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By default, Knative services have a fixed domain format:

 <application_name>-<namespace>.<openshift_cluster_domain>

You can customize the domain for your Knative service by configuring the service as a private service and creating the required Service Mesh resources.

Prerequisites

Setting cluster availability to cluster-local

By default, Knative services are published to a public IP address. Being published to a public IP address means that Knative services are public applications, and have a publicly accessible URL.

Publicly accessible URLs are accessible from outside of the cluster. However, developers may need to build back-end services that are only be accessible from inside the cluster, known as private services. Developers can label individual services in the cluster with the serving.knative.dev/visibility=cluster-local label to make them private.

Procedure
  • Set the visibility for your service by adding the serving.knative.dev/visibility=cluster-local label:

    $ oc label ksvc <service_name> serving.knative.dev/visibility=cluster-local
Verification
  • Check that the URL for your service is now in the format http://<service_name>.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local, by entering the following command and reviewing the output:

    $ oc get ksvc
    Example output
    NAME            URL                                                                         LATESTCREATED     LATESTREADY       READY   REASON
    hello           http://hello.default.svc.cluster.local                                      hello-tx2g7       hello-tx2g7       True

Creating necessary Service Mesh resources

Procedure
  1. Create an Istio gateway to accept traffic.

    1. Create a YAML file, and copy the following YAML into it:

      apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
      kind: Gateway
      metadata:
        name: default-gateway
      spec:
        selector:
          istio: ingressgateway
        servers:
        - port:
            number: 80
            name: http
            protocol: HTTP
          hosts:
          - "*"
    2. Apply the YAML file:

      $ oc apply -f <filename>
  2. Create an Istio VirtualService object to rewrite the host header.

    1. Create a YAML file, and copy the following YAML into it:

      apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
      kind: VirtualService
      metadata:
        name: hello
      spec:
        hosts:
        - custom-ksvc-domain.example.com
        gateways:
        - default-gateway
        http:
        - rewrite:
            authority: hello.default.svc (1)
          route:
          - destination:
              host: hello.default.svc (1)
              port:
                number: 80
      1 Your Knative service in the format <service_name>.<namespace>.svc.
    2. Apply the YAML file:

      $ oc apply -f <filename>
  3. Create an Istio ServiceEntry object. This is required for OpenShift Serverless because Kourier is outside of the service mesh.

    1. Create a YAML file, and copy the following YAML into it:

      apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
      kind: ServiceEntry
      metadata:
        name: hello.default.svc
      spec:
        hosts:
        - hello.default.svc (1)
        location: MESH_EXTERNAL
        endpoints:
        - address: kourier-internal.knative-serving-ingress.svc
        ports:
        - number: 80
          name: http
          protocol: HTTP
        resolution: DNS
      1 Your Knative service in the format <service_name>.<namespace>.svc.
    2. Apply the YAML file:

      $ oc apply -f <filename>
  4. Create an OpenShift Container Platform route that points to the VirtualService object.

    1. Create a YAML file, and copy the following YAML into it:

      apiVersion: route.openshift.io/v1
      kind: Route
      metadata:
        name: hello
        namespace: istio-system (1)
      spec:
        host: custom-ksvc-domain.example.com
        port:
          targetPort: 8080
        to:
          kind: Service
          name: istio-ingressgateway
1 The OpenShift Container Platform route must be created in the same namespace as the ServiceMeshControlPlane. In this example, the ServiceMeshControlPlane is deployed in the istio-system namespace.
  1. Apply the YAML file:

    $ oc apply -f <filename>

Accessing a service using your custom domain

Procedure
  1. Access the custom domain by using the Host header in a curl request. For example:

    $ curl -H "Host: custom-ksvc-domain.example.com" http://<ip_address>

    where <ip_address> is the IP address that the OpenShift Container Platform ingress router is exposed to.

    Example output
    Hello OpenShift!

Additional resources