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Configuring ingress cluster traffic using an Ingress Controller

Using Ingress Controllers and routes

The Ingress Operator manages Ingress Controllers and wildcard DNS.

Using an Ingress Controller is the most common way to allow external access to an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

An Ingress Controller is configured to accept external requests and proxy them based on the configured routes. This is limited to HTTP, HTTPS using SNI, and TLS using SNI, which is sufficient for web applications and services that work over TLS with SNI.

Work with your administrator to configure an Ingress Controller to accept external requests and proxy them based on the configured routes.

The administrator can create a wildcard DNS entry and then set up an Ingress Controller. Then, you can work with the edge Ingress Controller without having to contact the administrators.

By default, every Ingress Controller in the cluster can admit any route created in any project in the cluster.

The Ingress Controller:

  • Has two replicas by default, which means it should be running on two worker nodes.

  • Can be scaled up to have more replicas on more nodes.

The procedures in this section require prerequisites performed by the cluster administrator.

Prerequisites

Before starting the following procedures, the administrator must:

  • Set up the external port to the cluster networking environment so that requests can reach the cluster.

  • Make sure there is at least one user with cluster admin role. To add this role to a user, run the following command:

    $ oc adm policy add-cluster-role-to-user cluster-admin username

  • Have an OpenShift Container Platform cluster with at least one master and at least one node and a system outside the cluster that has network access to the cluster. This procedure assumes that the external system is on the same subnet as the cluster. The additional networking required for external systems on a different subnet is out-of-scope for this topic.

Creating a project and service

If the project and service that you want to expose do not exist, first create the project, then the service.

If the project and service already exist, skip to the procedure on exposing the service to create a route.

Prerequisites

  • Install the oc CLI and log in as a cluster administrator.

Procedure

  1. Create a new project for your service by running the oc new-project command:

    $ oc new-project myproject

  2. Use the oc new-app command to create your service:

    $ oc new-app nodejs:12~https://github.com/sclorg/nodejs-ex.git

  3. To verify that the service was created, run the following command:

    $ oc get svc -n myproject
    Example output
    NAME        TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
nodejs-ex   ClusterIP   172.30.197.157   <none>        8080/TCP   70s

    By default, the new service does not have an external IP address.

Exposing the service by creating a route

You can expose the service as a route by using the oc expose command.

Procedure

To expose the service:

  1. Log in to OpenShift Container Platform.

  2. Log in to the project where the service you want to expose is located:

    $ oc project myproject

  3. Run the oc expose service command to expose the route:

    $ oc expose service nodejs-ex
    Example output
    route.route.openshift.io/nodejs-ex exposed

  4. To verify that the service is exposed, you can use a tool, such as cURL, to make sure the service is accessible from outside the cluster.

    1. Use the oc get route command to find the route’s host name:

      $ oc get route
      Example output
      NAME        HOST/PORT                        PATH   SERVICES    PORT       TERMINATION   WILDCARD
nodejs-ex   nodejs-ex-myproject.example.com         nodejs-ex   8080-tcp                 None

    2. Use cURL to check that the host responds to a GET request:

      $ curl --head nodejs-ex-myproject.example.com
      Example output
      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...

Configuring Ingress Controller sharding by using route labels

Ingress Controller sharding by using route labels means that the Ingress Controller serves any route in any namespace that is selected by the route selector.

A diagram showing multiple Ingress Controllers with different route selectors serving any route containing a label that matches a given route selector regardless of the namespace a route belongs to
Figure 1. Ingress sharding using route labels

Ingress Controller sharding is useful when balancing incoming traffic load among a set of Ingress Controllers and when isolating traffic to a specific Ingress Controller. For example, company A goes to one Ingress Controller and company B to another.

Procedure

  1. Edit the router-internal.yaml file:

    # cat router-internal.yaml
apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
kind: IngressController
metadata:
  name: sharded
  namespace: openshift-ingress-operator
spec:
  domain: <apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net> (1)
  nodePlacement:
    nodeSelector:
      matchLabels:
        node-role.kubernetes.io/worker: ""
  routeSelector:
    matchLabels:
      type: sharded
    1 Specify a domain to be used by the Ingress Controller. This domain must be different from the default Ingress Controller domain.

  2. Apply the Ingress Controller router-internal.yaml file:

    # oc apply -f router-internal.yaml

    The Ingress Controller selects routes in any namespace that have the label type: sharded.

  3. Create a new route using the domain configured in the router-internal.yaml:

    $ oc expose svc <service-name> --hostname <route-name>.apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net

Configuring Ingress Controller sharding by using namespace labels

Ingress Controller sharding by using namespace labels means that the Ingress Controller serves any route in any namespace that is selected by the namespace selector.

A diagram showing multiple Ingress Controllers with different namespace selectors serving routes that belong to the namespace containing a label that matches a given namespace selector
Figure 2. Ingress sharding using namespace labels

Ingress Controller sharding is useful when balancing incoming traffic load among a set of Ingress Controllers and when isolating traffic to a specific Ingress Controller. For example, company A goes to one Ingress Controller and company B to another.

Procedure

  1. Edit the router-internal.yaml file:

    # cat router-internal.yaml
    Example output
    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
kind: IngressController
metadata:
  name: sharded
  namespace: openshift-ingress-operator
spec:
  domain: <apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net> (1)
  nodePlacement:
    nodeSelector:
      matchLabels:
        node-role.kubernetes.io/worker: ""
  namespaceSelector:
    matchLabels:
      type: sharded
    1 Specify a domain to be used by the Ingress Controller. This domain must be different from the default Ingress Controller domain.

  2. Apply the Ingress Controller router-internal.yaml file:

    # oc apply -f router-internal.yaml

    The Ingress Controller selects routes in any namespace that is selected by the namespace selector that have the label type: sharded.

  3. Create a new route using the domain configured in the router-internal.yaml:

    $ oc expose svc <service-name> --hostname <route-name>.apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net

Creating a route for Ingress Controller sharding

A route allows you to host your application at a URL. In this case, the hostname is not set and the route uses a subdomain instead. When you specify a subdomain, you automatically use the domain of the Ingress Controller that exposes the route. For situations where a route is exposed by multiple Ingress Controllers, the route is hosted at multiple URLs.

The following procedure describes how to create a route for Ingress Controller sharding, using the hello-openshift application as an example.

Ingress Controller sharding is useful when balancing incoming traffic load among a set of Ingress Controllers and when isolating traffic to a specific Ingress Controller. For example, company A goes to one Ingress Controller and company B to another.

Prerequisites

  • You installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • You are logged in as a project administrator.

  • You have a web application that exposes a port and an HTTP or TLS endpoint listening for traffic on the port.

  • You have configured the Ingress Controller for sharding.

Procedure

  1. Create a project called hello-openshift by running the following command:

    $ oc new-project hello-openshift

  2. Create a pod in the project by running the following command:

    $ oc create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/origin/master/examples/hello-openshift/hello-pod.json

  3. Create a service called hello-openshift by running the following command:

    $ oc expose pod/hello-openshift

  4. Create a route definition called hello-openshift-route.yaml:

    YAML definition of the created route for sharding:
    apiVersion: route.openshift.io/v1
kind: Route
metadata:
  labels:
    type: sharded (1)
  name: hello-openshift-edge
  namespace: hello-openshift
spec:
  subdomain: hello-openshift (2)
  tls:
    termination: edge
  to:
    kind: Service
    name: hello-openshift
    1 Both the label key and its corresponding label value must match the ones specified in the Ingress Controller. In this example, the Ingress Controller has the label key and value type: sharded.
    2 The route will be exposed using the value of the subdomain field. When you specify the subdomain field, you must leave the hostname unset. If you specify both the host and subdomain fields, then the route will use the value of the host field, and ignore the subdomain field.

  5. Use hello-openshift-route.yaml to create a route to the hello-openshift application by running the following command:

    $ oc -n hello-openshift create -f hello-openshift-route.yaml
Verification

  • Get the status of the route with the following command:

    $ oc -n hello-openshift get routes/hello-openshift-edge -o yaml

    The resulting Route resource should look similar to the following:

    Example output
    apiVersion: route.openshift.io/v1
kind: Route
metadata:
  labels:
    type: sharded
  name: hello-openshift-edge
  namespace: hello-openshift
spec:
  subdomain: hello-openshift
  tls:
    termination: edge
  to:
    kind: Service
    name: hello-openshift
status:
  ingress:
  - host: hello-openshift.<apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net> (1)
    routerCanonicalHostname: router-sharded.<apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net> (2)
    routerName: sharded (3)
    1 The hostname the Ingress Controller, or router, uses to expose the route. The value of the host field is automatically determined by the Ingress Controller, and uses its domain. In this example, the domain of the Ingress Controller is <apps-sharded.basedomain.example.net>.
    2 The hostname of the Ingress Controller.
    3 The name of the Ingress Controller. In this example, the Ingress Controller has the name sharded.

Additional resources

The Ingress Operator manages wildcard DNS. For more information, see the following: