Istio Virtual Service Relationship to Normal Kubernetes Service - kubernetes

I am watching a Pluralsight video on the Istio service mesh. One part of the presentation says this:
The VirtualService uses the Kubernetes service to find the IP addresses of all the pods. The VirtualService doesn't route any traffic through the [Kubernetes] service, but it just uses it to get the list of endpoints where the traffic could go.
And it shows this graphic (to show the pod discovery, not for traffic routing):
I am a bit confused by this because I don't know how an Istio VirtualService knows which Kubernetes Service to look at. I don't see any reference in the example Istio VirtualService yaml files to a Kubernetes Service.
I have theorized that the DestinationRules could have enough labels on them to get down to just the needed pods, but the examples only use the labels v1 and v2. It seems unlikely that a version alone will give only the needed pods. (Many different Services could be on v1 or v2.)
How does an Istio VirtualService know which Kubernetes Service to associate to?
or said another way,
How does an Istio VirtualService know how to find the correct pods from all the pods in the cluster?

When creating a VitualService you define which service to find in route.destination section
port : service running on port
host : name of the service
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
name: test
spec:
hosts:
- "example.com"
gateways:
- test-gateway
http:
- match:
- uri:
prefix: /
route:
- destination:
port:
number: 80
host: app-service
so,
app-pod/s -> (managed by) app-service -> test virtual service

Arfat's answer is correct.
I want to add the following part from the docs about the host, which should make things even more clear.
https://istio.io/latest/docs/reference/config/networking/virtual-service/#VirtualService
[...] Note for Kubernetes users: When short names are used (e.g. “reviews” instead of “reviews.default.svc.cluster.local”), Istio will interpret the short name based on the namespace of the rule, not the service. A rule in the “default” namespace containing a host “reviews” will be interpreted as “reviews.default.svc.cluster.local”, irrespective of the actual namespace associated with the reviews service. To avoid potential misconfigurations, it is recommended to always use fully qualified domain names over short names.
So when you write host: app-service and the VirtualService is in the default namespace, the host is interpreted as app-service.default.svc.cluster.local, which is the FQDN of the kubernetes service. If the app-service is in another namespace, say dev, you need to set the host as host: app-service.dev.svc.cluster.local.
Same goes for DestinationRule, where the FQDN of a kubernetes service is defined as host, as well.
https://istio.io/latest/docs/reference/config/networking/destination-rule/#DestinationRule
VirtualService and DestinationRule are configured for a host. The VirtualService defines where the traffic should go (eg host, weights for different versions, ...) and the DestinationRule defines, how the traffic should be handled, (eg load balancing algorithm and how are the versions defined.
So traffic is not routed like this
Gateway -> VirtualService -> DestinationRule -> Service -> Pod, but like
Gateway -> Service, considering the config from VirtualService and DestinationRule.

Related

Can Ingress Controllers use Selector based rules?

I have deployed a statefulset in AKS - My goal is to load balance traffic to my statefulset.
From my understanding I can define a LoadBalancer Service that can route traffic based on Selectors, something like this.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: nginx
labels:
app: nginx
spec:
type: LoadBalancer
ports:
- port: 80
name: web
selector:
app: nginx
However I don't want to necessarily go down the LoadBalance route and I would prefer Ingress doing this work for me, My question is can any of the ingress controller support routing rules which can do Path based routing to endpoints based on selectors? Instead of routing to another service.
Update
To elaborate more on the scenario - Each pod in my statefulset is a stateless node doing data processing of a HTTP feed. I want my ingress service to be able to load balance traffic across these statefulset pods ( honoring keep-alives etc), however given the nature of statefulsets in k8s they are currently exposed through a headless service. I am not sure if a headless service can load balance traffic to my statefulsets?
Update 2
Quick search reveals headless service does not loadbalance
Sometimes you don't need load-balancing and a single Service IP. In this case, you can create what are termed "headless" Services, by explicitly specifying "None" for the cluster IP (.spec.clusterIP).
As much i know it's not possible to do the selector-based routing with ingress.
selector based routing is mostly used during a Blue-green deployment or canary deployment you can only achieve this by using the service mesh. You can use any of the service mesh like istio or APP mesh and you can do the selector base routing.
I have deployed a statefulset in AKS - My goal is to load balance
traffic to my statefulset.
if your goal is to just load balance traffic you can use the ingress controller maybe still not sure about scenrio you are trying to explain.
By default kubernetes service also Load balance the traffic across the PODs.
Flow will be something like DNS > ingress > ingress controller > Kubernetes service (Load balancing here) > any of statefulset
+1 to Harsh Manvar's answer but let me add also my 3 cents.
My question is can any of the ingress controller support routing rules
which can do Path based routing to endpoints based on selectors?
Instead of routing to another service.
To the best of my knowledge, the answer to your question is no, it can't as it doesn't even depend on a particular ingress controller implementation. Note that various ingress controllers, no matter how different they may be when it comes to implementation, must conform to the general specification of the ingress resource, described in the official kubernetes documentation. You don't have different kinds of ingresses, depending on what controller is used.
Ingress and Service work on a different layer of abstraction. While Service exposes a set of pods using a selector e.g.:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: my-service
spec:
selector:
app: MyApp 👈
path-based routing performed by Ingress is always done between Services:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: minimal-ingress
annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
spec:
rules:
- http:
paths:
- path: /testpath
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: test 👈
port:
number: 80
I am not sure if a headless service can load balance traffic to my statefulsets?
The first answer is "no". Why?
k8s Service is implemented by the kube-proxy. Kube-proxy itself can work in two modes:
iptables (also known as netfilter)
ipvs (also known as LVS/Linux Virtual Server)
load balancing in case of iptables mode is a NAT iptables rule: from ClusterIP address to the list of Endpoints
load balancing in case of ipvs mode is a VIP (LVS Virtual IP) with the Endpoints as upstreams
So, when you create k8s Service with clusterIP set to None you are exactly saying:
"I need this service WITHOUT load balancing"
Setting up the clusterIP to None causes kube-proxy NOT TO CREATE NAT rule in iptables mode, VIP in ipvs mode. There will be nothing for traffic load balancing across the pods selected by this particular Service selector
The second answer is "it could be". Why?
You are free to create headless Service with desired pods selector. DNS query to this Service will return the list of DNS A records for selected pods. Then you can use this data to implement load balancing YOUR way

Can a `ServiceEntry` be applied to only 1 service?

We have a cluster with Istio, but there is this one condition, I can't find how to fulfill.
We need one of the services to have certain restrictions within the mesh as well, and to talk to one external endpoint. Through Sidecar object, I should be able to set the restrictions internally, but I don't know how to restrict to one external endpoint.
I can set the external endpoint in the Sidecar object as well, but I have to create a ServiceEntry anyways, in which case all the services can talk to that external endpoint.
It seems that what I need is to set a ServiceEntry for one specific service, but this is not possible. Is there any other way to achieve this?
I asked this question on GitHub; to Istio team, and the only way to achieve this is putting the service in a different namespace, and make the ServiceEntry to apply to the workloads only in that namespace through exportTo parameter.
The ServiceEntry would look like this:
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: ServiceEntry
metadata:
name: se-demo
spec:
exportTo:
- . # with ".", we are saying the ServiceEntry to only apply to the workloads in the same namespace.
hosts:
- www.google.com
location: MESH_EXTERNAL
ports:
- name: https
number: 443
protocol: HTTPS
resolution: DNS

Do I need a istio sidecar proxy at client end for routing rules to be applied?

I have couple of services named svc A and svc B with request flow as follows:
svc A --> svc B
I have injected sidecar with svc B and then added the routing rules via VirtualServices object as:
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
name: b
namespace: default
spec:
hosts:
- b.default.svc.cluster.local
http:
- route:
- destination:
host: b.default.svc.cluster.local
fault:
abort:
percentage:
value: 100
httpStatus: 403
These rules are only applied when svc A has a sidecar istio proxy. Which makes me think if we need to have istio proxy on the client side as well? I was expecting that the service for which I added rules should only have the sidecar. I can't think of any technical requirement to have it along side svc B.
Yes, Service A needs a sidecar. It's confusing I admit, but the way to think of the VirtualService resource is "where do I find the backends I want to talk to and what service should they appear to provide me?" A's sidecar is its helper which does things on its behalf like load-balancing, and in your case fault injection (Service B is reliable; it's Service A that wants it to seem unreliable).
The comments that A and B both need sidecars in order to communicate at all aren't correct (unless you want mTLS), but if you want the mesh to provide additional services to A, then A needs a sidecar.
yes, you should inject sidecar proxy in service A as well. then only the two services can communicate with each other through proxies
First go ahead and run:
gcloud container clusters describe [Your-Pod-Name] | grep -e clusterIpv4Cidr -e servicesIpv4Cidr
This will give you two IP addresses. Add these into your deployment yaml like shown below (REPLACING THE IP ADDRESSES WITH YOURS)
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: [Your-Pod-Name]
annotations:
sidecar.istio.io/inject: "true"
traffic.sidecar.istio.io/includeOutboundIPRanges: 10.32.0.0/14,10.35.240.0/20
This allows internet connection to your services.

Kubernetes path based routing for multiple namespaces

The environment: I have a kubernetes cluster set up with namespaces for "dev", "sit" and "prod". In each of these namespaces i have multiple services of type:LoadBalancer which target a specific deployment of a dockerised application (i have multiple applications) so i can access each of these by just using the exposed ip address of the service of whichever namespace i want. Example service looks like this an is very simple:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: application1
spec:
ports:
- port: 80
targetPort: 3000
protocol: TCP
name: http
type: LoadBalancer
selector:
app: application1
The problem: I now want to be able to support multiple versions of all applications (ip:/v1/, ip:/v2/ etc) as to allow the users to migrate to the new version when they are ready and i've been trying to implement path-based routing following this guide. I have managed to restructure my architecture so that i have ReplicationControllers and an ingress which looks at the rules of the path to route to the correct service.
This seems to work if i'd only have one exposed service and a single namespace because i only have DNS host names for production environment and want to use the individual ip address of a service for other environments and i can't figure out how to specify the ingress rules for a service which doesn't have a hostname.
I could just have a loadbalancer for every environment and use path based routing to route to each different services for dev and sit which is not ideal because to access any service we'd have to now use something like this ip/application1 and ip/application2 instead of directly using the service ip address of each application. But my biggest problem is that when i followed the guide and created the ingress, replicationController and a service in my SIT namespace it started affecting the loadbalancer services in my other two environments (as i understand the kubernetes would sometimes try to use the nginx controller from SIT environment on my DEV services and therefore would fail, other times it would use the GCE default configuration and would work).
I tried adding the arg "- --watch-namespace=sit" to limit the scope of the ingress controller to only affect sit but it does not seem to work.
I now want to be able to support multiple versions of all applications (ip:/v1/, ip:/v2/ etc.)
That is exactly what Ingress can do, but the problem is that you want to use IP addresses for routing, but Ingress is using DNS names for that.
I think the best way to implement this is to use an Ingress which will handle requests. On GCE Ingress uses the HTTP(S) load balancer. Yes, you will need a DNS name for that, but it will help you to create a routing which you need.
Also, I highly recommend using TLS encryption for connections.
You can check LetsEncrypt to get a free SSL certificate.
So, the solution should like below:
1. Deploy your Services with type "ClusterIP" instead of "LoadBalancer". You can have more than one Service object for an application so you can do it in parallel with your current configuration.
2. Select any namespace (even special one), for instance - "ingress-ns". We need to create there Service objects which will point to your services in other namespaces. Here is an example of a service (let new DNS name be "my.shiny.new.domain"):
kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
name: service-v1
namespace: ingress-ns
spec:
type: ExternalName
externalName: <service>.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local # here is a service name and namespace of your service with version v1.
ports:
- port: 80
3. Now, we have a namespace with several services which are pointing to different versions of your application in different namespaces. Now, we can create an Ingress object which will create an HTTP(S) Load Balancer on GCE with path-based routing:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: test
namespace: ingress-ns
spec:
rules:
- host: my.shiny.new.domain
http:
paths:
- path: /v1
backend:
serviceName: service-v1
servicePort: 80
- path: /v2
backend:
serviceName: service-v2
servicePort: 80
Kubernetes will create a new HTTP(S) balancer with rules you set up in an Ingress object, and you will have an entry point with cross-namespaces path-based routing, and you don't have to use multiple IP addresses for that.
Actually, you can also manage by that ingress your primary version of an application and use your primary domain with "/" path to handle requests to your production version.

Preserving remote client IP with Ingress

My goal is to make my web application (deployed on Kubernetes 1.4 cluster) see the IP of the client that originally made the HTTP request. As I'm planning to run the application on a bare-metal cluster, GCE and the service.alpha.kubernetes.io/external-traffic: OnlyLocal service annotation introduced in 1.4 is not applicable for me.
Looking for alternatives, I've found this question which is proposing to set up an Ingress to achieve my goal. So, I've set up the Ingress and the NginX Ingress Controller. The deployment went smoothly and I was able to connect to my web app via the Ingress Address and port 80. However in the logs I still see cluster-internal IP (from 172.16.0.0/16) range - and that means that the external client IPs are not being properly passed via the Ingress. Could you please tell me what do I need to configure in addition to the above to make it work?
My Ingress' config:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: myWebApp
spec:
backend:
serviceName: myWebApp
servicePort: 8080
As a layer 4 proxy, Nginx cannot retain the original source IP address in the actual IP packets. You can work around this using the Proxy protocol (the link points to the HAProxy documentation, but Nginx also supports it).
For this to work however, the upstream server (meaning the myWebApp service in your case) also needs to support this protocol. In case your upstream application also uses Nginx, you can enable proxy protocol support in your server configuration as documented in the official documentation.
According to the Nginx Ingress Controller's documentation, this feature can be enabled in the Ingress Controller using a Kubernetes ConfigMap:
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: nginx-ingress-controller
data:
use-proxy-protocol: "true"
Specify the name of the ConfigMap in your Ingress controller manifest, by adding the --nginx-configmap=<insert-configmap-name> flag to the command-line arguments.