Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) external or internal ingresses for Istio service mesh add-on deployment

Article
09/23/2024

This article shows you how to deploy external or internal ingresses for Istio service mesh add-on for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster.

Note

When performing a minor revision upgrade of the Istio add-on, another deployment for the external / internal gateways will be created for the new control plane revision.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes you followed the documentation to enable the Istio add-on on an AKS cluster, deploy a sample application, and set environment variables.

Enable external ingress gateway

Use az aks mesh enable-ingress-gateway to enable an externally accessible Istio ingress on your AKS cluster:

az aks mesh enable-ingress-gateway --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER --ingress-gateway-type external

Use kubectl get svc to check the service mapped to the ingress gateway:

kubectl get svc aks-istio-ingressgateway-external -n aks-istio-ingress

Observe from the output that the external IP address of the service is a publicly accessible one:

NAME                                TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)                                      AGE
aks-istio-ingressgateway-external   LoadBalancer   10.0.10.249   <EXTERNAL_IP>   15021:30705/TCP,80:32444/TCP,443:31728/TCP   4m21s

Note

Customizations to IP address on internal and external gateways aren't supported yet. IP address customizations on the ingress specifications are reverted back by the Istio add-on.It's planned to allow these customizations in the Gateway API implementation for the Istio add-on in future.

Applications aren't accessible from outside the cluster by default after enabling the ingress gateway. To make an application accessible, map the sample deployment's ingress to the Istio ingress gateway using the following manifest:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: bookinfo-gateway-external
spec:
  selector:
    istio: aks-istio-ingressgateway-external
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: bookinfo-vs-external
spec:
  hosts:
  - "*"
  gateways:
  - bookinfo-gateway-external
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        exact: /productpage
    - uri:
        prefix: /static
    - uri:
        exact: /login
    - uri:
        exact: /logout
    - uri:
        prefix: /api/v1/products
    route:
    - destination:
        host: productpage
        port:
          number: 9080
EOF

Note

The selector used in the Gateway object points to istio: aks-istio-ingressgateway-external, which can be found as label on the service mapped to the external ingress that was enabled earlier.

Set environment variables for external ingress host and ports:

export INGRESS_HOST_EXTERNAL=$(kubectl -n aks-istio-ingress get service aks-istio-ingressgateway-external -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
export INGRESS_PORT_EXTERNAL=$(kubectl -n aks-istio-ingress get service aks-istio-ingressgateway-external -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="http2")].port}')
export GATEWAY_URL_EXTERNAL=$INGRESS_HOST_EXTERNAL:$INGRESS_PORT_EXTERNAL

Retrieve the external address of the sample application:

echo "http://$GATEWAY_URL_EXTERNAL/productpage"

Navigate to the URL from the output of the previous command and confirm that the sample application's product page is displayed. Alternatively, you can also use curl to confirm the sample application is accessible. For example:

curl -s "http://${GATEWAY_URL_EXTERNAL}/productpage" | grep -o "<title>.*</title>"

Confirm that the sample application's product page is accessible. The expected output is:

<title>Simple Bookstore App</title>

Enable internal ingress gateway

Use az aks mesh enable-ingress-gateway to enable an internal Istio ingress on your AKS cluster:

az aks mesh enable-ingress-gateway --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $CLUSTER --ingress-gateway-type internal

Use kubectl get svc to check the service mapped to the ingress gateway:

kubectl get svc aks-istio-ingressgateway-internal -n aks-istio-ingress

Observe from the output that the external IP address of the service isn't a publicly accessible one and is instead only locally accessible:

NAME                                TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)                                      AGE
aks-istio-ingressgateway-internal   LoadBalancer   10.0.182.240  <IP>      15021:30764/TCP,80:32186/TCP,443:31713/TCP   87s

After enabling the ingress gateway, applications need to be exposed through the gateway and routing rules need to be configured accordingly. Use the following manifest to map the sample deployment's ingress to the Istio ingress gateway:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: bookinfo-internal-gateway
spec:
  selector:
    istio: aks-istio-ingressgateway-internal
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: bookinfo-vs-internal
spec:
  hosts:
  - "*"
  gateways:
  - bookinfo-internal-gateway
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        exact: /productpage
    - uri:
        prefix: /static
    - uri:
        exact: /login
    - uri:
        exact: /logout
    - uri:
        prefix: /api/v1/products
    route:
    - destination:
        host: productpage
        port:
          number: 9080
EOF

Note

The selector used in the Gateway object points to istio: aks-istio-ingressgateway-internal, which can be found as label on the service mapped to the internal ingress that was enabled earlier.

Set environment variables for internal ingress host and ports:

export INGRESS_HOST_INTERNAL=$(kubectl -n aks-istio-ingress get service aks-istio-ingressgateway-internal -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
export INGRESS_PORT_INTERNAL=$(kubectl -n aks-istio-ingress get service aks-istio-ingressgateway-internal -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="http2")].port}')
export GATEWAY_URL_INTERNAL=$INGRESS_HOST_INTERNAL:$INGRESS_PORT_INTERNAL

Retrieve the address of the sample application:

echo "http://$GATEWAY_URL_INTERNAL/productpage"

Navigate to the URL from the output of the previous command and confirm that the sample application's product page is NOT displayed. Alternatively, you can also use curl to confirm the sample application is NOT accessible. For example:

curl -s "http://${GATEWAY_URL_INTERNAL}/productpage" | grep -o "<title>.*</title>"

Use kubectl exec to confirm application is accessible from inside the cluster's virtual network:

kubectl exec "$(kubectl get pod -l app=ratings -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" -c ratings -- curl -sS  "http://$GATEWAY_URL_INTERNAL/productpage"  | grep -o "<title>.*</title>"

Confirm that the sample application's product page is accessible. The expected output is:

<title>Simple Bookstore App</title>

Ingress gateway service annotation customization

The following annotations can be added to the Kubernetes service for the external and internal ingress gateways:

service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-internal-subnet: to bind an internal ingress gateway to a specific subnet.
service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-shared-securityrule: for exposing the ingress gateway through an augmented security rule.
service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-allowed-service-tags: for specifying which service tags the ingress gateway can receive requests from.
service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-ipv4: for configuring a static IPv4 address.
service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-resource-group: for specifying the resource group of a public IP in a different resource group from the cluster.
service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-pip-name: for specifying the name of a public IP address.

Delete resources

If you want to clean up the Istio external or internal ingress gateways, but leave the mesh enabled on the cluster, run the following command:

az aks mesh disable-ingress-gateway --ingress-gateway-type <external/internal> --resource-group ${RESOURCE_GROUP}

If you want to clean up the Istio service mesh and the ingresses (leaving behind the cluster), run the following command:

az aks mesh disable --resource-group ${RESOURCE_GROUP} --name ${CLUSTER}

If you want to clean up all the resources created from the Istio how-to guidance documents, run the following command:

az group delete --name ${RESOURCE_GROUP} --yes --no-wait

Next steps

Note

In case of any issues encountered with deploying the Istio ingress gateway or configuring ingress traffic routing, refer to article on troubleshooting Istio add-on ingress gateways

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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) external or internal ingresses for Istio service mesh add-on deployment

Prerequisites

Enable external ingress gateway

Enable internal ingress gateway

Ingress gateway service annotation customization

Delete resources

Next steps

Additional resources