Getting started with the Kong Ingress Controller
Overview
This guide walks through setting up an HTTP(S) route and plugin using Kong Gateway and Kong Ingress Controller.
Installation
Please follow the deployment documentation to install the Kong Ingress Controller onto your Kubernetes cluster.
Installing the Gateway APIs
If you wish to use the Gateway APIs examples, follow the supplemental Gateway APIs installation instructions.
Testing connectivity to Kong Gateway
This guide assumes that PROXY_IP
environment variable is
set to contain the IP address or URL pointing to Kong Gateway.
If you’ve not done so, follow one of the
deployment guides to configure this environment variable.
If everything is setup correctly, making a request to Kong Gateway should return back
a HTTP 404 Not Found
status code:
curl -i $PROXY_IP
Response:
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 48
X-Kong-Response-Latency: 0
Server: kong/3.0.0
{"message":"no Route matched with those values"}
This is expected since Kong Gateway doesn’t know how to proxy the request yet.
Deploy an upstream HTTP application
To proxy requests, you need an upstream application to proxy to. Deploying this echo server provides a simple application that returns information about the Pod it’s running in:
echo "
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
labels:
app: echo
name: echo
spec:
ports:
- port: 1025
name: tcp
protocol: TCP
targetPort: 1025
- port: 1026
name: udp
protocol: TCP
targetPort: 1026
- port: 1027
name: http
protocol: TCP
targetPort: 1027
selector:
app: echo
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
labels:
app: echo
name: echo
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: echo
strategy: {}
template:
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
app: echo
spec:
containers:
- image: kong/go-echo:latest
name: echo
ports:
- containerPort: 1027
env:
- name: NODE_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: spec.nodeName
- name: POD_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.name
- name: POD_NAMESPACE
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.namespace
- name: POD_IP
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: status.podIP
resources: {}
" | kubectl apply -f -
Response:
service/echo created
deployment.apps/echo created
Create a configuration group
Ingress and Gateway APIs controllers need a configuration that indicates which set of routing configuration they should recognize. This allows multiple controllers to coexist in the same cluster. Before creating individual routes, you need to create a class configuration to associate routes with:
Kong Ingress Controller recognizes the kong
IngressClass and
konghq.com/kic-gateway-controller
GatewayClass
by default. Setting the CONTROLLER_INGRESS_CLASS
or
CONTROLLER_GATEWAY_API_CONTROLLER_NAME
environment variable to
another value overrides these defaults.
Add routing configuration
Create routing configuration to proxy /echo
requests to the echo server:
Test the routing rule:
curl -i http://kong.example/echo --resolve kong.example:80:$PROXY_IP
Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 140
Connection: keep-alive
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2023 12:24:55 GMT
X-Kong-Upstream-Latency: 0
X-Kong-Proxy-Latency: 1
Via: kong/3.2.2
Welcome, you are connected to node docker-desktop.
Running on Pod echo-7f87468b8c-tzzv6.
In namespace default.
With IP address 10.1.0.237.
...
If everything is deployed correctly, you should see the above response. This verifies that Kong Gateway can correctly route traffic to an application running inside Kubernetes.
Add TLS configuration
The routing configuration can include a certificate to present when clients connect over HTTPS. This is not required, as Kong Gateway will serve a default certificate if it cannot find another, but including TLS configuration along with routing configuration is typical.
First, create a test certificate for the kong.example
hostname using one of the following commands:
Then, create a Secret containing the certificate:
kubectl create secret tls kong.example --cert=./server.crt --key=./server.key
Response:
secret/kong.example created
Finally, update your routing configuration to use this certificate:
After, requests will serve the configured certificate:
curl -ksv https://kong.example/echo --resolve kong.example:443:$PROXY_IP 2>&1 | grep -A1 "certificate:"
Response:
* Server certificate:
* subject: CN=kong.example
Using plugins in Kong
Setup a KongPlugin resource:
echo "
apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
name: request-id
config:
header_name: my-request-id
echo_downstream: true
plugin: correlation-id
" | kubectl apply -f -
Response:
kongplugin.configuration.konghq.com/request-id created
Update your route configuration to use the new plugin:
Requests that match the echo
Ingress or HTTPRoute now include a
my-request-id
header with a unique ID in both their request headers upstream
and their response headers downstream.
Using plugins on Services
Kong can also apply plugins to Services. This allows you execute the same plugin configuration on all requests to that Service, without configuring the same plugin on multiple Ingresses.
Create a KongPlugin resource:
echo "
apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
name: rl-by-ip
config:
minute: 5
limit_by: ip
policy: local
plugin: rate-limiting
" | kubectl apply -f -
Response:
kongplugin.configuration.konghq.com/rl-by-ip created
Next, apply the konghq.com/plugins
annotation to the Kubernetes Service
that needs rate-limiting:
kubectl annotate service echo konghq.com/plugins=rl-by-ip
Response:
service/echo annotated
Kong will now enforce a rate limit to requests proxied to this Service:
curl -i http://kong.example/echo --resolve kong.example:80:$PROXY_IP
Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
X-RateLimit-Remaining-Minute: 4
RateLimit-Limit: 5
RateLimit-Remaining: 4
RateLimit-Reset: 13
X-RateLimit-Limit-Minute: 5
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2022 22:47:47 GMT
Server: echoserver
my-request-id: ea87894d-7f97-4710-84ae-cbc608bb8107#3
X-Kong-Upstream-Latency: 1
X-Kong-Proxy-Latency: 1
Via: kong/3.1.1
Hostname: echo-fc6fd95b5-6lqnc
Pod Information:
node name: kind-control-plane
pod name: echo-fc6fd95b5-6lqnc
pod namespace: default
pod IP: 10.244.0.9
...
Next steps
- To learn how to secure proxied routes, see the ACL and JWT Plugins Guide.
- The External Services Guide explains how to proxy services outside of your Kubernetes cluster.
- Gateway API is a set of resources for configuring networking in Kubernetes. The Kong Ingress Controller supports Gateway API by default. To learn how to use Gateway API supported by the Kong Ingress Controller, see Using Gateway API.