Configuring domain names with static IP addresses

This tutorial demonstrates how to use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to expose your web application to the internet on a static external IP address and configure a domain name to point to your application.

This tutorial assumes you own a registered domain name, such as example.com. You can register a domain name through Google Domains or another domain registrar of your choice if you do not have one.

Note: This tutorial does not apply to the NGINX Ingress Controller.

Objectives

This tutorial demonstrates the following steps:

• Reserve a static external IP address for your application
• Configure either Service or Ingress resources to use the static IP
• Update DNS records of your domain name to point to your application

Before you begin

Take the following steps to enable the Kubernetes Engine API:

1. Visit the Kubernetes Engine page in the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create or select a project.
3. Wait for the API and related services to be enabled. This can take several minutes.

4. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to confirm that billing is enabled for your project.

Install the following command-line tools used in this tutorial:

• gcloud is used to create and delete Kubernetes Engine clusters. gcloud is included in the Google Cloud SDK.
• kubectl is used to manage Kubernetes, the cluster orchestration system used by Kubernetes Engine. You can install kubectl using gcloud:

  gcloud components install kubectl

Clone the sample code from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes-engine-samples
cd kubernetes-engine-samples/hello-app/manifests

Set defaults for the gcloud command-line tool

To save time typing your project ID and Compute Engine zone options in the gcloud command-line tool, you can set the defaults:

gcloud config set project project-id
gcloud config set compute/zone compute-zone

Create a cluster

Create a container cluster named domain-test to deploy your web application:

gcloud container clusters create domain-test

Deploying your web application

The following manifest describes a Deployment that runs a sample web application container image:

helloweb-deployment.yaml

View on GitHub

# Copyright 2020 Google LLC
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: helloweb
  labels:
    app: hello
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: hello
      tier: web
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: hello
        tier: web
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: hello-app
        image: gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080

Run the following command to create the Deployment:

kubectl apply -f helloweb-deployment.yaml

Exposing your application

You can expose your application on GKE using either of the following methods:

• Use a Service, which creates a TCP Network Load Balancer that works with regional IP addresses.

• Use an Ingress, which creates an HTTP(S) Load Balancer and supports global IP addresses.

To learn more about the pros and cons of each method, refer to the Setting up HTTP(S) Load Balancing with Ingress.

Use a Service

To ensure that your application has a static public IP address, you must reserve a static IP address.

Note: Static IP addresses are free of charge when they are used by a load balancer. If you reserve a static IP address and do not use it, you are charged per unused IP address pricing.

If you choose to expose your application using a Service, you must create a regional IP address. Global IP addresses only work with Ingress resource type, as explained in the next section.

To use a Service, create a static IP address named helloweb-ip in the region us-central1:

gcloud

gcloud compute addresses create helloweb-ip --region us-central1

To find the static IP address you created, run the following command:

gcloud compute addresses describe helloweb-ip --region us-central1

Output:

address: 203.0.113.32
...

Config Connector

Note: This step requires Config Connector. Follow the installation instructions to install Config Connector on your cluster.

View on GitHub

apiVersion: compute.cnrm.cloud.google.com/v1beta1
kind: ComputeAddress
metadata:
  name: helloweb-ip
spec:
  location: us-central1

To deploy this manifest, download it to your machine as compute-address-regional.yaml, and run:

kubectl apply -f compute-address-regional.yaml

To find the static IP address, run the following command:

kubectl get computeaddress helloweb-ip -o jsonpath='{.spec.address}'

The following manifest describes a Service of type LoadBalancer, which creates a network load balancer to expose Pods with a public IP.

Replace YOUR.IP.ADDRESS.HERE with the static IP address:

helloweb-service-static-ip.yaml

View on GitHub

# Copyright 2020 Google LLC
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: helloweb
  labels:
    app: hello
spec:
  selector:
    app: hello
    tier: web
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
  type: LoadBalancer
  loadBalancerIP: "YOUR.IP.ADDRESS.HERE"

Then, create the Service:

kubectl apply -f helloweb-service-static-ip.yaml

To see the reserved IP address associated with the load balancer:

kubectl get service

Output:

NAME               CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)          AGE
helloweb           10.31.254.176   203.0.113.32     80:30690/TCP     54s

Note: Provisioning and configuring the load balancer might take a few minutes.

Use an Ingress

If you choose to expose your application using an Ingress, which creates an HTTP(S) Load Balancer, you must reserve a global static IP address. Regional IP addresses do not work with Ingress.

To learn more about how to use Ingress to expose your applications to the internet, refer to the Setting up HTTP(S) Load Balancing with Ingress tutorial.

Note: Static IP addresses are free of charge when they are used by a load balancer. If you reserve a static IP address and do not use it, you are charged per unused IP address pricing.

To create a global static IP address named helloweb-ip:

gcloud

gcloud compute addresses create helloweb-ip --global

To find the static IP address you created:

gcloud compute addresses describe helloweb-ip --global

Output:

address: 203.0.113.32
...

Config Connector

Note: This step requires Config Connector. Follow the installation instructions to install Config Connector on your cluster.

View on GitHub

apiVersion: compute.cnrm.cloud.google.com/v1beta1
kind: ComputeAddress
metadata:
  name: helloweb-ip
spec:
  location: global

To deploy this manifest, download it to your machine as compute-address-global.yaml, and run:

kubectl apply -f compute-address-global.yaml

The following manifest describes an Ingress that exposes a web application on a static IP with two resources:

• A Service with type:NodePort
• An Ingress configured with the service name and static IP annotation

helloweb-ingress-static-ip.yaml

View on GitHub

# Copyright 2020 Google LLC
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: helloweb
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.global-static-ip-name: helloweb-ip
  labels:
    app: hello
spec:
  backend:
    serviceName: helloweb-backend
    servicePort: 8080
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: helloweb-backend
  labels:
    app: hello
spec:
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    app: hello
    tier: web
  ports:
  - port: 8080
    targetPort: 8080

The kubernetes.io/ingress.global-static-ip-name annotation specifies the name of the global IP address resource to be associated with the HTTP(S) Load Balancer.

Apply the resource to the cluster:

kubectl apply -f helloweb-ingress-static-ip.yaml

Output:

ingress "helloweb" created
service "helloweb-backend" created

To see the reserve IP address associated with the load balancer:

kubectl get ingress

Output:

NAME       HOSTS     ADDRESS          PORTS     AGE
helloweb   *         203.0.113.32     80        4m

Note: Provisioning and configuring the load balancer might take a few minutes.

Visiting your reserved static IP address

To verify that the load balancer is configured correctly, you can either use a web browser to visit the IP address or use curl:

curl http://203.0.113.32/

Output:

Hello, world!
Hostname: helloweb-3766687455-8lvqv

Note: You might get HTTP 404 and HTTP 500 errors for a few minutes if you used Ingress resource to configure a load balancer. It takes time for configuration changes to propagate to regions across the globe.

Configuring your domain name records

To have browsers querying your domain name, such as example.com, or subdomain name, such as blog.example.com, point to the static IP address you reserved, you must update the DNS (Domain Name Server) records of your domain name.

You must create an A (Address) type DNS record for your domain or subdomain name and have its value configured with the reserved IP address

DNS records of your domain are managed by your nameserver. Your nameserver might be the "registrar" where you registered your domain, a DNS service such as Cloud DNS, or another third-party provider.

• If your nameserver is Cloud DNS: Follow Cloud DNS Quickstart guide to configure DNS A record for your domain name with the reserved IP address of your application.

• If your nameserver is another provider: Refer to your DNS service's documentation on setting DNS A records to configure your domain name. If you choose to use Cloud DNS instead, refer to Migrating to Cloud DNS.

Visiting your domain name

To verify that your domain name's DNS A records resolve to the IP address you reserved, visit your domain name.

Note: It can take a few hours for DNS records to propagate. This time might depend on your nameservers, local internet service provider (ISP), and many other factors.

To make a DNS query for your domain name's A record, run the host command:

host example.com

Output:

example.com has address 203.0.113.32

At this point, you can point your web browser to your domain name and visit your website!

Cleaning up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud Platform account for the resources used in this tutorial:

1. Delete the load balancing resources:

   kubectl delete ingress,service -l app=hello

2. Release the reserved static IP. After the load balancer is deleted, the unused but reserved IP address is no longer free of charge and is billed per unused IP address pricing. Run the following commands to release the static IP resource:

   • If you used a Service:

     gcloud compute addresses delete helloweb-ip --region us-central1

   • If you used an Ingress:

     gcloud compute addresses delete helloweb-ip --global

3. Delete the sample application:

   kubectl delete -f helloweb-deployment.yaml

4. Wait until the load balancer is deleted by watching the output of the following command. The output should not show a forwarding rule that contains "helloweb" in its name:

   gcloud compute forwarding-rules list

5. Delete the container cluster:

   gcloud container clusters delete domain-test

What's next

• Register your own domain name through Google Domains.

• Explore other Kubernetes Engine tutorials.

• Try out other Google Cloud features for yourself. Have a look at our tutorials.