Egress Gateways with TLS Origination
The TLS Origination for Egress Traffic example shows how to configure Istio to perform TLS origination for traffic to an external service. The Configure an Egress Gateway example shows how to configure Istio to direct egress traffic through a dedicated egress gateway service. This example combines the previous two by describing how to configure an egress gateway to perform TLS origination for traffic to external services.
Before you begin
Setup Istio by following the instructions in the Installation guide.
Start the sleep sample which will be used as a test source for external calls.
If you have enabled automatic sidecar injection, do
$ kubectl apply -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@
otherwise, you have to manually inject the sidecar before deploying the
sleep
application:$ kubectl apply -f <(istioctl kube-inject -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@)
Note that any pod that you can
exec
andcurl
from would do.Create a shell variable to hold the name of the source pod for sending requests to external services. If you used the sleep sample, run:
$ export SOURCE_POD=$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})
Perform TLS origination with an egress gateway
This section describes how to perform the same TLS origination as in the TLS Origination for Egress Traffic example, only this time using an egress gateway. Note that in this case the TLS origination will be done by the egress gateway, as opposed to by the sidecar in the previous example.
Define a
ServiceEntry
foredition.cnn.com
:$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: ServiceEntry metadata: name: cnn spec: hosts: - edition.cnn.com ports: - number: 80 name: http protocol: HTTP - number: 443 name: https protocol: HTTPS resolution: DNS EOF
Verify that your
ServiceEntry
was applied correctly by sending a request to http://edition.cnn.com/politics.$ kubectl exec -it $SOURCE_POD -c sleep -- curl -sL -o /dev/null -D - http://edition.cnn.com/politics HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently ... location: https://edition.cnn.com/politics ... command terminated with exit code 35
Your
ServiceEntry
was configured correctly if you see 301 Moved Permanently in the output.Create an egress
Gateway
for edition.cnn.com, port 443, and a destination rule for sidecar requests that will be directed to the egress gateway.Choose the instructions corresponding to whether or not you want to enable mutual TLS Authentication between the source pod and the egress gateway.
$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: Gateway metadata: name: istio-egressgateway spec: selector: istio: egressgateway servers: - port: number: 80 name: https protocol: HTTPS hosts: - edition.cnn.com tls: mode: MUTUAL serverCertificate: /etc/certs/cert-chain.pem privateKey: /etc/certs/key.pem caCertificates: /etc/certs/root-cert.pem --- apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: DestinationRule metadata: name: egressgateway-for-cnn spec: host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local subsets: - name: cnn trafficPolicy: loadBalancer: simple: ROUND_ROBIN portLevelSettings: - port: number: 80 tls: mode: ISTIO_MUTUAL sni: edition.cnn.com EOF
$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: Gateway metadata: name: istio-egressgateway spec: selector: istio: egressgateway servers: - port: number: 80 name: http-port-for-tls-origination protocol: HTTP hosts: - edition.cnn.com --- apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: DestinationRule metadata: name: egressgateway-for-cnn spec: host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local subsets: - name: cnn EOF
Define a
VirtualService
to direct the traffic through the egress gateway, and aDestinationRule
to perform TLS origination for requests toedition.cnn.com
:$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: VirtualService metadata: name: direct-cnn-through-egress-gateway spec: hosts: - edition.cnn.com gateways: - istio-egressgateway - mesh http: - match: - gateways: - mesh port: 80 route: - destination: host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local subset: cnn port: number: 80 weight: 100 - match: - gateways: - istio-egressgateway port: 80 route: - destination: host: edition.cnn.com port: number: 443 weight: 100 --- apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: DestinationRule metadata: name: originate-tls-for-edition-cnn-com spec: host: edition.cnn.com trafficPolicy: loadBalancer: simple: ROUND_ROBIN portLevelSettings: - port: number: 443 tls: mode: SIMPLE # initiates HTTPS for connections to edition.cnn.com EOF
Send an HTTP request to http://edition.cnn.com/politics.
$ kubectl exec -it $SOURCE_POD -c sleep -- curl -sL -o /dev/null -D - http://edition.cnn.com/politics HTTP/1.1 200 OK ... content-length: 150793 ...
The output should be the same as in the TLS Origination for Egress Traffic example, with TLS origination: without the 301 Moved Permanently message.
Check the log of the
istio-egressgateway
pod and you should see a line corresponding to our request. If Istio is deployed in theistio-system
namespace, the command to print the log is:$ kubectl logs -l istio=egressgateway -c istio-proxy -n istio-system | tail
You should see a line similar to the following:
"[2018-06-14T13:49:36.340Z] "GET /politics HTTP/1.1" 200 - 0 148528 5096 90 "172.30.146.87" "curl/7.35.0" "c6bfdfc3-07ec-9c30-8957-6904230fd037" "edition.cnn.com" "151.101.65.67:443"
Cleanup the TLS origination example
Remove the Istio configuration items you created:
$ kubectl delete gateway istio-egressgateway
$ kubectl delete serviceentry cnn
$ kubectl delete virtualservice direct-cnn-through-egress-gateway
$ kubectl delete destinationrule originate-tls-for-edition-cnn-com
$ kubectl delete destinationrule egressgateway-for-cnn
Perform mutual TLS origination with an egress gateway
Similar to the previous section, this section describes how to configure an egress gateway to perform TLS origination for an external service, only this time using a service that requires mutual TLS.
This example is considerably more involved because you need to first:
- generate client and server certificates
- deploy an external service that supports the mutual TLS protocol
- redeploy the egress gateway with the needed mutual TLS certs
Only then can you configure the external traffic to go through the egress gateway which will perform TLS origination.
Generate client and server certificates and keys
Clone the https://github.com/nicholasjackson/mtls-go-example repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/nicholasjackson/mtls-go-example
Change directory to the cloned repository:
$ cd mtls-go-example
Generate the certificates for
nginx.example.com
. Use any password with the following command:$ ./generate.sh nginx.example.com <password>
Select
y
for all prompts that appear.Move the certificates into the
nginx.example.com
directory:$ mkdir ../nginx.example.com && mv 1_root 2_intermediate 3_application 4_client ../nginx.example.com
Go back to your previous directory:
$ cd ..
Deploy a mutual TLS server
To simulate an actual external service that supports the mutual TLS protocol, deploy an NGINX server in your Kubernetes cluster, but running outside of the Istio service mesh, i.e., in a namespace without Istio sidecar proxy injection enabled.
Create a namespace to represent services outside the Istio mesh, namely
mesh-external
. Note that the sidecar proxy will not be automatically injected into the pods in this namespace since the automatic sidecar injection was not enabled on it.$ kubectl create namespace mesh-external
Create Kubernetes Secrets to hold the server’s and CA certificates.
$ kubectl create -n mesh-external secret tls nginx-server-certs --key nginx.example.com/3_application/private/nginx.example.com.key.pem --cert nginx.example.com/3_application/certs/nginx.example.com.cert.pem $ kubectl create -n mesh-external secret generic nginx-ca-certs --from-file=nginx.example.com/2_intermediate/certs/ca-chain.cert.pem
Create a configuration file for the NGINX server:
$ cat <<EOF > ./nginx.conf events { } http { log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $status ' '"$request" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; server { listen 443 ssl; root /usr/share/nginx/html; index index.html; server_name nginx.example.com; ssl_certificate /etc/nginx-server-certs/tls.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx-server-certs/tls.key; ssl_client_certificate /etc/nginx-ca-certs/ca-chain.cert.pem; ssl_verify_client on; } } EOF
Create a Kubernetes ConfigMap to hold the configuration of the NGINX server:
$ kubectl create configmap nginx-configmap -n mesh-external --from-file=nginx.conf=./nginx.conf
Deploy the NGINX server:
$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: my-nginx namespace: mesh-external labels: run: my-nginx spec: ports: - port: 443 protocol: TCP selector: run: my-nginx --- apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: my-nginx namespace: mesh-external spec: selector: matchLabels: run: my-nginx replicas: 1 template: metadata: labels: run: my-nginx spec: containers: - name: my-nginx image: nginx ports: - containerPort: 443 volumeMounts: - name: nginx-config mountPath: /etc/nginx readOnly: true - name: nginx-server-certs mountPath: /etc/nginx-server-certs readOnly: true - name: nginx-ca-certs mountPath: /etc/nginx-ca-certs readOnly: true volumes: - name: nginx-config configMap: name: nginx-configmap - name: nginx-server-certs secret: secretName: nginx-server-certs - name: nginx-ca-certs secret: secretName: nginx-ca-certs EOF
Define a
ServiceEntry
and aVirtualService
fornginx.example.com
to instruct Istio to direct traffic destined tonginx.example.com
to your NGINX server:$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: ServiceEntry metadata: name: nginx spec: hosts: - nginx.example.com ports: - number: 80 name: http protocol: HTTP - number: 443 name: https protocol: HTTPS resolution: DNS endpoints: - address: my-nginx.mesh-external.svc.cluster.local ports: https: 443 --- apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: VirtualService metadata: name: nginx spec: hosts: - nginx.example.com tls: - match: - port: 443 sni_hosts: - nginx.example.com route: - destination: host: nginx.example.com port: number: 443 weight: 100 EOF
Deploy a container to test the NGINX deployment
Create Kubernetes Secrets to hold the client’s and CA certificates:
$ kubectl create secret tls nginx-client-certs --key nginx.example.com/4_client/private/nginx.example.com.key.pem --cert nginx.example.com/4_client/certs/nginx.example.com.cert.pem $ kubectl create secret generic nginx-ca-certs --from-file=nginx.example.com/2_intermediate/certs/ca-chain.cert.pem
Deploy the sleep sample with mounted client and CA certificates to test sending requests to the NGINX server:
$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF # Copyright 2017 Istio Authors # # 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. ################################################################################################## # Sleep service ################################################################################################## apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: sleep labels: app: sleep spec: ports: - port: 80 name: http selector: app: sleep --- apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: sleep spec: replicas: 1 template: metadata: labels: app: sleep spec: containers: - name: sleep image: tutum/curl command: ["/bin/sleep","infinity"] imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent volumeMounts: - name: nginx-client-certs mountPath: /etc/nginx-client-certs readOnly: true - name: nginx-ca-certs mountPath: /etc/nginx-ca-certs readOnly: true volumes: - name: nginx-client-certs secret: secretName: nginx-client-certs - name: nginx-ca-certs secret: secretName: nginx-ca-certs EOF
Define an environment variable to hold the name of the
sleep
pod:$ export SOURCE_POD=$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})
Use the deployed sleep pod to send requests to the NGINX server. Since
nginx.example.com
does not actually exist and therefore DNS cannot resolve it, the followingcurl
command uses the--resolve
option to resolve the hostname manually. The IP value passed in the –resolve option (1.1.1.1 below) is not significant. Any value other than 127.0.0.1 can be used. Normally, a DNS entry exists for the destination hostname and you would not use the--resolve
option ofcurl
.$ kubectl exec -it $SOURCE_POD -c sleep -- curl -v --resolve nginx.example.com:443:1.1.1.1 --cacert /etc/nginx-ca-certs/ca-chain.cert.pem --cert /etc/nginx-client-certs/tls.crt --key /etc/nginx-client-certs/tls.key https://nginx.example.com ... Server certificate: subject: C=US; ST=Denial; L=Springfield; O=Dis; CN=nginx.example.com start date: 2018-08-16 04:31:20 GMT expire date: 2019-08-26 04:31:20 GMT common name: nginx.example.com (matched) issuer: C=US; ST=Denial; O=Dis; CN=nginx.example.com SSL certificate verify ok. > GET / HTTP/1.1 > User-Agent: curl/7.35.0 > Host: nginx.example.com ... < HTTP/1.1 200 OK < Server: nginx/1.15.2 ... <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Welcome to nginx!</title> ...
Verify that the server requires the client’s certificate:
$ kubectl exec -it $(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name}) -c sleep -- curl -k --resolve nginx.example.com:443:1.1.1.1 https://nginx.example.com <html> <head><title>400 No required SSL certificate was sent</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <center><h1>400 Bad Request</h1></center> <center>No required SSL certificate was sent</center> <hr><center>nginx/1.15.2</center> </body> </html>
Redeploy the egress gateway with the client certificates
Create Kubernetes Secrets to hold the client’s and CA certificates.
$ kubectl create -n istio-system secret tls nginx-client-certs --key nginx.example.com/4_client/private/nginx.example.com.key.pem --cert nginx.example.com/4_client/certs/nginx.example.com.cert.pem $ kubectl create -n istio-system secret generic nginx-ca-certs --from-file=nginx.example.com/2_intermediate/certs/ca-chain.cert.pem
Generate the
istio-egressgateway
deployment with a volume to be mounted from the new secrets. Use the same options you used for generating youristio.yaml
:$ istioctl manifest generate --set values.gateways.istio-ingressgateway.enabled=false \ --set values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.enabled=true \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[0].name'=egressgateway-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[0].secretName'=istio-egressgateway-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[0].mountPath'=/etc/istio/egressgateway-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[1].name'=egressgateway-ca-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[1].secretName'=istio-egressgateway-ca-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[1].mountPath'=/etc/istio/egressgateway-ca-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[2].name'=nginx-client-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[2].secretName'=nginx-client-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[2].mountPath'=/etc/nginx-client-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[3].name'=nginx-ca-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[3].secretName'=nginx-ca-certs \ --set 'values.gateways.istio-egressgateway.secretVolumes[3].mountPath'=/etc/nginx-ca-certs > \ ./istio-egressgateway.yaml
Redeploy
istio-egressgateway
:$ kubectl apply -f ./istio-egressgateway.yaml deployment "istio-egressgateway" configured
Verify that the key and the certificate are successfully loaded in the
istio-egressgateway
pod:$ kubectl exec -it -n istio-system $(kubectl -n istio-system get pods -l istio=egressgateway -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') -- ls -al /etc/nginx-client-certs /etc/nginx-ca-certs
tls.crt
andtls.key
should exist in/etc/istio/nginx-client-certs
, whileca-chain.cert.pem
in/etc/istio/nginx-ca-certs
.
Configure mutual TLS origination for egress traffic
Create an egress
Gateway
fornginx.example.com
, port 443, and destination rules and virtual services to direct the traffic through the egress gateway and from the egress gateway to the external service.$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: Gateway metadata: name: istio-egressgateway spec: selector: istio: egressgateway servers: - port: number: 443 name: https protocol: HTTPS hosts: - nginx.example.com tls: mode: MUTUAL serverCertificate: /etc/certs/cert-chain.pem privateKey: /etc/certs/key.pem caCertificates: /etc/certs/root-cert.pem --- apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: DestinationRule metadata: name: egressgateway-for-nginx spec: host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local subsets: - name: nginx trafficPolicy: loadBalancer: simple: ROUND_ROBIN portLevelSettings: - port: number: 443 tls: mode: ISTIO_MUTUAL sni: nginx.example.com EOF
Define a
VirtualService
to direct the traffic through the egress gateway, and aDestinationRule
to perform mutual TLS origination:$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: VirtualService metadata: name: direct-nginx-through-egress-gateway spec: hosts: - nginx.example.com gateways: - istio-egressgateway - mesh http: - match: - gateways: - mesh port: 80 route: - destination: host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local subset: nginx port: number: 443 weight: 100 - match: - gateways: - istio-egressgateway port: 443 route: - destination: host: nginx.example.com port: number: 443 weight: 100 --- apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3 kind: DestinationRule metadata: name: originate-mtls-for-nginx spec: host: nginx.example.com trafficPolicy: loadBalancer: simple: ROUND_ROBIN portLevelSettings: - port: number: 443 tls: mode: MUTUAL clientCertificate: /etc/nginx-client-certs/tls.crt privateKey: /etc/nginx-client-certs/tls.key caCertificates: /etc/nginx-ca-certs/ca-chain.cert.pem sni: nginx.example.com EOF
Send an HTTP request to
http://nginx.example.com
:$ kubectl exec -it $SOURCE_POD -c sleep -- curl -s --resolve nginx.example.com:80:1.1.1.1 http://nginx.example.com <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Welcome to nginx!</title> ...
Check the log of the
istio-egressgateway
pod for a line corresponding to our request. If Istio is deployed in theistio-system
namespace, the command to print the log is:$ kubectl logs -l istio=egressgateway -n istio-system | grep 'nginx.example.com' | grep HTTP
You should see a line similar to the following:
[2018-08-19T18:20:40.096Z] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 - 0 612 7 5 "172.30.146.114" "curl/7.35.0" "b942b587-fac2-9756-8ec6-303561356204" "nginx.example.com" "172.21.72.197:443"
Cleanup the mutual TLS origination example
Remove created Kubernetes resources:
$ kubectl delete secret nginx-server-certs nginx-ca-certs -n mesh-external $ kubectl delete secret nginx-client-certs nginx-ca-certs $ kubectl delete secret nginx-client-certs nginx-ca-certs -n istio-system $ kubectl delete configmap nginx-configmap -n mesh-external $ kubectl delete service my-nginx -n mesh-external $ kubectl delete deployment my-nginx -n mesh-external $ kubectl delete namespace mesh-external $ kubectl delete gateway istio-egressgateway $ kubectl delete serviceentry nginx $ kubectl delete virtualservice direct-nginx-through-egress-gateway $ kubectl delete destinationrule originate-mtls-for-nginx $ kubectl delete destinationrule egressgateway-for-nginx
Delete the directory of certificates and the repository used to generate them:
$ rm -rf nginx.example.com mtls-go-example
Delete the generated configuration files used in this example:
$ rm -f ./nginx.conf ./istio-egressgateway.yaml
Cleanup
Delete the sleep
service and deployment:
$ kubectl delete service sleep
$ kubectl delete deployment sleep