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Version: 1.5.0

APISIX Ingress Controller the Hard Way

In this tutorial, we will install APISIX and APISIX Ingress Controller in Kubernetes from native yaml.

Prerequisites#

If you don't have a Kubernetes cluster to use, we recommend you to use kind to create a local Kubernetes cluster.

kubectl create ns apisix

In this tutorial, all our operations will be performed at namespace apisix.

ETCD Installation#

Here, we will deploy a single-node ETCD cluster without authentication inside the Kubernetes cluster.

In this case, we assume you have a storage provisioner. If you are using KiND, a local path provisioner will be created automatically. If you don't have a storage provisioner or don't want to use persistence volume, you could use an emptyDir as volume.

# etcd-headless.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: etcd-headless
namespace: apisix
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: etcd
annotations:
service.alpha.kubernetes.io/tolerate-unready-endpoints: "true"
spec:
type: ClusterIP
clusterIP: None
ports:
- name: "client"
port: 2379
targetPort: client
- name: "peer"
port: 2380
targetPort: peer
selector:
app.kubernetes.io/name: etcd
---
# etcd.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
name: etcd
namespace: apisix
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: etcd
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: etcd
serviceName: etcd-headless
podManagementPolicy: Parallel
replicas: 1
updateStrategy:
type: RollingUpdate
template:
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: etcd
spec:
securityContext:
fsGroup: 1001
runAsUser: 1001
containers:
- name: etcd
image: docker.io/bitnami/etcd:3.4.14-debian-10-r0
imagePullPolicy: "IfNotPresent"
# command:
# - /scripts/setup.sh
env:
- name: BITNAMI_DEBUG
value: "false"
- name: MY_POD_IP
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: status.podIP
- name: MY_POD_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.name
- name: ETCDCTL_API
value: "3"
- name: ETCD_NAME
value: "$(MY_POD_NAME)"
- name: ETCD_DATA_DIR
value: /etcd/data
- name: ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS
value: "http://$(MY_POD_NAME).etcd-headless.apisix.svc.cluster.local:2379"
- name: ETCD_LISTEN_CLIENT_URLS
value: "http://0.0.0.0:2379"
- name: ETCD_INITIAL_ADVERTISE_PEER_URLS
value: "http://$(MY_POD_NAME).etcd-headless.apisix.svc.cluster.local:2380"
- name: ETCD_LISTEN_PEER_URLS
value: "http://0.0.0.0:2380"
- name: ALLOW_NONE_AUTHENTICATION
value: "yes"
ports:
- name: client
containerPort: 2379
- name: peer
containerPort: 2380
volumeMounts:
- name: data
mountPath: /etcd
# If you don't have a storage provisioner or don't want to use persistence volume, you could use an `emptyDir` as follow.
# volumes:
# - name: data
# emptyDir: {}
volumeClaimTemplates:
- metadata:
name: data
spec:
accessModes:
- "ReadWriteOnce"
resources:
requests:
storage: "8Gi"

Apply these two yaml files to Kubernetes, wait few seconds, etcd installation should be successful. We could run a health check to ensure that.

$ kubectl -n apisix exec -it etcd-0 -- etcdctl endpoint health
127.0.0.1:2379 is healthy: successfully committed proposal: took = 1.741883ms

Please notice that this etcd installation is quite simple and lack of many necessary production features, it should only be used for learning case. If you want to deploy a production-ready etcd, please refer to bitnami/etcd.

APISIX Installation#

Create a config file for our APISIX. We are going to deploy APISIX version 2.5.

Note that the APISIX ingress controller needs to communicate with the APISIX admin API, so we set apisix.allow_admin to 0.0.0.0/0 for test.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: apisix-conf
namespace: apisix
data:
config.yaml: |-
apisix:
node_listen: 9080 # APISIX listening port
enable_heartbeat: true
enable_admin: true
enable_admin_cors: true
enable_debug: false
enable_dev_mode: false # Sets nginx worker_processes to 1 if set to true
enable_reuseport: true # Enable nginx SO_REUSEPORT switch if set to true.
enable_ipv6: true
config_center: etcd # etcd: use etcd to store the config value

allow_admin: # http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_access_module.html#allow
- 0.0.0.0/0
port_admin: 9180

# Default token when use API to call for Admin API.
# *NOTE*: Highly recommended to modify this value to protect APISIX's Admin API.
# Disabling this configuration item means that the Admin API does not
# require any authentication.
admin_key:
# admin: can everything for configuration data
- name: "admin"
key: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1
role: admin
# viewer: only can view configuration data
- name: "viewer"
key: 4054f7cf07e344346cd3f287985e76a2
role: viewer
# dns_resolver:
# - 127.0.0.1
dns_resolver_valid: 30
resolver_timeout: 5

nginx_config: # config for render the template to generate nginx.conf
error_log: "/dev/stderr"
error_log_level: "warn" # warn,error
worker_rlimit_nofile: 20480 # the number of files a worker process can open, should be larger than worker_connections
event:
worker_connections: 10620
http:
access_log: "/dev/stdout"
keepalive_timeout: 60s # timeout during which a keep-alive client connection will stay open on the server side.
client_header_timeout: 60s # timeout for reading client request header, then 408 (Request Time-out) error is returned to the client
client_body_timeout: 60s # timeout for reading client request body, then 408 (Request Time-out) error is returned to the client
send_timeout: 10s # timeout for transmitting a response to the client.then the connection is closed
underscores_in_headers: "on" # default enables the use of underscores in client request header fields
real_ip_header: "X-Real-IP" # http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_realip_module.html#real_ip_header
real_ip_from: # http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_realip_module.html#set_real_ip_from
- 127.0.0.1
- 'unix:'

etcd:
host:
- "http://etcd-headless.apisix.svc.cluster.local:2379"
prefix: "/apisix" # apisix configurations prefix
timeout: 30 # seconds
plugins: # plugin list
- api-breaker
- authz-keycloak
- basic-auth
- batch-requests
- consumer-restriction
- cors
- echo
- fault-injection
- grpc-transcode
- hmac-auth
- http-logger
- ip-restriction
- jwt-auth
- kafka-logger
- key-auth
- limit-conn
- limit-count
- limit-req
- node-status
- openid-connect
- prometheus
- proxy-cache
- proxy-mirror
- proxy-rewrite
- redirect
- referer-restriction
- request-id
- request-validation
- response-rewrite
- serverless-post-function
- serverless-pre-function
- sls-logger
- syslog
- tcp-logger
- udp-logger
- uri-blocker
- wolf-rbac
- zipkin
- traffic-split
stream_plugins:
- mqtt-proxy

Please make sure etcd.host matches the headless service we created at first. In our case, it's http://etcd-headless.apisix.svc.cluster.local:2379.

In this config, we defined an access key with the admin name under the apisix.admin_key section. This key is our API key, will be used to control APISIX later. This key is the default API key for APISIX, and it should be changed in production environments.

Save this as config.yaml, then run kubectl -n apisix create cm apisix-conf --from-file ./config.yaml to create configmap. Later we will mount this configmap into APISIX deployment.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: apisix
namespace: apisix
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: apisix
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: apisix
template:
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: apisix
spec:
containers:
- name: apisix
image: "apache/apisix:2.5-alpine"
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
ports:
- name: http
containerPort: 9080
protocol: TCP
- name: tls
containerPort: 9443
protocol: TCP
- name: admin
containerPort: 9180
protocol: TCP
readinessProbe:
failureThreshold: 6
initialDelaySeconds: 10
periodSeconds: 10
successThreshold: 1
tcpSocket:
port: 9080
timeoutSeconds: 1
lifecycle:
preStop:
exec:
command:
- /bin/sh
- -c
- "sleep 30"
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /usr/local/apisix/conf/config.yaml
name: apisix-config
subPath: config.yaml
resources: {}
volumes:
- configMap:
name: apisix-conf
name: apisix-config

Now, APISIX should be ready to use. Use kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name to list APISIX pod name. Here we assume the pod name is apisix-7644966c4d-cl4k6.

Let's have a check:

kubectl -n apisix exec -it apisix-7644966c4d-cl4k6 -- curl http://127.0.0.1:9080

If you are using Linux or macOS, run the command below in bash:

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl http://127.0.0.1:9080

If APISIX works properly, it should output: {"error_msg":"404 Route Not Found"}. Because we haven't defined any route yet.

HTTPBIN service#

Before configuring the APISIX, we need to create a test service. We use kennethreitz/httpbin here. We put this httpbin service in demo namespace.

kubectl create ns demo
kubectl -n demo run httpbin --image-pull-policy=IfNotPresent --image kennethreitz/httpbin --port 80
kubectl -n demo expose pod httpbin --port 80

After the httpbin service started, we should be able to access it inside the APISIX pod via service.

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl http://httpbin.demo/get

This should output the request's query parameters, for example:

{
"args": {},
"headers": {
"Accept": "*/*",
"Host": "httpbin.demo",
"User-Agent": "curl/7.67.0"
},
"origin": "172.17.0.1",
"url": "http://httpbin.demo/get"
}

To read more, please refer to Getting Started.

Define Route#

Now, we can define the route for proxying HTTPBIN service traffic through APISIX.

Assuming we want to route all traffic which URI has /httpbin prefix and the request contains Host: httpbin.org header.

Please notice that the admin port is 9180.

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1" -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1" -X PUT -d '
{
"uri": "/*",
"host": "httpbin.org",
"upstream": {
"type": "roundrobin",
"nodes": {
"httpbin.demo:80": 1
}
}
}'

The output would be like this:

{"action":"set","node":{"key":"\/apisix\/routes\/1","value":{"status":1,"create_time":1621408897,"upstream":{"pass_host":"pass","type":"roundrobin","hash_on":"vars","nodes":{"httpbin.demo:80":1},"scheme":"http"},"update_time":1621408897,"priority":0,"host":"httpbin.org","id":"1","uri":"\/*"}}}

We could check route rules by GET /apisix/admin/routes:

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1" -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1"

It should output like this:

{"action":"get","node":{"key":"\/apisix\/routes\/1","value":{"upstream":{"pass_host":"pass","type":"roundrobin","scheme":"http","hash_on":"vars","nodes":{"httpbin.demo:80":1}},"id":"1","create_time":1621408897,"update_time":1621408897,"host":"httpbin.org","priority":0,"status":1,"uri":"\/*"}},"count":"1"}

Now, we can test the routing rule:

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl "http://127.0.0.1:9080/get" -H 'Host: httpbin.org'

It will output like:

{
"args": {},
"headers": {
"Accept": "*/*",
"Host": "httpbin.org",
"User-Agent": "curl/7.67.0",
"X-Forwarded-Host": "httpbin.org"
},
"origin": "127.0.0.1",
"url": "http://httpbin.org/get"
}

Install APISIX Ingress Controller#

APISIX ingress controller can help you manage your configurations declaratively by using Kubernetes resources. Here we will install version 0.5.0.

Currently, the APISIX ingress controller supports both official Ingress resource or APISIX's CustomResourceDefinitions, which includes ApisixRoute and ApisixUpstream.

Before installing the APISIX controller, we need to create a service account and the corresponding ClusterRole to ensure that the APISIX ingress controller has sufficient permissions to access required resources.

Here is an example config from apisix-helm-chart:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: apisix-ingress-controller
namespace: apisix
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
name: apisix-clusterrole
namespace: apisix
rules:
- apiGroups:
- ""
resources:
- configmaps
- endpoints
- persistentvolumeclaims
- pods
- replicationcontrollers
- replicationcontrollers/scale
- serviceaccounts
- services
- secrets
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- ""
resources:
- bindings
- events
- limitranges
- namespaces/status
- pods/log
- pods/status
- replicationcontrollers/status
- resourcequotas
- resourcequotas/status
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- ""
resources:
- namespaces
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- apps
resources:
- controllerrevisions
- daemonsets
- deployments
- deployments/scale
- replicasets
- replicasets/scale
- statefulsets
- statefulsets/scale
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- autoscaling
resources:
- horizontalpodautoscalers
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- batch
resources:
- cronjobs
- jobs
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- extensions
resources:
- daemonsets
- deployments
- deployments/scale
- ingresses
- networkpolicies
- replicasets
- replicasets/scale
- replicationcontrollers/scale
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- policy
resources:
- poddisruptionbudgets
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- networking.k8s.io
resources:
- ingresses
- networkpolicies
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- metrics.k8s.io
resources:
- pods
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- apisix.apache.org
resources:
- apisixroutes
- apisixroutes/status
- apisixupstreams
- apisixupstreams/status
- apisixtlses
- apisixtlses/status
- apisixclusterconfigs
- apisixclusterconfigs/status
- apisixconsumers
- apisixconsumers/status
verbs:
- get
- list
- watch
- apiGroups:
- coordination.k8s.io
resources:
- leases
verbs:
- '*'
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
name: apisix-clusterrolebinding
namespace: apisix
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: ClusterRole
name: apisix-clusterrole
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: apisix-ingress-controller
namespace: apisix

Then, we need to create ApisixRoute CRD:

git clone https://github.com/apache/apisix-ingress-controller.git --depth 1
cd apisix-ingress-controller/
kubectl apply -k samples/deploy/crd

Please refer to samples for details.

To make the ingress controller works properly with APISIX, we need to create a config file containing the APISIX admin API URL and API key as below:

apiVersion: v1
data:
config.yaml: |
# log options
log_level: "debug"
log_output: "stderr"
http_listen: ":8080"
enable_profiling: true
kubernetes:
kubeconfig: ""
resync_interval: "30s"
namespace_selector:
- "apisix.ingress=watching"
ingress_class: "apisix"
ingress_version: "networking/v1"
apisix_route_version: "apisix.apache.org/v2"
apisix:
default_cluster_base_url: "http://apisix-admin.apisix:9180/apisix/admin"
default_cluster_admin_key: "edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1"
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: apisix-configmap
namespace: apisix
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-controller

If you want to learn all the configuration items, see conf/config-default.yaml for details.

Because the ingress controller needs to access APISIX admin API, we need to create a service for APISIX.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: apisix-admin
namespace: apisix
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: apisix
spec:
type: ClusterIP
ports:
- name: apisix-admin
port: 9180
targetPort: 9180
protocol: TCP
selector:
app.kubernetes.io/name: apisix

Because currently APISIX ingress controller doesn't 100% compatible with APISIX, we need to delete the previously created route in case of some data structure mismatch.

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1" -X DELETE -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1"

After these configurations, we could deploy the ingress controller now.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: apisix-ingress-controller
namespace: apisix
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-controller
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-controller
template:
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-controller
spec:
serviceAccountName: apisix-ingress-controller
volumes:
- name: configuration
configMap:
name: apisix-configmap
items:
- key: config.yaml
path: config.yaml
initContainers:
- name: wait-apisix-admin
image: busybox:1.28
command: ['sh', '-c', "until nc -z apisix-admin.apisix.svc.cluster.local 9180 ; do echo waiting for apisix-admin; sleep 2; done;"]
containers:
- name: ingress-controller
command:
- /ingress-apisix/apisix-ingress-controller
- ingress
- --config-path
- /ingress-apisix/conf/config.yaml
image: "apache/apisix-ingress-controller:1.4.0"
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
ports:
- name: http
containerPort: 8080
protocol: TCP
livenessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /healthz
port: 8080
readinessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /healthz
port: 8080
resources:
{}
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /ingress-apisix/conf
name: configuration

In this deployment, we mount the configmap created above as a config file, and tell Kubernetes to use the service account apisix-ingress-controller.

After the ingress controller status is converted to Running, we could create an ApisixRoute resource and observe its behaviors.

Here is an example ApisixRoute:

apiVersion: apisix.apache.org/v2
kind: ApisixRoute
metadata:
name: httpserver-route
namespace: demo
spec:
http:
- name: httpbin
match:
hosts:
- local.httpbin.org
paths:
- /*
backends:
- serviceName: httpbin
servicePort: 80

Note that the apiVersion field should match the configmap above. And the serviceName should match the exposed service name, it's httpbin here.

Before create it, let's ensure requests with header Host: local.http.demo will returns 404:

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl "http://127.0.0.1:9080/get" -H 'Host: local.httpbin.org'

It will return:

{"error_msg":"404 Route Not Found"}

The ApisixRoute should be applied in the same namespace with the target service, in this case is demo. After applying it, let's check if it works.

kubectl -n apisix exec -it $(kubectl get pods -n apisix -l app.kubernetes.io/name=apisix -o name) -- curl "http://127.0.0.1:9080/get" -H "Host: local.httpbin.org"

It should return:

{
"args": {},
"headers": {
"Accept": "*/*",
"Host": "local.httpbin.org",
"User-Agent": "curl/7.67.0",
"X-Forwarded-Host": "local.httpbin.org"
},
"origin": "127.0.0.1",
"url": "http://local2.httpbin.org/get"
}

That's all! Enjoy your journey with APISIX and APISIX ingress controller!