Envoy as Ingress, API and Function Gateway for Kubernetes with Gloo

Kubernetes users often need to allow traffic to flow from and to the cluster, and Envoy is great for that purpose. The open source project Gloo, which is built on top of Envoy, is designed for microservices, monoliths and also applications that might want to leverage function as a service. Gloo can decouple client APIs from upstream APIs at the routing level. In a simplistic way, Gloo is a great and easy to use tool to get traffic inside your Kubernetes cluster.

Continue reading for more information on how to get started with Gloo. This should only take a few minutes

Installing Gloo

For this installation, there are three main prerequisites:

  • Kubernetes version: Gloo requires version 1.8 or higher. Minikube is an easy way to get access to your own local Kubernetes installation.
  • kubectl: you need access to the kubectl command line tool.
  • glooctl: this is the Gloo command line tool which you will use to interact with the open source version of Gloo. Check the releases page under Gloo’s project repository to download the latest release. There you will find versions compatible with macOS and Linux.

Once all you have the above, all you need to do is run the following command:

glooctl install kube

If you are familiar with Kubernetes, the command above will tell kubernetes what and how it should run the Gloo images. The Gloo pods should be running in a namespace called gloo-system.

Your output should look similar to this:

namespace/gloo-system created
customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/upstreams.gloo.solo.io created
customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/virtualservices.gloo.solo.io created
customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/roles.gloo.solo.io created
customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/attributes.gloo.solo.io created
configmap/ingress-config created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/gloo-role created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/gloo-discovery-role created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/gloo-cluster-admin-binding created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/gloo-discovery-cluster-admin-binding created
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/gloo-knative-upstream-discovery-role created
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/gloo-knative-upstream-discovery-binding created
deployment.apps/control-plane created
service/control-plane created
deployment.apps/function-discovery created
deployment.apps/ingress created
service/ingress created
deployment.extensions/kube-ingress-controller created
deployment.extensions/upstream-discovery created
Gloo successfully installed.

Checking your Installation

For more details on what is running in the gloo-system namespace, run the following command:

kubectl get all -n gloo-system

Your output should look similar to this:

NAME                                           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/control-plane-6fc6dc7545-xrllk             1/1     Running   0          11m
pod/function-discovery-544c596dcd-gk8x7        1/1     Running   0          11m
pod/ingress-64f75ccb7-4z299                    1/1     Running   0          11m
pod/kube-ingress-controller-665d59bc7d-t6lwk   1/1     Running   0          11m
pod/upstream-discovery-74db4d7475-gqrst        1/1     Running   0          11m

NAME                    TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                         AGE
service/control-plane   ClusterIP      10.101.206.34    <none>        8081/TCP                        11m
service/ingress         LoadBalancer   10.108.115.187   <pending>     8080:32608/TCP,8443:30634/TCP   11m

NAME                                      DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/control-plane             1         1         1            1           11m
deployment.apps/function-discovery        1         1         1            1           11m
deployment.apps/ingress                   1         1         1            1           11m
deployment.apps/kube-ingress-controller   1         1         1            1           11m
deployment.apps/upstream-discovery        1         1         1            1           11m

NAME                                                 DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/control-plane-6fc6dc7545             1         1         1       11m
replicaset.apps/function-discovery-544c596dcd        1         1         1       11m
replicaset.apps/ingress-64f75ccb7                    1         1         1       11m
replicaset.apps/kube-ingress-controller-665d59bc7d   1         1         1       11m
replicaset.apps/upstream-discovery-74db4d7475        1         1         1       11m

In case your pods are not in Running state, feel free to jump on the Gloo slack channel. The community will be able to assist you there.

What’s next?

For examples and more documentation on how to use the open source project Gloo, check the project page.