k8s_gateway
A CoreDNS plugin that is very similar to k8s_external but supporting all types of Kubernetes external resources - Ingress, Service of type LoadBalancer, HTTPRoutes, TLSRoutes, GRPCRoutes from the Gateway API project.
This plugin relies on its own connection to the k8s API server and doesn't share any code with the existing kubernetes plugin. The assumption is that this plugin can now be deployed as a separate instance (alongside the internal kube-dns) and act as a single external DNS interface into your Kubernetes cluster(s).
Description
k8s_gateway
resolves Kubernetes resources with their external IP addresses based on zones specified in the configuration. This plugin will resolve the following type of resources:
Kind |
Matching Against |
External IPs are from |
HTTPRoute/TLSRoute/GRPCRoute1 |
all FQDNs from spec.hostnames matching configured zones |
gateway.status.addresses 2 |
Ingress |
all FQDNs from spec.rules[*].host matching configured zones |
.status.loadBalancer.ingress |
Service3 |
name.namespace + any of the configured zones OR any string consisting of lower case alphanumeric characters, '-' or '.', specified in the coredns.io/hostname or external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname annotations (see this for an example) |
.status.loadBalancer.ingress |
VirtualServer4 |
spec.host |
.status.externalEnpoints.ip |
1: Currently supported version of GatewayAPI CRDs is v0.8.1+.
2: Gateway is a separate resource specified in the spec.parentRefs
of HTTPRoute|TLSRoute|GRPCRoute.
3: Only resolves service of type LoadBalancer
4: Currently supported version of nginxinc kubernetes-ingress is 1.12.3
Currently only supports A-type queries, all other queries result in NODATA responses.
This plugin is NOT supposed to be used for intra-cluster DNS resolution and does not contain the default upstream kubernetes plugin.
Install
The recommended installation method is using the helm chart provided in the repo:
helm repo add k8s_gateway https://ori-edge.github.io/k8s_gateway/
helm install exdns --set domain=foo k8s_gateway/k8s-gateway
Alternatively, for labbing and testing purposes k8s_gateway
can be deployed with a single manifest:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ori-edge/k8s_gateway/master/examples/install-clusterwide.yml
The only required configuration option is the zone that plugin should be authoritative for:
k8s_gateway ZONE
Additional configuration options can be used to further customize the behaviour of a plugin:
{
k8s_gateway ZONE
resources [RESOURCES...]
ttl TTL
apex APEX
secondary SECONDARY
kubeconfig KUBECONFIG [CONTEXT]
fallthrough [ZONES...]
}
resources
a subset of supported Kubernetes resources to watch. By default all supported resources are monitored. Available options are [ Ingress | Service | HTTPRoute | TLSRoute | GRPCRoute | VirtualServer ]
.
ttl
can be used to override the default TTL value of 60 seconds.
apex
can be used to override the default apex record value of {ReleaseName}-k8s-gateway.{Namespace}
secondary
can be used to specify the optional apex record value of a peer nameserver running in the cluster (see Dual Nameserver Deployment
section below).
kubeconfig
can be used to connect to a remote Kubernetes cluster using a kubeconfig file. CONTEXT
is optional, if not set, then the current context specified in kubeconfig will be used. It supports TLS, username and password, or token-based authentication.
fallthrough
if zone matches and no record can be generated, pass request to the next plugin. If [ZONES...] is omitted, then fallthrough happens for all zones for which the plugin is authoritative. If specific zones are listed (for example in-addr.arpa
and ip6.arpa
), then only queries for those zones will be subject to fallthrough.
Example:
k8s_gateway example.com {
resources Ingress
ttl 30
apex exdns-1-k8s-gateway.kube-system
secondary exdns-2-k8s-gateway.kube-system
kubeconfig /.kube/config
}
Dual Nameserver Deployment
Most of the time, deploying a single k8s_gateway
instance is enough to satisfy most popular DNS resolvers. However, some of the stricter resolvers expect a zone to be available on at least two servers (RFC1034, section 4.1). In order to satisfy this requirement, a pair of k8s_gateway
instances need to be deployed, each with its own unique loadBalancer IP. This way the zone NS record will point to a pair of glue records, hard-coded to these IPs.
Another consideration is that in this case k8s_gateway
instances need to know about their peers in order to provide consistent responses (at least the same set of nameservers). Configuration-wise this would require the following:
- Two separate
k8s_gateway
deployments with two separate type: LoadBalancer
services in front of them.
- No apex override, which would default to
releaseName.namespace
- A peer nameserver's apex must be included in
secondary
configuration option
- Glue records must match the
releaseName.namespace.zone
of each of the running plugin
For example, the above requirements could be satisfied with the following commands:
- Install two instances of
k8s_plugin
gateway pointing at each other:
helm install -n kube-system exdns-1 --set domain=zone.example.com --set secondary=exdns-2.kube-system ./charts/k8s-gateway
helm install -n kube-system exdns-2 --set domain=zone.example.com --set secondary=exdns-1.kube-system ./charts/k8s-gateway
- Obtain their external IPs
kubectl -n kube-system get svc -l app.kubernetes.io/name=k8s-gateway
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
exdns-1-k8s-gateway LoadBalancer 10.103.229.129 198.51.100.1 53:32122/UDP 5m22s
exdns-2-k8s-gateway LoadBalancer 10.107.87.145 203.0.113.11 53:30009/UDP 4m21s
- Delegate the domain from the parent zone by creating a pair of NS records and a pair of glue records pointing to the above IPs:
zone.example.com (NS record) -> exdns-1-k8s-gateway.zone.example.com (A record) -> 198.51.100.1
zone.example.com (NS record) -> exdns-2-k8s-gateway.zone.example.com (A record) -> 203.0.113.11
Build
With compile-time configuration file
$ git clone https://github.com/coredns/coredns
$ cd coredns
$ vim plugin.cfg
# Replace lines with kubernetes and k8s_external with k8s_gateway:github.com/ori-edge/k8s_gateway
$ go generate
$ go build
$ ./coredns -plugins | grep k8s_gateway
With external golang source code
$ git clone https://github.com/ori-edge/k8s_gateway.git
$ cd k8s_gateway
$ go build cmd/coredns.go
$ ./coredns -plugins | grep k8s_external
For more details refer to this CoreDNS doc
Release
Helm Charts
If the change was made only to helm charts, only two things are required:
- Bump the chart version in
./charts/k8s-gateway/Chart.yaml
- Run
make helm-update
Plugin
To cut a new plugin release the following is required:
- Bump the app
pluginVersion
in ./cmd/coredns.go
and commit.
- Tag the last commit with the save version number.
- Bump the
appVersion
and tag
in ./charts/k8s-gateway/Chart.yaml
and ./charts/k8s-gateway/values.yaml
respectively.
- Run
make helm-update
Hack
This repository contains a Tiltfile that can be used for local development. To build a local k8s cluster with kind run:
make setup
To bring up a tilt development enviornment run tilt up
or:
make up
Some test resources can be added to the k8s cluster with:
# ingress and service resources
kubectl apply -f ./test/ingress-services.yml
# gateway API resources
kubectl apply -f ./test/gateway-api/resources.yml
# nginxinc's VirtualService resources
kubectl apply -f test/nginxinc-kubernetes-ingress/resources.yaml
Test queries can be sent to the exposed CoreDNS service like this:
$ ip=$(kubectl get nodes -o jsonpath='{.items[0].status.addresses[0].address}')
# ingress resource
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 myservicea.foo.org +short
198.51.100.0
# loadBalancer
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 test.default.foo.org +short
198.51.100.3
# HTTPRoute/gateway-API
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 myservicea.gw.foo.org +short
198.51.100.4
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 myserviceb.gw.foo.org +short
198.51.100.4
# multi-gateway HTTPRoute
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 myserviced.gw.foo.org +short
198.51.100.5
198.51.100.4
# nginxinc's Ingress
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 myserviceb.foo.org +short
198.51.100.2
# nginxinc's VirtualServer
$ dig @$ip -p 32553 virtualservera.foo.org +short
198.51.100.2
To cleanup local environment do:
make nuke
Apple Silicon Development
Developing with apple silicon requires lima/colima installed on your machine. It sadly, did not work at all with kind.
Below, you'll find the yaml
used for developing with Cilium CNI and k3s.
Colima version at the time: v0.5.6
cpu: 6
disk: 60
memory: 16
arch: host
runtime: containerd
kubernetes:
enabled: true
version: v1.28.2+k3s1
k3sArgs:
- --flannel-backend=none
- --disable=servicelb
- --disable=traefik
- --disable-network-policy
- --disable-kube-proxy
autoActivate: true
network:
address: false
dns: []
dnsHosts:
host.docker.internal: host.lima.internal
driver: slirp
forwardAgent: false
docker:
insecure-registries:
- localhost:5000
- host.docker.internal:5000
vmType: vz
rosetta: true
mountType: virtiofs
mountInotify: false
cpuType: host
layer: false
provision:
- mode: system
script: |
set -e
# needed for cilium
mount bpffs -t bpf /sys/fs/bpf
mount --make-shared /sys/fs/bpf
mkdir -p /run/cilium/cgroupv2
mount -t cgroup2 none /run/cilium/cgroupv2
mount --make-shared /run/cilium/cgroupv2/
ln -s /opt/cni/bin/cilium-cni /usr/libexec/cni/cilium-cni
sshConfig: true
mounts: []
env: {}
cgroupsV2: false
Steps
- In
Tiltfile.nerdctl
colima start
with above configuration
tilt up -f Tiltfile.nerdctl
+ space bar for the environment to trigger.
The stacks should deploy and you'll have a proper stack that builds k8s-gateway
with coredns
and deploys to kube-system
namespace.
Also see
Blogpost
Helm repo guide