Deis (pronounced DAY-iss) Workflow is an open source Platform as a Service (PaaS) that adds a developer-friendly layer to any Kubernetes cluster, making it easy to deploy and manage applications on your own servers.

We welcome your input! If you have feedback, please submit an issue. If you'd like to participate in development, please read the "Development" section below and submit a pull request.

The Deis router handles ingress and routing of HTTP/S traffic bound for the Deis Workflow controller (API) and for your own applications. This component is 100% Kubernetes native and, while it's intended for use with the Deis Workflow PaaS, it's flexible enough to be used standalone inside any Kubernetes cluster.

The Deis project welcomes contributions from all developers. The high level process for development matches many other open source projects. See below for an outline.

• Fork this repository
• Make your changes
• Submit a pull request (PR) to this repository with your changes, and unit tests whenever possible.
  • If your PR fixes any issues, make sure you write Fixes #1234 in your PR description (where #1234 is the number of the issue you're closing)
• The Deis core contributors will review your code. After each of them sign off on your code, they'll label your PR with LGTM1 and LGTM2 (respectively). Once that happens, they'll merge it.

This section documents simple procedures for installing the Deis Router for evaluation or use. Those wishing to contribute to Deis Router development might consider the more developer-oriented instructions in the Hacking Router section.

Deis Router can be installed with or without the rest of the Deis Workflow platform. In either case, begin with a healthy Kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes getting started documentation is available here.

Next, install the Helm Classic package manager, then use the commands below to initialize that tool and load the deis/charts repository.

$ helmc update
$ helmc repo add deis https://github.com/deis/charts

To install the router:

$ helmc fetch deis/<chart>
$ helmc generate -x manifests <chart>
$ helmc install <chart>

Where <chart> is selected from the options below:

For next steps, skip ahead to the How it Works and Configuration Guide sections.

The only dependencies for hacking on / contributing to this component are:

• git
• make
• docker
• kubectl, properly configured to manipulate a healthy Kubernetes cluster that you presumably use for development
• Your favorite text editor

Although the router is written in Go, you do not need Go or any other development tools installed. Any parts of the developer workflow requiring tools not listed above are delegated to a containerized Go development environment.

If your Kubernetes cluster is running locally on one or more virtual machines, it's advisable to also run your own local Docker registry. This provides a place where router images built from source-- possibly containing your own experimental hacks-- can be pushed relatively quickly and can be accessed readily by your Kubernetes cluster.

Fortunately, this is very easy to set up as long as you have Docker already functioning properly:

$ make dev-registry

This will produce output containing further instructions such as:

59ba57a3628fe04016634760e039a3202036d5db984f6de96ea8876a7ba8a945

To use a local registry for Deis Router development:
    export DEIS_REGISTRY=192.168.99.102:5000/

Following those instructions will make your local registry usable by the various make targets mentioned in following sections.

If you do not want to run your own local registry or if the Kubernetes cluster you will be deploying to is remote, then you can easily make use of a public registry such as hub.docker.com, provided you have an account. To do so:

$ export DEIS_REGISTRY=registry.hub.docker.com/
$ export IMAGE_PREFIX=your-username

The entire developer workflow for anyone hacking on the router is implemented as a set of make targets. They are simple and easy to use, and collectively provide a workflow that should feel familiar to anyone who has hacked on Deis v1.x in the past.

To "bootstrap" the development environment:

$ make bootstrap

In router's case, this step carries out some extensive dependency management using glide within the containerized development environment. Because the router leverages the Kubernetes API, which in turn has in excess of one hundred dependencies, this step can take quite some time. Be patient, and allow up to 20 minutes. You generally only ever have to do this once.

$ make build

Make sure to have defined the variable DEIS_REGISTRY previous to this step, as your image tags will be prefixed according to this.

Built images will be tagged with the sha of the latest git commit. This means that for a new image to have its own unique tag, experimental changes should be committed before building. Do this in a branch. Commits can be squashed later when you are done hacking.

$ make deploy

The deploy target will implicitly build first, then push the built image (which has its own unique tags) to your development registry (i.e. that specified by DEIS_REGISTRY). A Kubernetes manifest is prepared, referencing the uniquely tagged image, and that manifest is submitted to your Kubernetes cluster. If a router component is already running in your Kubernetes cluster, it will be deleted and replaced with your build.

To see that the router is running, you can look for its pod(s):

$ kubectl get pods --namespace=deis

To deploy some sample routable applications:

$ make examples

This will deploy Nginx and Apache to your Kubernetes cluster as if they were user applications.

To test, first modify your /etc/hosts such that the following four hostnames are resolvable to the IP of the Kubernetes node that is hosting the router:

• nginx.example.com
• apache.example.com
• httpd.example.com
• unknown.example.com

By requesting the following three URLs from your browser, you should find that one is routed to a pod running Nginx, while the other two are routed to a pod running Apache:

• http://nginx.example.com
• http://apache.example.com
• http://httpd.example.com

Requesting http://unknown.example.com should result in a 404 from the router since no route exists for that domain name.

The router is implemented as a simple Go program that manages Nginx and Nginx configuration. It regularly queries the Kubernetes API for services labeled with router.deis.io/routable: "true". Such services are compared to known services resident in memory. If there are differences, new Nginx configuration is generated and Nginx is reloaded.

When generating configuration, the program reads all annotations of each service prefixed with router.deis.io. These annotations describe all the configuration options that allow the program to dynamically construct Nginx configuration, including virtual hosts for all the domain names associated with each routable application.

Similarly, the router watches the annotations on its own replication controller to dynamically construct global Nginx configuration.

Router configuration is driven almost entirely by annotations on the router's replication controller and the services of all routable applications-- those labeled with router.deis.io/routable: "true".

One exception to this, however, is that in order for the router to discover its own annotations, the router must be configured via environment variable with some awareness of its own namespace. (It cannot query the API for information about itself without knowing this.)

The POD_NAMESPACE environment variable is required by the router and it should be configured to match the Kubernetes namespace that the router is deployed into. If no value is provided, the router will assume a value of default.

For example, consider the following Kubernetes manifest. Given a manifest containing the following metadata:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ReplicationController
metadata:
  name: deis-router
  namespace: deis
# ...

The corresponding template must inject a POD_NAMESPACE=deis environment variable into router containers. The most elegant way to achieve this is by means of the Kubernetes "downward API," as in this snippet from the same manifest:

# ...
spec:
  # ...
  template:
    # ...
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: deis-router
        # ...
        env:
        - name: POD_NAMESPACE
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
# ...

Altering the value of the POD_NAMESPACE environment variable requires the router to be restarted for changes to take effect.

All remaining options are configured through annotations. Any of the following three Kubernetes resources can be configured:

The table below details the configuration options that are available for each of the above.

Note that Kubernetes annotation maps are all of Go type map[string]string. As such, all configuration values must also be strings. To avoid Kubernetes attempting to populate the map[string]string with non-string values, all numeric and boolean configuration values should be enclosed in double quotes to help avoid confusion.

apiVersion: v1
kind: ReplicationController
metadata:
  name: deis-router
  namespace: deis
  # ...
  annotations:
    router.deis.io/nginx.platformDomain: example.com
    router.deis.io/nginx.useProxyProtocol: "true"
# ...

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: deis-builder
  namespace: deis
  # ...
  annotations:
    router.deis.io/nginx.connectTimeout: "20000"
    router.deis.io/nginx.tcpTimeout: "2400000"
# ...

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: foo
  labels:
  	router.deis.io/routable: "true"
  namespace: examples
  # ...
  annotations:
    router.deis.io/domains: foo,bar,www.foobar.com
# ...

Router has support for HTTPS with the ability to perform SSL termination using certificates supplied via Kubernetes secrets. Just as router utilizes the Kubernetes API to discover routable services, router also uses the API to discover cert-bearing secrets. This allows the router to dynamically refresh and reload configuration whenever such a certificate is added, updated, or removed. There is never a need to explicitly restart the router.

A certificate may be supplied in the manner described above and can be used to provide a secure virtual host (in addition to the insecure virtual host) for any fully-qualified domain name associated with a routable service.

Here is an example of a Kubernetes secret bearing a certificate for use with a specific fully-qualified domain name. The following criteria must be met:

• Secret name must be for the form <arbitrary name>-cert
  • This must be associated to the domain using the router.deis.io/certificates annotation.
• Must be in the same namespace as the routable service
• Certificate must be supplied as the value of the key tls.crt
• Certificate private key must be supplied as the value of the key tls.key
• Both the certificate and private key must be base64 encoded

For example, assuming a routable service exists in the namespace cheery-yardbird and is configured with www.example.com among its domains, like so:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: cheery-yardbird
  annotations:
    router.deis.io/domains: cheery-yardbird,www.example.com
    router.deis.io/certificates: www.example.com:www-example-com"
# ...

The corresponding cert-bearing secret would appear as follows:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: www-example-com-cert
  namespace: cheery-yardbird
type: Opaque
data:
  tls.crt: MT1...uDh==
  tls.key: MT1...MRp=

A wildcard certificate may be supplied in a manner similar to that described above and can be used as a platform certificate to provide a secure virtual host (in addition to the insecure virtual host) for every "domain" of a routable service that is not a fully-qualified domain name.

For instance, if a routable service exists having a "domain" frozen-wookie and the router's platform domain is example.com, a supplied wildcard certificate for *.example.com will be used to secure a frozen-wookie.example.com virtual host. Similarly, if no platform domain is defined, the supplied wildcard certificate will be used to secure a virtual host matching the expression ~^frozen-wookie\.(?<domain>.+)$. (The latter is almost certainly guaranteed to result in certificate warnings in an end user's browser, so it is advisable to always define the router's platform domain.)

If the same routable service also had a domain www.frozen-wookie.com, the *.example.com wildcard certificate plays no role in securing the www.frozen-wookie.com virtual host.

Here is an example of a Kubernetes secret bearing a wildcard certificate for use by the router. The following criteria must be met:

• Namespace must be the same namespace as the router
• Name must be deis-router-platform-cert
• Certificate must be supplied as the value of the key tls.crt
• Certificate private key must be supplied as the value of the key tls.key
• Both the certificate and private key must be base64 encoded

For example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: deis-router-platform-cert
  namespace: deis
type: Opaque
data:
  tls.crt: LS0...tCg==
  tls.key: LS0...LQo=

When combined with a good certificate, the router's default SSL options are sufficient to earn an A grade from Qualys SSL Labs.

Earning an A+ is as easy as simply enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security (see the router.deis.io/nginx.ssl.hsts.enabled option), but be aware that this will implicitly trigger the router.deis.io/nginx.ssl.enforce option and cause your applications to permanently use HTTPS for all requests.

Depending on what distribution of Kubernetes you use and where you host it, installation of the router may automatically include an external (to Kubernetes) load balancer or similar mechanism for routing inbound traffic from beyond the cluster into the cluster to the router(s). For example, kube-aws and Google Container Engine both do this. On some other platforms-- Vagrant or bare metal, for instance-- this must either be accomplished manually or does not apply at all.

If a load balancer such as the one described above does exist (whether created automatically or manually) and if you intend on handling any long-running requests, the load balancer (or similar) may require some manual configuration to increase the idle connection timeout. Typically, this is most applicable to AWS and Elastic Load Balancers, but may apply in other cases as well. It does not apply to Google Container Engine, as the idle connection timeout cannot be configured there, but also works fine as-is.

If, for instance, router were installed on kube-aws, in conjunction with the rest of the Deis Workflow platform, this timeout should be increased to a recommended value of 1200 seconds. This will ensure the load balancer does not hang up on the client during long-running operations like an application deployment. Directions for this can be found here.

If using a Kubernetes distribution or underlying infrastructure that does not support the automated provisioning of a front-facing load balancer, operators will wish to manually configure a load balancer (or use other tricks) to route inbound traffic from beyond the cluster into the cluster to the platform's own router(s). There are many ways to accomplish this. The remainder of this section discusses three general options for accomplishing this.

This manually replicates the configuration that would be achieved automatically with some distributions on some infrastructure providers, as discussed above.

First, determine the "node ports" for the deis-router service:

$ kubectl describe service deis-router --namespace=deis

This will yield output similar to the following:

...
Port:			http	80/TCP
NodePort:		http	32477/TCP
Endpoints:		10.2.80.11:80
Port:			https	443/TCP
NodePort:		https	32389/TCP
Endpoints:		10.2.80.11:443
Port:			builder	2222/TCP
NodePort:		builder	30729/TCP
Endpoints:		10.2.80.11:2222
Port:			healthz	9090/TCP
NodePort:		healthz	31061/TCP
Endpoints:		10.2.80.11:9090
...

The node ports shown above are high-numbered ports that are allocated on every Kubernetes worker node for use by the router service. The kube-proxy component on every Kubernetes node will listen on these ports and proxy traffic through to the corresponding port within an "endpoint--" that is, a pod running the Deis router.

If manually creating a load balancer, configure the load balancer to have all Kubernetes worker nodes in the back-end pool, and listen on ports 80, 443, and 2222 (port 9090 can be ignored). Each of these listeners should proxy inbound traffic to the corresponding node ports on the worker nodes. Ports 80 and 443 may use either HTTP/S or TCP as protocols. Port 2222 must use TCP.

With this configuration, the path a request takes from the end-user to an application pod is as follows:

user agent (browser) --> front-facing load balancer --> kube-proxy on _any_ Kubernetes worker node --> _any_ Deis router pod --> kube-proxy on that same node --> _any_ application pod

Option 2 differs only slightly from option 1, but is more efficient. As such, even operators who had a front-facing load balancer automatically provisioned on their infrastructure by Kubernetes might consider manually reconfiguring that load balancer as follows.

Deis router pods will listen on host ports 80, 443, 2222, and 9090 wherever they run. (They will not run on any worker nodes where all of these four ports are not available.) Taking advantage of this, an operator may completely dismiss the node ports discussed in option 1. The load balancer can be configured to have all Kubernetes worker nodes in the back-end pool, and listen on ports 80, 443, and 2222. Each of these listeners should proxy inbound traffic to the same ports on the worker nodes. Ports 80 and 443 may use either HTTP/S or TCP as protocols. Port 2222 must use TCP.

Additionally, a health check must be configured using the HTTP protocol, port 9090, and the /healthz endpoint. With such a health check in place, only nodes that are actually hosting a router pods will pass and be included in the load balancer's pool of active back end instances.

With this configuration, the path a request takes from the end-user to an application pod is as follows:

user agent (browser) --> front-facing load balancer --> a Deis router pod --> kube-proxy on that same node --> _any_ application pod

Option 3 is similar to option 2, but does not actually utilize a load balancer at all. Instead, a DNS A record may be created that lists the public IP addresses of all Kubernetes worker nodes. This will leverage DNS round-robining to direct requests to all nodes. To guarantee all nodes can adequately route incoming traffic, the Deis router component should be scaled out by increasing the number of replicas specified in the replication controller to match the number of worker nodes. Anti-affinity should ensure exactly one router pod runs per worker node.

This configuration is not suitable for production. The primary use case for this configuration is demonstrating or evaluating Deis Workflow on bare metal Kubernetes clusters without incurring the effort to configure an actual front-facing load balancer.

The Helm Classic charts available for installing router (either with or without the rest of Deis Workflow) are intended to get users up and running as quickly as possible. As such, the charts do not strictly require any editing prior to installation in order to successfully bootstrap a cluster. However, there are some useful customizations that should be applied for use in production environments:

• Specify a platform domain. Without a platform domain specified, any routable service specifying one or more non-fully-qualified domain names (not containing any . character) among its router.deis.io/domains will be matched using a regular expression of the form ^{{ $domain }}\.(?<domain>.+)$ where {{ $domain }} resolves to the non-fully-qualified domain name. By way of example, the idiosyncrasy that this exposes is that traffic bound for the foo subdomain of any domain would be routed to an application that lists the non-fully-qualified domain name foo among its router.deis.io/domains. While this behavior is not innately wrong, it may not be desirable. To circumvent this, specify a platform domain. This will cause routable services specifying one or more non-fully-qualified domain names to be matched, explicitly, as subdomains of the platform domain. Apart from remediating this minor idiosyncrasy, this is required in order to properly utilize a wildcard SSL certificate and may also result in a very modest performance improvement.

• Do you need to use SSL to secure the platform domain?

• If using SSL, generate and provide your own dhparam. A dhparam is a secret key used in Diffie Hellman key exchange during the SSL handshake in order to help ensure perfect forward secrecy. The Helm Classic charts available for installing router (either with or without the rest of Deis Workflow) already include a dhparam, but recall that dhparams are intended to be secret. The dhparam included in the charts is marginally preferable to using Nginx's default dhparam only because it is lesser-known, but it is still publicly available in the deis/charts repository. As such, users wishing to run the router in production and use SSL are best off generating their own dhparam. After being generated, it should be base64 encoded and included as the value of the dhparam key in a Kubernetes secret named deis-router-dhparam in the same namespace as the router itself.

  For example, to generate and base64 encode the dhparam on a Mac:

  $ openssl dhparam -out dhparam.pem 1024
  $ base64 dhparam.pem
  

  To generate an even stronger key, use 2048 bits, but note that generating such a key will take a very long time-- possibly hours.

  Include the base64 encoded dhparam in a secret:

  apiVersion: v1
  kind: Secret
  metadata:
      name: deis-router-dhparam
      namespace: deis
      labels:
        heritage: deis
  type: Opaque
  data:
      dhparam: <base64 encoded dhparam>
  

• If using SSL, do you need to enforce the use of SSL?

• If using SSL, do you need to enable strict transport security?

• If using SSL, what grade does Qualys SSL Labs give you?

• Should your router define and enforce a default whitelist? This may be advisable for routers governing ingress to a cluster that hosts applications intended for a limited audience-- e.g. applications for internal use within an organization.

• Do you need to scale the router? For greater availability, it's desirable to run more than one instance of the router. How many can only be informed by stress/performance testing the applications in your cluster. To increase the number of router instances from the default of one, increase the number of replicas specified by the deis-router replication controller. Do not specify a number of replicas greater than the number of worker nodes in your Kubernetes cluster.

Copyright 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Engine Yard, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.