectl apply --context gke-west-2 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/main/gateway/gke-gateway-controller/multi-cluster-gateway/store.yaml
   kubectl apply --context gke-east-1 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/main/gateway/gke-gateway-controller/multi-cluster-gateway/store.yaml
   

   It deploys the following resources to each cluster:

   namespace/store created
   deployment.apps/store created
   

   All examples in this page use the app deployed in this step. Make sure that the app is deployed across all three clusters before trying any of the remaining steps. This example uses only clusters gke-west-1 and gke-east-1 , and gke-west-2 is used in another example.

Multi-cluster Services

Services are how Pods are exposed to clients. Because the GKE Gateway controller uses container-native load balancing, it does not use the ClusterIP or Kubernetes load balancing to reach Pods. Traffic is sent directly from the load balancer to the Pod IPs. However, Services still play a critical role as a logical identifier for Pod grouping.

Multi-cluster Services (MCS) is both an API standard for Services that span clusters and a GKE controller that provides service discovery across GKE clusters. The multi-cluster Gateway controller uses MCS API resources to group Pods into a Service that is addressable across or spans multiple custers.

The multi-cluster Services API defines the following custom resources:

• ServiceExports map to a Kubernetes Service, exporting the endpoints of that Service to all clusters registered to the fleet. When a Service has a corresponding ServiceExport it means that the Service can be addressed by a multi-cluster Gateway.
• ServiceImports are automatically generated by the multi-cluster Service controller. ServiceExport and ServiceImports come in pairs. If a ServiceExport exists in the fleet, then a corresponding ServiceImport is created to allow the Service mapped to the ServiceExport to be accessed from across clusters.

Exporting Services works in the following way. A store Service exists in gke-1 which selects a group of Pods in that cluster. A ServiceExport is created in the cluster which allows the Pods in gke-1 to become accessible from the other clusters in the fleet. The ServiceExport will map to and expose Services that have the same name and Namespace as the ServiceExport resource.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: store
  namespace: store
spec:
  selector:
    app: store
  ports:
  - port: 8080
    targetPort: 8080
---
kind: ServiceExport
apiVersion: net.gke.io/v1
metadata:
  name: store
  namespace: store

The following diagram shows what happens after a ServiceExport is deployed. If a ServiceExport and Service pair exist then the multi-cluster Service controller deploys a corresponding ServiceImport to every GKE cluster in the fleet. The ServiceImport is the local representation of the store Service in every cluster. This enables the client Pod in gke-2 to use ClusterIP or headless Services to reach the store Pods in gke-1. When used in this manner multi-cluster Services provide east-west load balancing between clusters. To use multi-cluster Services for cluster-to-cluster load balancing, see Configuring multi-cluster Services.

Multi-cluster Gateways also use ServiceImports, but not for cluster-to-cluster load balancing. Instead, Gateways use ServiceImports as logical identifiers for a Service that exists in another cluster or that stretches across multiple clusters. The following HTTPRoute references a ServiceImport instead of a Service resource. By referencing a ServiceImport, this indicates that it is forwarding traffic to a group of backend Pods that run across one or more clusters.

kind: HTTPRoute
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: store-route
  namespace: store
  labels:
    gateway: multi-cluster-gateway
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - kind: Gateway
    namespace: store
    name: external-http
  hostnames:
  - "store.example.com"
  rules:
  - backendRefs:
    - name: store
      port: 8080

The following diagram shows how the HTTPRoute routes store.example.com traffic to store Pods on gke-1 and gke-2. The load balancer treats them as one pool of backends. If the Pods from one of the clusters becomes unhealthy, unreachable, or has no traffic capacity, then traffic load is balanced to the remaining Pods on the other cluster. New clusters can be added or removed with the store Service and ServiceExport. This will transparently add or remove backend Pods without any explicit routing configuration changes.

Exporting Services

At this point, the application is running across both clusters. Next, you will expose and export the applications by deploying Services and ServiceExports to each cluster.

1. Save the following manifest to a file named store-west-service.yaml:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: store
   spec:
     selector:
       app: store
     ports:
     - port: 8080
       targetPort: 8080
   ---
   kind: ServiceExport
   apiVersion: net.gke.io/v1
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: store
   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: store-west-1
     namespace: store
   spec:
     selector:
       app: store
     ports:
     - port: 8080
       targetPort: 8080
   ---
   kind: ServiceExport
   apiVersion: net.gke.io/v1
   metadata:
     name: store-west-1
     namespace: store
   

2. Deploy this manifest to gke-west-1:

   kubectl apply -f store-west-service.yaml --context gke-west-1
   

3. Save the following manifest to a file named store-east-service.yaml:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: store
   spec:
     selector:
       app: store
     ports:
     - port: 8080
       targetPort: 8080
   ---
   kind: ServiceExport
   apiVersion: net.gke.io/v1
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: store
   ---
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: store-east-1
     namespace: store
   spec:
     selector:
       app: store
     ports:
     - port: 8080
       targetPort: 8080
   ---
   kind: ServiceExport
   apiVersion: net.gke.io/v1
   metadata:
     name: store-east-1
     namespace: store
   

4. Deploy this ServiceExport resource to gke-east-1:

   kubectl apply -f store-east-service.yaml --context gke-east-1 --namespace store
   

5. Verify that the correct ServiceExports have been created in the cluster.

   kubectl get serviceexports --context CLUSTER_NAME --namespace store
   

   Replace CLUSTER_NAME with gke-west-1 and gke-east-1. The output should resemble the following:

   # gke-west-1
   NAME           AGE
   store          2m40s
   store-west-1   2m40s
   
   # gke-east-1
   NAME           AGE
   store          2m25s
   store-east-1   2m25s
   

   This demonstrates that the store Service contains store Pods across both clusters while the store-west-1 and store-east-1 Services only contain store Pods on their respective clusters. These overlapping Services are used to target the Pods across multiple clusters or a subset of Pods on a single cluster.

6. After a few minutes verify that the accompanying ServiceImports have been automatically created by the multi-cluster Services controller across all clusters in the fleet.

   kubectl get serviceimports --context CLUSTER_NAME --namespace store
   

   Replace CLUSTER_NAME with gke-west-1 and gke-east-1. The output should resemble the following:

   # gke-west-1
   NAME           TYPE           IP                  AGE
   store          ClusterSetIP   ["10.112.31.15"]    6m54s
   store-east-1   ClusterSetIP   ["10.112.26.235"]   5m49s
   store-west-1   ClusterSetIP   ["10.112.16.112"]   6m54s
   
   # gke-east-1
   NAME           TYPE           IP                  AGE
   store          ClusterSetIP   ["10.72.28.226"]   5d10h
   store-east-1   ClusterSetIP   ["10.72.19.177"]   5d10h
   store-west-1   ClusterSetIP   ["10.72.28.68"]    4h32m
   

This demonstrates that all three Services are accessible from both clusters in the fleet. However, because there is only a single active config cluster per fleet, you can only deploy Gateways and HTTPRoutes that reference these ServiceImports in gke-west-1. When an HTTPRoute in the config cluster references these ServiceImports as backends, the Gateway can forward traffic to these Services no matter which cluster they are exported from.

Note: The Gateway controller does not use ServiceImports or the ClusterSetIP to perform routing, even though the ClusterSetIP can be used to load balance traffic directly between clusters for east-west use cases. ServiceImports are only used by Gateways for their service discovery information. All Gateway traffic flows directly from the load balancer to the Pod IP addresses without any kube-proxy load balancing.

Deploy the Gateway and HTTPRoute

Once the applications have been deployed, you can then configure a Gateway using the gke-l7-gxlb-mc GatewayClass. This Gateway creates an external HTTP(S) load balancer configured to distribute traffic across your target clusters.

1. Save the following Gateway manifest to a file named external-http-gateway.yaml:

   kind: Gateway
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: external-http
     namespace: store
   spec:
     gatewayClassName: gke-l7-gxlb-mc
     listeners:
     - name: http
       protocol: HTTP
       port: 80
       allowedRoutes:
         kinds:
         - kind: HTTPRoute
   

   This uses the gke-l7-gxlb-mc GatewayClass

2. Apply the Gateway manifest to this example's gke-west-1 config cluster:

   kubectl apply -f external-http-gateway.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

3. Save the following HTTPRoute manifest to a file named public-store-route.yaml:

   kind: HTTPRoute
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: public-store-route
     namespace: store
     labels:
       gateway: external-http
   spec:
     hostnames:
     - "store.example.com"
     parentRefs:
     - name: external-http
     rules:
     - matches:
       - path:
           type: PathPrefix
           value: /west
       backendRefs:
       - group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         name: store-west-1
         port: 8080
     - matches:
       - path:
           type: PathPrefix
           value: /east
       backendRefs:
         - group: net.gke.io
           kind: ServiceImport
           name: store-east-1
           port: 8080
     - backendRefs:
       - group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         name: store
         port: 8080
   

Once deployed, this HTTPRoute will configure the following routing behavior:

• Requests to /west are routed to store Pods in the gke-west-1 cluster.
• Requests to /east are routed to store Pods in thegke-east-1 cluster.
• Requests to any other path are routed to either cluster, according to its health, capacity, and proximity to the requesting client.

Note that if all the Pods on a given cluster are unhealthy (or do not exist) then traffic to the store Service would only be sent to clusters that actually have store Pods. The existence of a ServiceExport and Service on a given cluster does not guarantee that traffic will be sent to that cluster. Pods must exist and be responding affirmatively to the load balancer health check or else the load balancer will just send traffic to healthy store Pods in other clusters.

1. Apply the HTTPRoute manifest to this example's gke-1 config cluster:

   kubectl apply -f public-store-route.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

The following diagram shows the resources you've deployed across both clusters. Because gke-west-1 is the Gateway config cluster, it is the cluster in which our Gateway, HTTPRoutes, and ServiceImports are watched by the Gateway controller. Each cluster has a store ServiceImport and another ServiceImport specific to that cluster. Both point at the same Pods. This lets the HTTPRoute to specify exactly where traffic should go - to the store Pods on a specific cluster or to the store Pods across all clusters.

Note that this is a logical resource model, not a depiction of the traffic flow. The traffic path goes directly from the load balancer to backend Pods and has no direct relation to whichever cluster is the config cluster.

Validating deployment

You can now issue requests to our multi-cluster Gateway and distribute traffic across both GKE clusters.

1. Validate that the Gateway and HTTPRoute have been deployed successfully by inspecting the Gateway status and events.

   kubectl describe gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io external-http --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

   Your output should look similar to the following:

   Spec:
     Gateway Class Name:  gke-l7-gxlb-mc
     Listeners:
       Port:      80
       Protocol:  HTTP
       Routes:
         Group:  networking.k8s.io
         Kind:   HTTPRoute
         Namespaces:
           From:  Same
         Selector:
           Match Labels:
             Gateway:  external-http
   Status:
     Addresses:
       Type:   IPAddress
       Value:  34.120.172.213
     Conditions:
       Last Transition Time:  1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
       Message:               Waiting for controller
       Reason:                NotReconciled
       Status:                False
       Type:                  Scheduled
   Events:
     Type     Reason  Age                     From                     Message
     ----     ------  ----                    ----                     -------
     Normal   UPDATE  29m (x2 over 29m)       global-gke-gateway-ctlr  store/external-http
     Normal   SYNC    59s (x9 over 29m)       global-gke-gateway-ctlr  SYNC on store/external-http was a success
   

2. Once the Gateway has deployed successfully retrieve the external IP address from external-http Gateway.

   kubectl get gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io external-http -o=jsonpath="{.status.addresses[0].value}" --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

   Replace VIP in the following steps with the IP address you receive as output.

3. Send traffic to the root path of the domain. This load balances traffic to the store ServiceImport which is across cluster gke-west-1 and gke-east-1. The load balancer sends your traffic to the closest region to you and you might not see responses from the other region.

   curl -H "host: store.example.com" http://VIP
   

   The output confirms that the request was served by Pod from the gke-west-1 cluster:

   {
   "cluster_name": "gke-east-1",
   "zone": "us-east1-b",
   "host_header": "store.example.com",
   "node_name": "gke-gke-east-1-default-pool-7aa30992-t2lp.c.agmsb-k8s.internal",
   "pod_name": "store-5f5b954888-dg22z",
   "pod_name_emoji": "⏭",
   "project_id": "agmsb-k8s",
   "timestamp": "2021-06-01T17:32:51"
   }
   

4. Next send traffic to the /west path. This routes traffic to the store-west ServiceImport which only has Pods running on the gke-west-1 cluster. A cluster-specific ServiceImport like store-west enables an application owner to explicitly send traffic to a specific cluster, rather than letting the load balancer make the decision.

   curl -H "host: store.example.com" http://VIP/west
   

   The output confirms that the request was served by Pod from the gke-west-1 cluster:

   {
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1", 
   "zone": "us-west1-a", 
   "host_header": "store.example.com",
   "node_name": "gke-gke-west-1-default-pool-65059399-2f41.c.agmsb-k8s.internal",
   "pod_name": "store-5f5b954888-d25m5",
   "pod_name_emoji": "🍾",
   "project_id": "agmsb-k8s",
   "timestamp": "2021-06-01T17:39:15",
   }
   

5. Finally, send traffic to the /east path.

   curl -H "host: store.example.com" http://VIP/east
   

   The output confirms that the request was served by Pod from the gke-east-1 cluster:

   {
   "cluster_name": "gke-east-1",
   "zone": "us-east1-b",
   "host_header": "store.example.com",
   "node_name": "gke-gke-east-1-default-pool-7aa30992-7j7z.c.agmsb-k8s.internal",
   "pod_name": "store-5f5b954888-hz6mw",
   "pod_name_emoji": "🧜🏾",
   "project_id": "agmsb-k8s",
   "timestamp": "2021-06-01T17:40:48"
   }
   

Blue-green, multi-cluster routing with Gateway

The gke-l7-rilb-* and gke-l7-global-external-managed-* GatewayClasses have many advanced traffic routing capabilities including traffic splitting, header matching, header manipulation, traffic mirroring, and more. In this example, you'll demonstrate how to use weight-based traffic splitting to explicitly control the traffic proportion across two GKE clusters.

This example goes through some realistic steps that a service owner would take in moving or expanding their application to a new GKE cluster. The goal of blue-green deployments is to reduce risk through multiple validation steps which confirm that the new cluster is operating correctly. This example walks through four stages of deployment:

1. 100%-Header-based canary: Use HTTP header routing to send only test or synthetic traffic to the new cluster.
2. 100%-Mirror traffic: Mirror user traffic to the canary cluster. This tests the capacity of the canary cluster by copying 100% of the user traffic to this cluster.
3. 90%-10%: Canary a traffic split of 10% to slowly expose the new cluster to live traffic.
4. 0%-100%: Cutover fully to the new cluster with the option of switching back if any errors are observed.

This example is similar to the previous one, except it deploys an internal multi-cluster Gateway instead. This deploys an internal HTTP(S) load balancer which is only privately accessible from within the VPC. You will use the clusters and same application that you deployed in the previous steps, except deploy them through a different Gateway.

Prerequisites

The following example builds on some of the steps in Deploying an external multi-cluster Gateway. Ensure that you have done the following steps before proceeding with this example:

1. Enabling multi-cluster Gateways
2. Deploying a demo application

This example uses the gke-west-1 and gke-west-2 clusters that you already set up. These clusters are in the same region because the gke-l7-rilb-mc GatewayClass is regional and only supports cluster backends in the same region.

1. Deploy the Service and ServiceExports needed on each cluster. If you deployed Services and ServiceExports from the previous example then you already deployed some of these.

   kubectl apply --context gke-west-1 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/main/gateway/gke-gateway-controller/multi-cluster-gateway/store-west-1-service.yaml
   kubectl apply --context gke-west-2 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/main/gateway/gke-gateway-controller/multi-cluster-gateway/store-west-2-service.yaml
   

   It deploys a similar set of resources to each cluster:

   service/store created
   serviceexport.net.gke.io/store created
   service/store-west-2 created
   serviceexport.net.gke.io/store-west-2 created
   

Configuring a proxy-only subnet

If you have not already done so, configure a proxy-only subnet for each region in which you are deploying internal Gateways. This subnet is used to provide internal IP addresses to the load balancer proxies.

You must create a proxy-only subnet before you create Gateways that manage internal HTTP(S) load balancers. Each region of a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in which you use internal HTTP(S) load balancers must have a proxy-only subnet.

The gcloud compute networks subnets create command creates a proxy-only a subnet.

gcloud compute networks subnets create SUBNET_NAME \
    --purpose=REGIONAL_MANAGED_PROXY \
    --role=ACTIVE \
    --region=REGION \
    --network=VPC_NETWORK_NAME \
    --range=CIDR_RANGE

Replace the following:

• SUBNET_NAME: the name of the proxy-only subnet.
• REGION: the region of the proxy-only subnet.
• VPC_NETWORK_NAME: the name of the VPC network that contains the subnet.
• CIDR_RANGE: the primary IP address range of the subnet. You must use a subnet mask no larger than /26 so that at least 64 IP addresses are available for proxies in the region. The recommended subnet mask is /23.

If the following event appears on your internal Gateway, a proxy-only subnet does not exist for that region. To resolve this issue, deploy a proxy-only subnet.

generic::invalid_argument: error ensuring load balancer: Insert: Invalid value for field 'resource.target': 'regions/us-west1/targetHttpProxies/gkegw-x5vt-default-internal-http-2jzr7e3xclhj'. A reserved and active subnetwork is required in the same region and VPC as the forwarding rule.

Deploying the Gateway

The following Gateway is created from the gke-l7-rilb-mc GatewayClass. This is a regional Gateway which can only target GKE clusters in the same region.

1. If you have not done so already, create a proxy-only subnet for the internal load balancer. This is required for the internal load balancer to function correctly. It creates a subnet that is used to provide IP addressing to the load balancer proxies. Create the proxy-only subnet in the same region that your cluster is in.

2. Save the following Gateway manifest to a file named internal-http-gateway.yaml:

   kind: Gateway
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: internal-http
     namespace: store
   spec:
     gatewayClassName: gke-l7-rilb-mc
     listeners:
     - name: http
       protocol: HTTP
       port: 80
       allowedRoutes:
         kinds:
         - kind: HTTPRoute
   

3. Apply the Gateway manifest to this example's gke-west-1 config cluster:

   kubectl apply -f internal-http-gateway.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

4. Validate that the Gateway has come up successfully. You can filter for just the events from this Gateway with the following command:

   kubectl get events --field-selector involvedObject.kind=Gateway,involvedObject.name=internal-http --context=gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

   The Gateway deployment was successful if the output resembles the following:

   LAST SEEN   TYPE     REASON   OBJECT                  MESSAGE
   22m         Normal   ADD      gateway/internal-http   store/internal-http
   6m50s       Normal   UPDATE   gateway/internal-http   store/internal-http
   11m         Normal   SYNC     gateway/internal-http   store/internal-http
   3m26s       Normal   SYNC     gateway/internal-http   SYNC on store/internal-http was a success
   

   Note: At this point if you are seeing an event like "A reserved and active subnetwork is required in the same region and VPC as the forwarding rule" then go back to the first step and create a proxy-only subnet in the region that your cluster is in.

Header-based canary

Header-based canarying lets the service owner match synthetic test traffic that does not come from real users. This is an easy way of validating that the basic networking of the application is functioning without exposing users directly.

1. Save the following manifest as a file named internal-route-stage-1.yaml.

   kind: HTTPRoute
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: internal-store-route
     namespace: store
     labels:
       gateway: internal-http
   spec:
     parentRefs:
     - kind: Gateway
       namespace: store
       name: internal-http
     hostnames:
     - "store.example.internal"
     rules:
     # Matches for env=canary and sends it to store-west-2 ServiceImport
     - matches:
       - headers:
         - name: env
           value: canary
       backendRefs:
         - group: net.gke.io
           kind: ServiceImport
           name: store-west-2
           port: 8080
     # All other traffic goes to store-west-1 ServiceImport
     - backendRefs:
       - group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         name: store-west-1
         port: 8080
   

Once deployed, this HTTPRoute configures the following routing behavior:

• Internal requests to store.example.internal without the env: canary HTTP header are routed to store Pods on the gke-west-1 cluster
• Internal requests to store.example.internal with the env: canary HTTP header are routed to store Pods on the gke-west-2 cluster

1. Apply internal-route-stage-1.yaml to the gke-west-1 cluster:

   kubectl apply -f internal-route-stage-1.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

Validate that the HTTPRoute is functioning correctly by sending traffic to the Gateway IP address.

1. Retrieve the internal IP address from internal-http.

   kubectl get gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io internal-http -o=jsonpath="{.status.addresses[0].value}" --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

   Replace VIP in the following steps with the IP address you receive as output.

Note: In the following steps send all requests to VIP from a client that has internal VPC connectivity and is in the same region as the GKE cluster. You can create a VM in us-west1 and SSH to it for this purpose. This is necessary because the internal-http Gateway is an internal, regional load balancer. Also set the host header with store.example.internal so that DNS does not have to be configured for this example to work.

1. Send a request to the Gateway using the env: canary HTTP header. This will confirm that traffic is being routed to gke-west-2. Use a private client in the same VPC as the GKE clusters to confirm that requests are being routed correctly. The following command must be run on a machine that has private access to the Gateway IP address or else it will not function.

   curl -H "host: store.example.internal" -H "env: canary" http://VIP
   

   The output confirms that the request was served by a Pod from the gke-west-2 cluster:

   {
     "cluster_name": "gke-west-2", 
     "host_header": "store.example.internal",
     "node_name": "gke-gke-west-2-default-pool-4cde1f72-m82p.c.agmsb-k8s.internal",
     "pod_name": "store-5f5b954888-9kdb5",
     "pod_name_emoji": "😂",
     "project_id": "agmsb-k8s",
     "timestamp": "2021-05-31T01:21:55",
     "zone": "us-west1-a"
   }
   

Traffic mirror

This stage sends traffic to the intended cluster but also mirrors that traffic to the canary cluster.

1. Save the following manifest as a file named internal-route-stage-2.yaml.

   kind: HTTPRoute
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: internal-store-route
     namespace: store
     labels:
       gateway: internal-http
   spec:
     parentRefs:
     - kind: Gateway
       namespace: store
       name: internal-http
     hostnames:
     - "store.example.internal"
     rules:
     # Sends all traffic to store-west-1 ServiceImport
     - backendRefs:
       - name: store-west-1
         group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         port: 8080
       # Also mirrors all traffic to store-west-2 ServiceImport
       filters:
       - type: RequestMirror
         requestMirror:
           backendRef:
             group: net.gke.io
             kind: ServiceImport
             name: store-west-2
             port: 8080
   

2. Apply internal-route-stage-2.yaml to the gke-west-1 cluster:

   kubectl apply -f internal-route-stage-2.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

3. Using your private client, send a request to the internal-http Gateway. Use the /mirror path so you can uniquely identify this request in the application logs in a later step.

   curl -H "host: store.example.internal" http://VIP/mirror
   

4. The output confirms that the client received a response from a Pod in the gke-west-1 cluster:

   {
      "cluster_name": "gke-west-1", 
      "host_header": "store.example.internal",
      "node_name": "gke-gke-west-1-default-pool-65059399-ssfq.c.agmsb-k8s.internal",
      "pod_name": "store-5f5b954888-brg5w",
      "pod_name_emoji": "🎖",
      "project_id": "agmsb-k8s",
      "timestamp": "2021-05-31T01:24:51",
      "zone": "us-west1-a"
   }
   

   This confirms that the primary cluster is responding to traffic. You still need to confirm that the cluster you are migrating to is receiving mirrored traffic.

5. Check the application logs of a store Pod on the gke-west-2 cluster. The logs should confirm that the Pod received mirrored traffic from the load balancer.

   kubectl logs deployment/store --context gke-west-2 -n store | grep /mirror
   

6. This output confirms that Pods on the gke-west-2 cluster are also receiving the same requests, however their responses to these requests are not sent back to the client. The IP addresses seen in the logs are that of the load balancer's internal IP addresses which are communicating with your Pods.

   Found 2 pods, using pod/store-5f5b954888-gtldf
   2021-05-31 01:32:21,416 ... "GET /mirror HTTP/1.1" 200 -
   2021-05-31 01:32:23,323 ... "GET /mirror HTTP/1.1" 200 -
   2021-05-31 01:32:24,137 ... "GET /mirror HTTP/1.1" 200 -
   

Using mirroring is helpful to determine how traffic load will impact application performance without impacting responses to your clients in any way. It may not be necessary for all kinds of rollouts, but can be useful when rolling out large changes that could impact performance or load.

Traffic split

Traffic splitting is one of the most common methods of rolling out new code or deploying to new environments safely. The service owner sets an explicit percentage of traffic that is sent to the canary backends that is typically a very small amount of the overall traffic so that the success of the rollout can be determined with an acceptable amount of risk to real user requests.

1. Save the following manifest as a file named internal-route-stage-3.yaml.

   kind: HTTPRoute
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: internal-store-route
     namespace: store
     labels:
       gateway: internal-http
   spec:
     parentRefs:
     - kind: Gateway
       namespace: store
       name: internal-http
     hostnames:
     - "store.example.internal"
     rules:
     - backendRefs:
       # 90% of traffic to store-west-1 ServiceImport
       - name: store-west-1
         group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         port: 8080
         weight: 90
       # 10% of traffic to store-west-2 ServiceImport
       - name: store-west-2
         group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         port: 8080
         weight: 10
   

2. Apply internal-route-stage-3.yaml to the gke-west-1 cluster:

   kubectl apply -f internal-route-stage-3.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

3. Using your private client, send a continuous curl request to the internal- http Gateway.

   while true; do curl -H "host: store.example.internal" -s VIP | grep "cluster_name"; sleep 1; done
   

   The output will be similar to this, indicating that a 90/10 traffic split is occurring.

   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-2",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
   ...
   

Doing a traffic split with a minority of the traffic enables the service owner to inspect the health of the application and the responses. If all the signals look healthy, then they may proceed to the full cutover.

Traffic cut over

The last stage of the blue-green migration is to fully cut over to the new cluster and remove the old cluster. If the service owner was actually onboarding a second cluster to an existing cluster then this last step would be different as the final step would have traffic going to both clusters. In that scenario a single store ServiceImport is recommended that has Pods from both gke-west-1 and gke-west-2 clusters. This allows the load balancer to make the decision of where traffic should go for an active-active application, based on proximity, health, and capacity.

1. Save the following manifest as a file named internal-route-stage-4.yaml.

   kind: HTTPRoute
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: internal-store-route
     namespace: store
     labels:
       gateway: internal-http
   spec:
     parentRefs:
     - kind: Gateway
       namespace: store
       name: internal-http
     hostnames:
     - "store.example.internal"
     rules:
       - backendRefs:
         # No traffic to the store-west-1 ServiceImport
         - name: store-west-1
           group: net.gke.io
           kind: ServiceImport
           port: 8080
           weight: 0
         # All traffic to the store-west-2 ServiceImport
         - name: store-west-2
           group: net.gke.io
           kind: ServiceImport
           port: 8080
           weight: 100
   

2. Apply internal-route-stage-4.yaml to the gke-west-1 cluster:

   kubectl apply -f internal-route-stage-4.yaml --context gke-west-1 --namespace store
   

3. Using your private client, send a continuous curl request to the internal- http Gateway.

   while true; do curl -H "host: store.example.internal" -s VIP | grep "cluster_name"; sleep 1; done
   

   The output will be similar to this, indicating that all traffic is now going to gke-west-2.

   "cluster_name": "gke-west-2",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-2",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-2",
   "cluster_name": "gke-west-2",
   ...
   

This final step completes a full blue-green application migration from one GKE cluster to another GKE cluster.

Deploy capacity-based load balancing

The exercise in this section demonstrates global load balancing and Service capacity concepts by deploying an application across two GKE clusters in different regions. Generated traffic is sent at various request per second (RPS) levels to show how traffic is load balanced across clusters and regions.

The following diagram shows the topology that you will deploy and how traffic overflows between clusters and regions when traffic has exceeded Service capacity:

To learn more about traffic management, see GKE traffic management.

Prepare your environment

1. Follow Enabling multi-cluster Gateways to prepare your environment.

2. Confirm that the GatewayClass resources are installed on the config cluster:

   kubectl get gatewayclasses --context=gke-west-1
   

   The output is similar to the following:

   NAME                                CONTROLLER                  ACCEPTED   AGE
   gke-l7-global-external-managed      networking.gke.io/gateway   True       16h
   gke-l7-global-external-managed-mc   networking.gke.io/gateway   True       16h
   gke-l7-gxlb                         networking.gke.io/gateway   True       16h
   gke-l7-gxlb-mc                      networking.gke.io/gateway   True       16h
   gke-l7-rilb                         networking.gke.io/gateway   True       16h
   gke-l7-rilb-mc                      networking.gke.io/gateway   True       16h
   

Deploy an application

Deploy the sample web application server to both clusters:

kubectl apply --context gke-west-1 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/master/gateway/docs/store-traffic-deploy.yaml

kubectl apply --context gke-east-1 -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gke-networking-recipes/master/gateway/docs/store-traffic-deploy.yaml

The output is similar to the following:

namespace/store created
deployment.apps/store created

Deploy a Service, Gateway, and HTTPRoute

1. Save the following sample manifest as store-service.yaml:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: traffic-test
     annotations:
       networking.gke.io/max-rate-per-endpoint: "10"
   spec:
     ports:
     - port: 8080
       targetPort: 8080
       name: http
     selector:
       app: store
     type: ClusterIP
   ---
   kind: ServiceExport
   apiVersion: net.gke.io/v1
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: traffic-test
   

   This manifest describes a Service and ServiceExport that exports the Service across clusters as a multi-cluster Service. The ServiceExport indicates that the store Service endpoints on this cluster are aggregated with the endpoints of all the other store Services within the fleet. The ServiceExport acts as the enablement flag to convert a Service into a multi-cluster Service. The max-rate-per-endpoint is set to 10. With 2 replicas, each Service has 20 RPS of capacity per cluster.

   For more information on how to choose a Service capacity level for your Service, see Determine your Service's capacity.

2. Apply the manifest to both clusters:

   kubectl apply -f store-service.yaml --context gke-west-1
   kubectl apply -f store-service.yaml --context gke-east-1
   

3. Save the following sample manifest as store-gateway.yaml:

   kind: Gateway
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: traffic-test
   spec:
     gatewayClassName: gke-l7-gxlb-mc
     listeners:
     - name: http
       protocol: HTTP
       port: 80
       allowedRoutes:
         kinds:
         - kind: HTTPRoute
   

   The manifest describes an external, global, multi-cluster Gateway that deploys an external HTTP(S) load balancer with a publicly accessible IP address.

4. Apply the manifest to your config cluster:

   kubectl apply -f store-gateway.yaml --context gke-west-1
   

5. Save the following sample manifest as store-route.yaml:

   kind: HTTPRoute
   apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
   metadata:
     name: store
     namespace: traffic-test
     labels:
       gateway: store
   spec:
     parentRefs:
     - kind: Gateway
       namespace: traffic-test
       name: store
     rules:
     - backendRefs:
       - name: store
         group: net.gke.io
         kind: ServiceImport
         port: 8080
   

   The manifest describes an HTTPRoute that configures the Gateway with a routing rule that directs all traffic to the store ServiceImport. The store ServiceImport groups the store Service Pods across both clusters and allows them to be addressed by the load balancer as a single Service.

6. Apply the manifest to your config cluster:

   kubectl apply -f store-route.yaml --context gke-west-1
   

   It might take several minutes for the Gateway to fully deploy. You can check the Gateway's events after a few minutes to see if it has finished deploying:

   kubectl describe gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io store -n traffic-test
   

   The output is similar to the following:

   ...
   Status:
     Addresses:
       Type:   IPAddress
       Value:  34.117.182.69
     Conditions:
       Last Transition Time:  1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
       Message:               Waiting for controller
       Reason:                NotReconciled
       Status:                False
       Type:                  Scheduled
   Events:
     Type     Reason  Age                   From                   Message
     ----     ------  ----                  ----                   -------
     Normal   ADD     8m13s                 mc-gateway-controller  traffic-test/store
     Normal   SYNC    7m57s                 mc-gateway-controller  traffic-test/store
     Warning  SYNC    6m14s                 mc-gateway-controller  failed to translate Gateway "traffic-test/store": no GroupKey's for port 8080 exist
     Normal   UPDATE  2m6s (x3 over 8m13s)  mc-gateway-controller  traffic-test/store
     Normal   SYNC    2m6s                  mc-gateway-controller  SYNC on traffic-test/store was a success
   

   This output shows that the Gateway has deployed successfully. It might still take a few minutes for traffic to start passing after the Gateway has deployed. Take note of the IP address in this output, as it is used in a following step.

Confirm traffic

Confirm that traffic is passing to the application by testing the Gateway IP address with a curl command:

curl GATEWAY_IP_ADDRESS

The output is similar to the following:

{
  "cluster_name": "gke-west-1",
  "host_header": "34.117.182.69",
  "pod_name": "store-54785664b5-mxstv",
  "pod_name_emoji": "👳🏿",
  "project_id": "project",
  "timestamp": "2021-11-01T14:06:38",
  "zone": "us-west1-a"
}

This output shows the Pod metadata, which indicates the region where the request was served from.

Verify traffic using load testing

To verify the load balancer is working, you can deploy a traffic generator in your gke-west-1 cluster. The traffic generator generates traffic at different levels of load to demonstrate the capacity and overflow capabilities of the load balancer. The following steps demonstrate three levels of load:

• 10 RPS, which is under the capacity for the store Service in gke-west-1.
• 30 RPS, which is over capacity for the gke-west-1 store Service and causes traffic overflow to gke-east-1.
• 60 RPS, which is over capacity for the Services in both clusters.

Configure dashboard

1. Get the name of the underying URLmap for your Gateway:

   kubectl get gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io store -n traffic-test --context=gke-west-1 -o=jsonpath="{.metadata.annotations.networking\.gke\.io/url-maps}"
   

   The output is similar to the following:

   gkemcg-traffic-test-store-armvfyupay1t
   

2. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Metrics explorer page.

   Go to Metrics explorer

3. Click on MQL.

4. Enter the following query to observe traffic metrics for the store Service across your two clusters:

   fetch https_lb_rule
   | metric 'loadbalancing.googleapis.com/https/backend_request_count'
   | filter (resource.url_map_name == 'GATEWAY_URL_MAP')
   | align rate(1m)
   | every 1m
   | group_by [resource.backend_scope],
       [value_backend_request_count_aggregate:
          aggregate(value.backend_request_count)]
   

   Replace GATEWAY_URL_MAP with the URLmap name from the previous step.

5. Click Run query. Wait at least 5 minutes after deploying the load generator in the next section for the metrics to display in the chart.

Test with 10 RPS

1. Deploy a Pod to your gke-west-1 cluster:

   kubectl run --context=gke-west-1 -i --tty --rm loadgen  \
       --image=cyrilbkr/httperf  \
       --restart=Never  \
       -- /bin/sh -c 'httperf  \
       --server=GATEWAY_IP_ADDRESS  \
       --hog --uri="/zone" --port 80  --wsess=100000,1,1 --rate 10'
   

   Replace GATEWAY_IP_ADDRESS with the Gateway IP address from the previous step.

   The output is similar to the following, indicating that the traffic generator is sending traffic:

   If you don't see a command prompt, try pressing enter.
   

   The load generator continuously sends 10 RPS to the Gateway. Even though traffic is coming from inside a Google Cloud region, the load balancer treats it as client traffic coming from the US West Coast. To simulate realistic client diversity, the load generator sends each HTTP request as a new TCP connection, which means traffic is distributed across backend Pods more evenly.

   The generator takes up to 5 minutes to generate traffic for the dashboard.

2. View your Metrics explorer dashboard. Two lines appear, indiciating how much traffic is load balanced to each of the clusters:

   

   You should see that us-west1-a is receiving approximately 10 RPS of traffic while us-east1-b is not receiving any traffic. Because the traffic generator is running in us-west1, all traffic is sent to the Service in the gke-west-1 cluster.

3. Stop the load generator using Ctrl+C, then delete the pod:

   kubectl delete pod loadgen --context=gke-west-1
   

Test with 30 RPS

1. Deploy the load generator again, but configured to send 30 RPS:

   kubectl run --context=gke-west-1 -i --tty --rm loadgen  \
       --image=cyrilbkr/httperf  \
       --restart=Never  \
       -- /bin/sh -c 'httperf  \
       --server=GATEWAY_IP_ADDRESS  \
       --hog --uri="/zone" --port 80  --wsess=100000,1,1 --rate 30'
   

   The generator takes up to 5 minutes to generate traffic for the dashboard.

2. View your Cloud Ops dashboard.

   

   You should see that approximately 20 RPS is being sent to us-west1-a and 10 RPS to us-east1-b. This indicates that the Service in gke-west-1 is fully utilized and is overflowing 10 RPS of traffic to the Service in gke-east-1.

3. Stop the load generator using Ctrl+C, then delete the Pod:

   kubectl delete pod loadgen --context=gke-west-1
   

Test with 60 RPS

1. Deploy the load generator configured to send 60 RPS:

   kubectl run --context=gke-west-1 -i --tty --rm loadgen  \
       --image=cyrilbkr/httperf  \
       --restart=Never  \
       -- /bin/sh -c 'httperf  \
       --server=GATEWAY_IP_ADDRESS  \
       --hog --uri="/zone" --port 80  --wsess=100000,1,1 --rate 60'
   

2. Wait 5 minutes and view your Cloud Ops dashboard. It should now show that both clusters are receiving roughly 30 RPS. Since all Services are overutilized globally, there is no traffic spillover and Services absorb all the traffic they can.

   

3. Stop the load generator using Ctrl+C, then delete the Pod:

   kubectl delete pod loadgen --context=gke-west-1
   

Clean up

After completing the exercise, follow these steps to remove resources and prevent unwanted charges incurring on your account:

1. Delete the clusters.

2. Unregister the clusters from the fleet if they don't need to be registered for another purpose.

3. Disable the multiclusterservicediscovery feature:

   gcloud container fleet multi-cluster-services disable
   

4. Disable Multi Cluster Ingress:

   gcloud container fleet ingress disable
   

5. Disable the APIs:

   gcloud services disable \
       multiclusterservicediscovery.googleapis.com \
       multiclusteringress.googleapis.com \
       trafficdirector.googleapis.com \
       --project=PROJECT_ID
   

What's next

• Learn more about the Gateway controller.