HTTP application routing add-on for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) (retired)
Caution
HTTP application routing add-on (preview) for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) will be retired on 03 March 2025. We recommend migrating to the Application Routing add-on by that date.
The HTTP application routing add-on makes it easy to access applications that are deployed to your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster by:
- Configuring an ingress controller in your AKS cluster.
- Creating publicly accessible DNS names for application endpoints
- Creating a DNS zone in your subscription. For more information about DNS cost, see DNS pricing.
Before you begin
- The HTTP application routing add-on doesn't work with AKS versions 1.22.6+.
- If you're running commands locally, install
kubectl
using theaz aks install-cli
command.
HTTP application routing add-on overview
The add-on deploys two components: a Kubernetes ingress controller and an External-DNS controller.
- Ingress controller: The ingress controller is exposed to the internet using a Kubernetes
LoadBalancer
service. The ingress controller watches and implements Kubernetes ingress resources and creates routes to application endpoints. - External-DNS controller: The External-DNS controller watches for Kubernetes ingress resources and creates DNS
A
records in the cluster-specific DNS zone.
Enable HTTP application routing
Create a new AKS cluster and enable the HTTP application routing add-on using the
az aks create
command with the--enable-addons
parameter.az aks create \ --resource-group myResourceGroup \ --name myAKSCluster \ --enable-addons http_application_routing \ --generate-ssh-keys
You can also enable HTTP routing on an existing AKS cluster using the
az aks enable-addons
command with the--addons
parameter.az aks enable-addons --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --addons http_application_routing
Retrieve the DNS zone name using the
az aks show
command. You need the DNS zone name to deploy applications to the cluster.az aks show --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --query addonProfiles.httpApplicationRouting.config.HTTPApplicationRoutingZoneName -o table
Your output should look like the following example output:
9f9c1fe7-21a1-416d-99cd-3543bb92e4c3.eastus.aksapp.io
Connect to your AKS cluster
Configure
kubectl
to connect to your Kubernetes cluster using theaz aks get-credentials
command. The following example gets credentials for the AKS cluster named myAKSCluster in the myResourceGroup:az aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster
Use HTTP application routing
Important
The HTTP application routing add-on can only be triggered on ingress resources with the following annotation:
annotations:
kubernetes.io/ingress.class: addon-http-application-routing
Create a file named samples-http-application-routing.yaml and copy in the following YAML. On line 43, update
<CLUSTER_SPECIFIC_DNS_ZONE>
with the DNS zone name you collected in the previous step.apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: aks-helloworld spec: replicas: 1 selector: matchLabels: app: aks-helloworld template: metadata: labels: app: aks-helloworld spec: containers: - name: aks-helloworld image: mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aks-helloworld:v1 ports: - containerPort: 80 env: - name: TITLE value: "Welcome to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)" --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: aks-helloworld spec: type: ClusterIP ports: - port: 80 selector: app: aks-helloworld --- apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1 kind: Ingress metadata: name: aks-helloworld annotations: kubernetes.io/ingress.class: addon-http-application-routing spec: rules: - host: aks-helloworld.<CLUSTER_SPECIFIC_DNS_ZONE> http: paths: - path: / pathType: Prefix backend: service: name: aks-helloworld port: number: 80
Create the resources using the
kubectl apply
command.kubectl apply -f samples-http-application-routing.yaml
The following example shows the created resources:
deployment.apps/aks-helloworld created service/aks-helloworld created ingress.networking.k8s.io/aks-helloworld created
Open a web browser to aks-helloworld.<CLUSTER_SPECIFIC_DNS_ZONE>, for example aks-helloworld.9f9c1fe7-21a1-416d-99cd-3543bb92e4c3.eastus.aksapp.io and verify you see the demo application. The application may take a few minutes to appear.
Remove HTTP application routing
Remove the HTTP application routing add-on using the [
az aks disable-addons][az-aks-disable-addons] command with the
addons` parameter.az aks disable-addons --addons http_application_routing --name myAKSCluster --resource-group myResourceGroup --no-wait
When the HTTP application routing add-on is disabled, some Kubernetes resources may remain in the cluster. These resources include configmaps and secrets and are created in the kube-system namespace. To maintain a clean cluster, you may want to remove these resources. Look for addon-http-application-routing resources using the following
kubectl get
commands:kubectl get deployments --namespace kube-system kubectl get services --namespace kube-system kubectl get configmaps --namespace kube-system kubectl get secrets --namespace kube-system
The following example output shows configmaps that should be deleted:
NAMESPACE NAME DATA AGE kube-system addon-http-application-routing-nginx-configuration 0 9m7s kube-system addon-http-application-routing-tcp-services 0 9m7s kube-system addon-http-application-routing-udp-services 0 9m7s
Delete remaining resources using the
kubectl delete
command. Make sure to specify the resource type, resource name, and namespace. The following example deletes one of the previous configmaps:kubectl delete configmaps addon-http-application-routing-nginx-configuration --namespace kube-system
Repeat the previous
kubectl delete
step for all addon-http-application-routing resources remaining in your cluster.
Troubleshoot
View the application logs for the External-DNS application using the
kubectl logs
command.kubectl logs -f deploy/addon-http-application-routing-external-dns -n kube-system
The logs should confirm that an
A
andTXT
DNS record were created successfully, as shown in the following example output:time="2018-04-26T20:36:19Z" level=info msg="Updating A record named 'aks-helloworld' to '52.242.28.189' for Azure DNS zone '471756a6-e744-4aa0-aa01-89c4d162a7a7.canadaeast.aksapp.io'." time="2018-04-26T20:36:21Z" level=info msg="Updating TXT record named 'aks-helloworld' to '"heritage=external-dns,external-dns/owner=default"' for Azure DNS zone '471756a6-e744-4aa0-aa01-89c4d162a7a7.canadaeast.aksapp.io'."
View the application logs for the NGINX ingress controller using the
kubectl logs
command.kubectl logs -f deploy/addon-http-application-routing-nginx-ingress-controller -n kube-system
The logs should confirm the
CREATE
of an ingress resource and the reload of the controller, as shown in the following example output:------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NGINX Ingress controller Release: 0.13.0 Build: git-4bc943a Repository: https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I0426 20:30:12.212936 9 flags.go:162] Watching for ingress class: addon-http-application-routing W0426 20:30:12.213041 9 flags.go:165] only Ingress with class "addon-http-application-routing" will be processed by this ingress controller W0426 20:30:12.213505 9 client_config.go:533] Neither --kubeconfig nor --master was specified. Using the inClusterConfig. This might not work. I0426 20:30:12.213752 9 main.go:181] Creating API client for https://10.0.0.1:443 I0426 20:30:12.287928 9 main.go:225] Running in Kubernetes Cluster version v1.8 (v1.8.11) - git (clean) commit 1df6a8381669a6c753f79cb31ca2e3d57ee7c8a3 - platform linux/amd64 I0426 20:30:12.290988 9 main.go:84] validated kube-system/addon-http-application-routing-default-http-backend as the default backend I0426 20:30:12.294314 9 main.go:105] service kube-system/addon-http-application-routing-nginx-ingress validated as source of Ingress status I0426 20:30:12.426443 9 stat_collector.go:77] starting new nginx stats collector for Ingress controller running in namespace (class addon-http-application-routing) I0426 20:30:12.426509 9 stat_collector.go:78] collector extracting information from port 18080 I0426 20:30:12.448779 9 nginx.go:281] starting Ingress controller I0426 20:30:12.463585 9 event.go:218] Event(v1.ObjectReference{Kind:"ConfigMap", Namespace:"kube-system", Name:"addon-http-application-routing-nginx-configuration", UID:"2588536c-4990-11e8-a5e1-0a58ac1f0ef2", APIVersion:"v1", ResourceVersion:"559", FieldPath:""}): type: 'Normal' reason: 'CREATE' ConfigMap kube-system/addon-http-application-routing-nginx-configuration I0426 20:30:12.466945 9 event.go:218] Event(v1.ObjectReference{Kind:"ConfigMap", Namespace:"kube-system", Name:"addon-http-application-routing-tcp-services", UID:"258ca065-4990-11e8-a5e1-0a58ac1f0ef2", APIVersion:"v1", ResourceVersion:"561", FieldPath:""}): type: 'Normal' reason: 'CREATE' ConfigMap kube-system/addon-http-application-routing-tcp-services I0426 20:30:12.467053 9 event.go:218] Event(v1.ObjectReference{Kind:"ConfigMap", Namespace:"kube-system", Name:"addon-http-application-routing-udp-services", UID:"259023bc-4990-11e8-a5e1-0a58ac1f0ef2", APIVersion:"v1", ResourceVersion:"562", FieldPath:""}): type: 'Normal' reason: 'CREATE' ConfigMap kube-system/addon-http-application-routing-udp-services I0426 20:30:13.649195 9 nginx.go:302] starting NGINX process... I0426 20:30:13.649347 9 leaderelection.go:175] attempting to acquire leader lease kube-system/ingress-controller-leader-addon-http-application-routing... I0426 20:30:13.649776 9 controller.go:170] backend reload required I0426 20:30:13.649800 9 stat_collector.go:34] changing prometheus collector from to default I0426 20:30:13.662191 9 leaderelection.go:184] successfully acquired lease kube-system/ingress-controller-leader-addon-http-application-routing I0426 20:30:13.662292 9 status.go:196] new leader elected: addon-http-application-routing-nginx-ingress-controller-5cxntd6 I0426 20:30:13.763362 9 controller.go:179] ingress backend successfully reloaded... I0426 21:51:55.249327 9 event.go:218] Event(v1.ObjectReference{Kind:"Ingress", Namespace:"default", Name:"aks-helloworld", UID:"092c9599-499c-11e8-a5e1-0a58ac1f0ef2", APIVersion:"extensions", ResourceVersion:"7346", FieldPath:""}): type: 'Normal' reason: 'CREATE' Ingress default/aks-helloworld W0426 21:51:57.908771 9 controller.go:775] service default/aks-helloworld does not have any active endpoints I0426 21:51:57.908951 9 controller.go:170] backend reload required I0426 21:51:58.042932 9 controller.go:179] ingress backend successfully reloaded... 167.220.24.46 - [167.220.24.46] - - [26/Apr/2018:21:53:20 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 234 "" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/5.0)" 197 0.001 [default-aks-helloworld-80] 10.244.0.13:8080 234 0.004 200
Clean up resources
Remove the associated Kubernetes objects created in this article using the
kubectl delete
command.kubectl delete -f samples-http-application-routing.yaml
The following example output shows Kubernetes objects have been removed:
deployment "aks-helloworld" deleted service "aks-helloworld" deleted ingress "aks-helloworld" deleted
Next steps
For information on how to install an HTTPS-secured ingress controller in AKS, see HTTPS ingress on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).