Traefik Ingress Controller

Unlike grumpy ol' man Nginx , Traefik, a microservice-friendly reverse proxy, is relatively fresh in the "cloud-native" space, having been "born" in the same year that Kubernetes was launched.

Traefik natively includes some features which Nginx lacks:

• Ability to use cross-namespace TLS certificates (this may be accidental, but it totally works currently)
• An elegant "middleware" implementation allowing certain requests to pass through additional layers of authentication
• A beautiful dashboard

Preparation

Namespace

We need a namespace to deploy our HelmRelease and associated ConfigMaps into. Per the flux design, I create this example yaml in my flux repo:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: traefik

HelmRepository

Next, we need to define a HelmRepository (a repository of helm charts), to which we'll refer when we create the HelmRelease. We only need to do this once per-repository. In this case, we're using the official Traefik helm chart, so per the flux design, I create this example yaml in my flux repo:

apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: HelmRepository
metadata:
  name: traefik
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 15m
  url: https://helm.traefik.io/traefik

Kustomization

Now that the "global" elements of this deployment (Namespace and HelmRepository) have been defined, we do some "flux-ception", and go one layer deeper, adding another Kustomization, telling flux to deploy any YAMLs found in the repo at /traefik. I create this example Kustomization in my flux repo:

apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
  name: traefik
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 15m
  path: ./traefik
  prune: true # remove any elements later removed from the above path
  timeout: 2m # if not set, this defaults to interval duration, which is 1h
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: flux-system
  healthChecks:
    - apiVersion: apps/v1
      kind: Deployment
      name: traefik
      namespace: traefik

ConfigMap

Now we're into the traefik-specific YAMLs. First, we create a ConfigMap, containing the entire contents of the helm chart's values.yaml. Paste the values into a values.yaml key as illustrated below, indented 4 spaces (since they're "encapsulated" within the ConfigMap YAML). I create this example yaml in my flux repo:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: traefik-helm-chart-value-overrides
  namespace: traefik
data:
  values.yaml: |-  # (1)!
    # <upstream values go here>

1. Paste in the contents of the upstream values.yaml here, intended 4 spaces, and then change the values you need as illustrated below.

Then work your way through the values you pasted, and change any which are specific to your configuration. It may not be necessary to change anything.

HelmRelease

Lastly, having set the scene above, we define the HelmRelease which will actually deploy traefik into the cluster, with the config and extra ConfigMap we defined above. I save this in my flux repo as traefik/helmrelease-traefik.yaml:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2beta1
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: traefik
  namespace: traefik
spec:
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: traefik
      version: 10.x # (1)!
      sourceRef:
        kind: HelmRepository
        name: traefik
        namespace: flux-system
  interval: 15m
  timeout: 5m
  releaseName: traefik
  valuesFrom:
  - kind: ConfigMap
    name: traefik-helm-chart-value-overrides
    valuesKey: values.yaml # This is the default, but best to be explicit for clarity

1. Use 9.x for Kubernetes versions older than 1.22, as described here.

Deploy traefik

Having committed the above to your flux repository, you should shortly see a traefik kustomization, and in the traefik namespace, traefik pods happily running:

demo@shredder:~$ kubectl get pods -n traefik
NAME                                                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
traefik-5b849b4fbd-svbxk                   1/1     Running   0          24h
traefik-5b849b4fbd-xt7vc                   1/1     Running   0          24h
demo@shredder:~$

How do I know it's working?

Test Service

By default, the chart will deploy Traefik in LoadBalancer mode. When you use kubectl to display the service (kubectl get services -n traefik), you'll see the external IP displayed:

demo@shredder:~$ kubectl get services -n traefik
NAME                                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)                      AGE
traefik                   LoadBalancer   10.152.183.162   172.168.209.1    80:30756/TCP,443:30462/TCP   24h
demo@shredder:~$

Pointing your web browser to the external IP displayed should result in a 404 page. Congratulations, you have external access to the Traefik ingress controller! 🥳

Test Ingress

Still, you didn't deploy an ingress controller to look at 404 pages! If you used my template repository to start off your flux deployment strategy, then the podinfo helm chart has already been deployed. By default, the podinfo configmap doesn't deploy an Ingress, but you can change this using the magic of GitOps... 🪄

Edit your podinfo helmrelease configmap (/podinfo/configmap-podinfo-helm-chart-value-overrides.yaml), and change ingress.enabled to true, and set the host name to match your local domain name (already configured using External DNS):

    ingress:
      enabled: false
      className: ""
      annotations: {}
        # kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
        # kubernetes.io/tls-acme: "true"
      hosts:
        - host: podinfo.local

To:

    ingress:
      enabled: true
      className: ""
      annotations: {}
        # kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
        # kubernetes.io/tls-acme: "true"
      hosts:
        - host: podinfo.<your domain name>

Commit your changes, wait for a reconciliation, and run kubectl get ingress -n podinfo. You should see an ingress created matching the host defined above, and the ADDRESS value should match the service address of the traefik service.

root@cn1:~# kubectl get ingress -A
NAMESPACE               NAME                                 CLASS    HOSTS                                  ADDRESS        PORTS     AGE
podinfo                 podinfo                              <none>   podinfo.example.com                    172.168.209.1   80, 443   91d

Now assuming your DNS is correct, you should be able to point your browser to the hostname you chose, and see the beautiful podinfo page! 🥳🥳

Test SSL

Ha, but we're not done yet! We have exposed a service via our load balancer, we've exposed a route to a service via an Ingress, but let's get rid of that nasty "insecure" message in the browser when using HTTPS...

Since you setup SSL certificates, including secret-replicator, you should end up with a letsencrypt-wildcard-cert secret in every namespace, including podinfo.

So once again, alter the podinfo ConfigMap to change this:

      tls: []
      #  - secretName: chart-example-tls
      #    hosts:
      #      - chart-example.local

To this:

      tls:
       - secretName: letsencrypt-wildcard-cert
         hosts:
           - podinfo.<your domain name>

Commit your changes, wait for the reconciliation, and the next time you point your browser at your ingress, you should get a beautiful, valid, officially-signed SSL certificate¹! 🥳🥳🥳

Troubleshooting

Are things not working as expected? Watch the traefik's logs with kubectl logs -n traefik -l app.kubernetes.io/name=traefik -f.

Chef's notes 📓

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