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Deploy a multi-zone global control plane

Prerequisites

To set up a multi-zone deployment we will need to:

Set up the global control plane
Set up the zone control planes
Verify control plane connectivity
Ensure mTLS is enabled for the multi-zone meshes

Usage

Set up the global control plane

The global control plane must run on a dedicated cluster (unless using “Universal on Kubernetes” mode), and cannot be assigned to a zone.

Kubernetes

global-control-plane Universal on Kubernetes using Helm

Universal

The global control plane on Kubernetes must reside on its own Kubernetes cluster, to keep its resources separate from the resources the zone control planes create during synchronization.

Run:

        
          kumactl
        
          Helm
        
      kumactl install control-plane \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.mode=global" \
  | kubectl apply -f -

      # Before installing Kong Mesh with Helm, configure your local Helm repository:
# https://docs.konghq.com/mesh/2.3.x/production/cp-deployment/kubernetes/#helm
helm install \
  --create-namespace \
  --namespace kong-mesh-system \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.mode=global" \
  kong-mesh kong-mesh/kong-mesh

Find the external IP and port of the kong-mesh-global-zone-sync service in the kong-mesh-system namespace:

kubectl get services -n kong-mesh-system

NAMESPACE     NAME                   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                                                                  AGE
kong-mesh-system   kong-mesh-global-zone-sync     LoadBalancer   10.105.9.10     35.226.196.103   5685:30685/TCP                                                           89s
kong-mesh-system   kong-mesh-control-plane     ClusterIP      10.105.12.133   <none>           5681/TCP,443/TCP,5676/TCP,5677/TCP,5678/TCP,5679/TCP,5682/TCP,5653/UDP   90s

By default, it’s exposed on port 5685. In this example the value is 35.226.196.103:5685. You pass this as the value of <global-kds-address> when you set up the zone control planes.

Running global control plane in “Universal on Kubernetes” mode means using PostgreSQL as storage instead of Kubernetes. It means that failover / HA / reliability characteristics will change. Please read Kubernetes and PostgreSQL docs for more details.

Before using Kong Mesh with helm, please follow these steps to configure your local helm repo and learn the reference helm configuration values.yaml.

Define Kubernetes secrets with database sensitive information

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: your-secret-name
type: Opaque
data:
  POSTGRES_DB: ...
  POSTGRES_HOST_RW: ...
  POSTGRES_USER: ...
  POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ...

Create a values.yaml file with: kuma.controlPlane.environment=universal and kuma.controlPlane.mode=global in the chart (values.yaml).

Set kuma.controlPlane.secrets with database sensitive information

# ...
    secrets:
      postgresDb:
        Secret: your-secret-name
        Key: POSTGRES_DB
        Env: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_DB_NAME
      postgresHost:
        Secret: your-secret-name
        Key: POSTGRES_HOST_RW
        Env: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_HOST
      postgrestUser:
        Secret: your-secret-name
        Key: POSTGRES_USER
        Env: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_USER
      postgresPassword:
        Secret: your-secret-name
        Key: POSTGRES_PASSWORD
        Env: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD

Optionally set kuma.postgres with TLS settings

# ...
  # Postgres' settings for universal control plane on k8s
  postgres:
    # -- Postgres port, password should be provided as a secret reference in "controlPlane.secrets"
    # with the Env value "KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD".
    # Example:
    # controlPlane:
    #   secrets:
    #     - Secret: postgres-postgresql
    #       Key: postgresql-password
    #       Env: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD
    port: "5432"
    # TLS settings
    tls:
      # -- Mode of TLS connection. Available values are: "disable", "verifyNone", "verifyCa", "verifyFull"
      mode: disable # ENV: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_TLS_MODE
      # -- Whether to disable SNI the postgres `sslsni` option.
      disableSSLSNI: false # ENV: KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_TLS_DISABLE_SSLSNI
      # -- Secret name that contains the ca.crt
      caSecretName:
      # -- Secret name that contains the client tls.crt, tls.key
      secretName:

Run helm install

 helm install kong-mesh \
   --create-namespace \
   --skip-crds \
   --namespace kong-mesh-system \
   --values values.yaml \
   kong-mesh/kong-mesh

Find the external IP and port of the kong-mesh-global-zone-sync service in the kong-mesh-system namespace:

 kubectl get services -n kong-mesh-system

 NAMESPACE     NAME                   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                                                                  AGE
 kong-mesh-system   kong-mesh-global-zone-sync     LoadBalancer   10.105.9.10     35.226.196.103   5685:30685/TCP                                                           89s
 kong-mesh-system   kong-mesh-control-plane     ClusterIP      10.105.12.133   <none>           5681/TCP,443/TCP,5676/TCP,5677/TCP,5678/TCP,5679/TCP,5682/TCP,5653/UDP   90s

In this example the value is 35.226.196.103:5685. You pass this as the value of <global-kds-address> when you set up the zone control planes.

When running the global control plane in Universal mode, a database must be used to persist state for production deployments. Ensure that migrations have been run against the database prior to running the global control plane.

Set up the global control plane, and add the global environment variable:

KUMA_MODE=global \
KUMA_ENVIRONMENT=universal \
KUMA_STORE_TYPE=postgres \
KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_HOST=<postgres-host> \
KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PORT=<postgres-port> \
KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_USER=<postgres-user> \
KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<postgres-password> \
KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_DB_NAME=<postgres-db-name> \
kuma-cp run

Set up the zone control planes

You need the following values to pass to each zone control plane setup:

zone – the zone name. An arbitrary string. This value registers the zone control plane with the global control plane.
kds-global-address – the external IP and port of the global control plane.

Kubernetes

Universal

For every individual zone create an own cluster and for each run:

        
          kumactl
        
          Helm
        
      kumactl install control-plane \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.mode=zone" \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.zone=<zone-name>" \
  --set "kuma.ingress.enabled=true" \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.kdsGlobalAddress=grpcs://<global-kds-address>:5685" \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.tls.kdsZoneClient.skipVerify=true" \
  | kubectl apply -f -

      # Before installing Kong Mesh with Helm, configure your local Helm repository:
# https://docs.konghq.com/mesh/2.3.x/production/cp-deployment/kubernetes/#helm
helm install \
  --create-namespace \
  --namespace kong-mesh-system \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.mode=zone" \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.zone=<zone-name>" \
  --set "kuma.ingress.enabled=true" \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.kdsGlobalAddress=grpcs://<global-kds-address>:5685" \
  --set "kuma.controlPlane.tls.kdsZoneClient.skipVerify=true" \
  kong-mesh kong-mesh/kong-mesh

where kuma.controlPlane.zone is the same value for all zone control planes in the same zone.

Add --set kuma.egress.enabled=true to list of arguments if you want to deploy optional Zone Egress.

Set --set kuma.controlPlane.tls.kdsZoneClient.skipVerify=true because the default global control plane’s certificate is self-signed. For production use a certificate signed by a trusted CA. See Secure access across services page for more information.

After installing a zone control plane, make sure to restart the application pods that are already running such that the data plane proxies can be connected.

When running the zone control plane in Universal mode, a database must be used to persist state for production deployments. Ensure that migrations have been run against the database prior to running the zone control plane.

On each zone control plane, run:

 KUMA_MODE=zone \
 KUMA_MULTIZONE_ZONE_NAME=<zone-name> \
 KUMA_ENVIRONMENT=universal \
 KUMA_STORE_TYPE=postgres \
 KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_HOST=<postgres-host> \
 KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PORT=<postgres-port> \
 KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_USER=<postgres-user> \
 KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<postgres-password> \
 KUMA_STORE_POSTGRES_DB_NAME=<postgres-db-name> \
 KUMA_MULTIZONE_ZONE_GLOBAL_ADDRESS=grpcs://<global-kds-address>:5685 \
 kuma-cp run

where KUMA_MULTIZONE_ZONE_NAME is the same value for all zone control planes in the same zone.

KUMA_MULTIZONE_ZONE_KDS_TLS_SKIP_VERIFY is required because the default global control plane’s certificate is self-signed. It’s recommended to use a certificate signed by a trusted CA in production. See Secure access across services page for more information.

Generate the zone proxy token:

To register the zone ingress and zone egress with the zone control plane, we need to generate a token first
```
kumactl generate zone-token --zone=<zone-name> --scope egress --scope ingress > /tmp/zone-token
```
You can also generate the token with the REST API. Alternatively, you could generate separate tokens for ingress and egress.

Create an ingress data plane proxy configuration to allow kuma-cp services to be exposed for cross-zone communication:

echo "type: ZoneIngress
name: ingress-01
networking:
  address: 127.0.0.1 # address that is routable within the zone
  port: 10000
  advertisedAddress: 10.0.0.1 # an address which other zones can use to consume this zone-ingress
  advertisedPort: 10000 # a port which other zones can use to consume this zone-ingress" > ingress-dp.yaml

Apply the ingress config, passing the IP address of the zone control plane to cp-address:

kuma-dp run \
  --proxy-type=ingress \
  --cp-address=https://<kuma-cp-address>:5678 \
  --dataplane-token-file=/tmp/zone-token \
  --dataplane-file=ingress-dp.yaml

If zone-ingress is running on a different machine than zone-cp you need to copy CA cert file from zone-cp (located in ~/.kuma/kuma-cp.crt) to somewhere accessible by zone-ingress (e.g. /tmp/kuma-cp.crt). Modify the above command and provide the certificate path in --ca-cert-file argument.

kuma-dp run \
  --proxy-type=ingress \
  --cp-address=https://<kuma-cp-address>:5678 \
  --dataplane-token-file=/tmp/zone-token \
  --ca-cert-file=/tmp/kuma-cp.crt \
  --dataplane-file=ingress-dp.yaml

Optional: if you want to deploy zone egress

Create a ZoneEgress data plane proxy configuration to allow kuma-cp services to be configured to proxy traffic to other zones or external services through zone egress:
```
echo "type: ZoneEgress
name: zoneegress-01
networking:
  address: 127.0.0.1 # address that is routable within the zone
  port: 10002" > zoneegress-dataplane.yaml
```

Apply the egress config, passing the IP address of the zone control plane to cp-address:

 kuma-dp run \
   --proxy-type=egress \
   --cp-address=https://<kuma-cp-address>:5678 \
   --dataplane-token-file=/tmp/zone-token \
   --dataplane-file=zoneegress-dataplane.yaml

Verify control plane connectivity

If your global control plane runs on Kubernetes, you’ll need to configure your kumactl like so:

# forward traffic from local pc into global control plane in the cluster
kubectl -n kong-mesh-system port-forward svc/kong-mesh-control-plane 5681:5681 &

# configure control plane for kumactl
kumactl config control-planes add \
  --name global-control-plane \
  --address http://localhost:5681 \
  --skip-verify

You can run kumactl get zones, or check the list of zones in the web UI for the global control plane, to verify zone control plane connections.

When a zone control plane connects to the global control plane, the Zone resource is created automatically in the global control plane.

The Zone Ingress tab of the web UI also lists zone control planes that you deployed with zone ingress.

Ensure mTLS is enabled on the multi-zone meshes

mTLS is mandatory to enable cross-zone service communication. mTLS can be configured in your mesh configuration as indicated in the mTLS section. This is required because Kong Mesh uses the Server Name Indication field, part of the TLS protocol, as a way to pass routing information cross zones.

Cross-zone communication details

For this example we will assume we have a service running in a Kubernetes zone exposing a kuma.io/service with value echo-server_echo-example_svc_1010. The following examples are running in the remote zone trying to access the previously mentioned service.

Kubernetes

Universal

To view the list of service names available, run:

kubectl get serviceinsight all-services-default -oyaml

apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: ServiceInsight
mesh: default
metadata:
  name: all-services-default
spec:
  services:
    echo-server_echo-example_svc_1010:
      dataplanes:
        online: 1
        total: 1
      issuedBackends:
        ca-1: 1
      status: online

The following are some examples of different ways to address echo-server in the echo-example Namespace in a multi-zone mesh.

To send a request in the same zone, you can rely on Kubernetes DNS and use the usual Kubernetes hostnames and ports:

curl http://echo-server:1010

Requests are distributed round-robin between zones. You can use locality-aware load balancing to keep requests in the same zone.

To send a request to any zone, you can use the generated kuma.io/service and Kong Mesh DNS:

curl http://echo-server_echo-example_svc_1010.mesh:80

Kong Mesh DNS also supports RFC 1123 compatible names, where underscores are replaced with dots:

curl http://echo-server.echo-example.svc.1010.mesh:80

kumactl inspect services

SERVICE                                  STATUS               DATAPLANES
echo-service_echo-example_svc_1010       Online               1/1

To consume the service in a Universal deployment without transparent proxy add the following outbound to your dataplane configuration:

outbound:
  - port: 20012
    tags:
      kuma.io/service: echo-server_echo-example_svc_1010

From the data plane running you will now be able to reach the service using localhost:20012.

Alternatively, if you configure transparent proxy you can just call echo-server_echo-example_svc_1010.mesh without defining an outbound section.

For security reasons it’s not possible to customize the kuma.io/service in Kubernetes.

If you want to have the same service running on both Universal and Kubernetes make sure to align the Universal’s data plane inbound to have the same kuma.io/service as the one in Kubernetes or leverage TrafficRoute.

Delete a zone

To delete a Zone we must first shut down the corresponding Kong Mesh zone control plane instances. As long as the Zone CP is running this will not be possible, and Kong Mesh returns a validation error like:

zone: unable to delete Zone, Zone CP is still connected, please shut it down first

When the Zone CP is fully disconnected and shut down, then the Zone can be deleted. All corresponding resources (like Dataplane and DataplaneInsight) will be deleted automatically as well.

Kubernetes

Universal

kubectl delete zone zone-1

Disable a zone

Change the enabled property value to false in the global control plane:

Kubernetes

Universal

apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: Zone
metadata:
  name: zone-1
spec:
  enabled: false

With this setting, the global control plane will stop exchanging configuration with this zone. As a result, the zone’s ingress from zone-1 will be deleted from other zone and traffic won’t be routed to it anymore. The zone will show as Offline in the GUI and CLI.