Kubernetes Gateway API
In addition to its own traffic management API, Istio supports the Kubernetes Gateway API and intends to make it the default API for traffic management in the future. This document describes the differences between the Istio and Kubernetes APIs and provides a simple example that shows you how to configure Istio to expose a service outside the service mesh cluster using the Gateway API. Note that these APIs are an actively developed evolution of the Kubernetes Service and Ingress APIs.
Setup
The Gateway APIs do not come installed by default on most Kubernetes clusters. Install the Gateway API CRDs if they are not present:
$ kubectl get crd gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io &> /dev/null || \ { kubectl kustomize "github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/config/crd?ref=v1.1.0" | kubectl apply -f -; }
Install Istio using the
minimal
profile:$ istioctl install --set profile=minimal -y
Differences from Istio APIs
The Gateway APIs share a lot of similarities to the Istio APIs such as Gateway and VirtualService.
The main resource shares the same name, Gateway
, and the resources serve similar goals.
The new Gateway APIs aim to take the learnings from various Kubernetes ingress implementations, including Istio, to build a standardized vendor neutral API. These APIs generally serve the same purposes as Istio Gateway and VirtualService, with a few key differences:
- In Istio APIs, a
Gateway
configures an existing gateway Deployment/Service that has been deployed. In the Gateway APIs, theGateway
resource both configures and deploys a gateway. See Deployment Methods for more information. - In the Istio
VirtualService
, all protocols are configured within a single resource. In the Gateway APIs, each protocol type has its own resource, such asHTTPRoute
andTCPRoute
. - While the Gateway APIs offer a lot of rich routing functionality, it does not yet cover 100% of Istio’s feature set. Work is ongoing to extend the API to cover these use cases, as well as utilizing the APIs extensibility to better expose Istio functionality.
Configuring a Gateway
See the Gateway API documentation for information about the APIs.
In this example, we will deploy a simple application and expose it externally using a Gateway
.
First, deploy the
httpbin
test application:$ kubectl apply -f @samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml@
Deploy the Gateway API configuration including a single exposed route (i.e.,
/get
):$ kubectl create namespace istio-ingress $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1 kind: Gateway metadata: name: gateway namespace: istio-ingress spec: gatewayClassName: istio listeners: - name: default hostname: "*.example.com" port: 80 protocol: HTTP allowedRoutes: namespaces: from: All --- apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1 kind: HTTPRoute metadata: name: http namespace: default spec: parentRefs: - name: gateway namespace: istio-ingress hostnames: ["httpbin.example.com"] rules: - matches: - path: type: PathPrefix value: /get backendRefs: - name: httpbin port: 8000 EOF
Set the Ingress Host environment variable:
$ kubectl wait -n istio-ingress --for=condition=programmed gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io gateway $ export INGRESS_HOST=$(kubectl get gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io gateway -n istio-ingress -ojsonpath='{.status.addresses[0].value}')
Access the
httpbin
service using curl:$ curl -s -I -HHost:httpbin.example.com "http://$INGRESS_HOST/get" HTTP/1.1 200 OK server: istio-envoy ...
Note the use of the
-H
flag to set the Host HTTP header to “httpbin.example.com”. This is needed because theHTTPRoute
is configured to handle “httpbin.example.com”, but in your test environment you have no DNS binding for that host and are simply sending your request to the ingress IP.Access any other URL that has not been explicitly exposed. You should see an HTTP 404 error:
$ curl -s -I -HHost:httpbin.example.com "http://$INGRESS_HOST/headers" HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found ...
Update the route rule to also expose
/headers
and to add a header to the request:$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1 kind: HTTPRoute metadata: name: http namespace: default spec: parentRefs: - name: gateway namespace: istio-ingress hostnames: ["httpbin.example.com"] rules: - matches: - path: type: PathPrefix value: /get - path: type: PathPrefix value: /headers filters: - type: RequestHeaderModifier requestHeaderModifier: add: - name: my-added-header value: added-value backendRefs: - name: httpbin port: 8000 EOF
Access
/headers
again and notice headerMy-Added-Header
has been added to the request:$ curl -s -HHost:httpbin.example.com "http://$INGRESS_HOST/headers" { "headers": { "Accept": "*/*", "Host": "httpbin.example.com", "My-Added-Header": "added-value", ...
Deployment methods
In the example above, you did not need to install an ingress gateway Deployment
prior to configuring a Gateway.
In the default configuration, a gateway Deployment
and Service
is automatically provisioned based on the Gateway
configuration.
For advanced use cases, manual deployment is still allowed.
Automated Deployment
By default, each Gateway
will automatically provision a Service
and Deployment
of the same name.
These configurations will be updated automatically if the Gateway
changes (for example, if a new port is added).
These resources can be customized in a few ways:
Annotations and labels on the
Gateway
will be copied to theService
andDeployment
. This allows configuring things such as Internal load balancers that read from these fields.Istio offers an additional annotation to configure the generated resources:
Annotation Purpose networking.istio.io/service-type
Controls the Service.spec.type
field. For example, set toClusterIP
to not expose the service externally. The default isLoadBalancer
.The
Service.spec.loadBalancerIP
field can be explicit set by configuring theaddresses
field:apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1 kind: Gateway metadata: name: gateway spec: addresses: - value: 192.0.2.0 type: IPAddress ...
Note: only one address may be specified.
- (Advanced) The generated Pod configuration can be configured by Custom Injection Templates.
Resource Attachment and Scaling
Resources can be attached to a Gateway
to customize it.
However, most Kubernetes resources do not currently support attaching directly to a Gateway
, but they can be attached to the corresponding generated Deployment
and Service
instead.
This is easily done because both of these resources are generated with name <gateway name>-<gateway class name>
and with a label gateway.networking.k8s.io/gateway-name: <gateway name>
.
For example, to deploy a Gateway
with a HorizontalPodAutoscaler
and PodDisruptionBudget
:
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
name: gateway
spec:
gatewayClassName: istio
listeners:
- name: default
hostname: "*.example.com"
port: 80
protocol: HTTP
allowedRoutes:
namespaces:
from: All
---
apiVersion: autoscaling/v2
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
name: gateway
spec:
# Match the generated Deployment by reference
# Note: Do not use `kind: Gateway`.
scaleTargetRef:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
name: gateway-istio
minReplicas: 2
maxReplicas: 5
metrics:
- type: Resource
resource:
name: cpu
target:
type: Utilization
averageUtilization: 50
---
apiVersion: policy/v1
kind: PodDisruptionBudget
metadata:
name: gateway
spec:
minAvailable: 1
selector:
# Match the generated Deployment by label
matchLabels:
gateway.networking.k8s.io/gateway-name: gateway
Manual Deployment
If you do not want to have an automated deployment, a Deployment
and Service
can be configured manually.
When this option is done, you will need to manually link the Gateway
to the Service
, as well as keep their port configuration in sync.
To link a Gateway
to a Service
, configure the addresses
field to point to a single Hostname
.
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
name: gateway
spec:
addresses:
- value: ingress.istio-gateways.svc.cluster.local
type: Hostname
...
Mesh Traffic
The Gateway API can also be used to configure mesh traffic.
This is done by configuring the parentRef
to point to a service, instead of a gateway.
For example, to add a header on all calls to an in-cluster Service
named example
:
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
name: mesh
spec:
parentRefs:
- group: ""
kind: Service
name: example
rules:
- filters:
- type: RequestHeaderModifier
requestHeaderModifier:
add:
- name: my-added-header
value: added-value
backendRefs:
- name: example
port: 80
More details and examples can be found in other traffic management tasks.
Cleanup
Remove the
httpbin
sample and gateway:$ kubectl delete -f @samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml@ $ kubectl delete httproute http $ kubectl delete gateways.gateway.networking.k8s.io gateway -n istio-ingress $ kubectl delete ns istio-ingress
Uninstall Istio:
$ istioctl uninstall -y --purge $ kubectl delete ns istio-system
Remove the Gateway API CRDs if they are no longer needed:
$ kubectl kustomize "github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/config/crd?ref=v1.1.0" | kubectl delete -f -