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How to Setup Nginx Ingress Controller On Kubernetes – Detailed Guide

Set Up Nginx Ingress Controller On Kubernetes
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In this comprehensive ingress guide, you will learn how to setup Nginx ingress controller on Kubernetes and configure ingress using DNS.

If you want to understand how Kubernetes ingress work, read my Kubernetes Ingress Tutorial. for beginners. I have explained all the core ingress concepts including how an ingress object works with an ingress controller.

Table of Contents
  1. Ingress & Nginx Ingress controller Architecture
  2. Prerequisites
  3. Nginx Ingress Controller Kubernetes Manifests
  4. Deploy Nginx Ingress Controller With Manifests
    1. Need for Admission Controller & Validating Webhook
    2. Create a Namespace
    3. Create Admission Controller Roles & Service Account
    4. Create Validating Webhook Configuration
    5. Deploy Jobs To Update Webhook Certificates
    6. Create Ingress Controller Roles & Service Account
    7. Create Configmap
    8. Create Ingress Controller & Admission Controller Services
    9. Create Ingress Controller Deployment
  5. Nginx Ingress Controller Helm Deployment
  6. Map a Domain Name To Ingress Loadbalancer IP
    1. Single DNS Mapping
    2. Wildcard DNS Mapping
  7. Deploy a Demo Application
  8. Create Ingress Object for Application
  9. TLS With Nginx Ingress
  10. Conclusion

There are two Nginx ingress controllers.

  1. Nginx ingress controller by kubernetes community
  2. Nginx ingress controller by Nginx Inc

We will be using the kubernetes community Nginx controller.

Note: Today, you can get 25% discount on Kubernetes CKA, CKAD, CKS, KCNA certifications using code  DCUBE20  at  kube.promo/latest

Ingress & Nginx Ingress controller Architecture

Here is a high-level architecture of Kubernetes ingress using the Nginx ingress controller. In this guide, we will learn by building the setup in the architecture.

(Note: Click the image to view in high resolution)

Nginx ingress controller deployment architecture

Prerequisites

  1. A Kubernetes cluster
  2. kubectl utility installed and authenticated to kubernetes cluster.
  3. Admin access to kubernetes cluster.
  4. A valid domain to point to ingress controller Load Balancer IP. (Optional)

If you are on google cloud, assign admin permissions to your account to enable cluster roles.

ACCOUNT=$(gcloud info --format='value(config.account)')
kubectl create clusterrolebinding owner-cluster-admin-binding \
    --clusterrole cluster-admin \
    --user $ACCOUNT

Nginx Ingress Controller Kubernetes Manifests

All the kubernetes manifests used in this tutorial are hosted on the Github repository. Clone it and use it for deployment. These manifests are taken from the official Nginx community repo.

git clone https://github.com/scriptcamp/nginx-ingress-controller.git

First, we will understand all the associated Kubernetes objects by deploying Nginx controllers using YAML manifests. Once we have the understanding, we will deploy it using the Helm chart.

Also, here is the one-liner to deploy all the objects. 

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.1.1/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

Note: If you want to understand all the Nginx ingress controllers objects and how they relate to each other, I suggest you create objects individually from the repo. Once you know how it works, you can use a single manifest or a helm chart to deploy it.

Deploy Nginx Ingress Controller With Manifests

We need to deploy the following objects to have a working Nginx controller.

  1. ingress-nginx namespace
  2. Service account/Roles/ClusterRoles for Nginx admission controller
  3. Validating webhook Configuration
  4. Jobs to create/update Webhook CA bundles
  5. Service account/Roles/ClusterRoles of Nginx controller deployment
  6. Nginx controller configmap
  7. Services for nginx controller & admission controller
  8. Ingress controller deployment

Note: You can create all the manifests yourself or use the Github repo. However, I highly suggest you go through every manifest and understand what you are deploying.

Need for Admission Controller & Validating Webhook

Kubernetes Admission Controller is a small piece of code to validate or update Kubernetes objects before creating them. In this case, it’s an admission controller to validate the ingress objects. In this case, the Admission Controller code is part of the Nginx controller which listens on port 8443.

We can deploy ingress objects with the wrong configuration without an admission controller. However, it breaks all the ingress rules associated with the ingress controller.

With the admission controller in place, we can ensure that the ingress object we create has configurations and doesn’t break routing rules.

Here is how admission controllers work for Nginx.

nginx ingress controller validation admission controller explained.
  1. When you deploy an ingress YAML, the Validation admission intercepts the request.
  2. Kubernetes API then sends the ingress object to the validation admission controller service endpoint based on admission webhook endpoints.
  3. Service sends the request to the Nginx deployment on port 8443 for validating the ingress object.
  4. The admission controller then sends a response to the k8s API.
  5. If it is a valid response, the API will create the ingress object.

Now let’s get started by creating Kubernetes objects for the ingress controller.

Create a Namespace

We will deploy all the Nginx controller objects in the ingress-nginx namespace.

Let’s create the namespace.

kubectl create ns ingress-nginx

Create Admission Controller Roles & Service Account

We need a Role and ClusterRole with required permissions and bind to ingress-nginx-admission service account.

Create a file named admission-service-account.yaml and copy the following contents.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
  namespace: ingress-nginx

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  annotations:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
  namespace: ingress-nginx
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - secrets
  verbs:
  - get
  - create

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
  namespace: ingress-nginx
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Role
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
  namespace: ingress-nginx


---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - admissionregistration.k8s.io
  resources:
  - validatingwebhookconfigurations
  verbs:
  - get
  - update

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
  namespace: ingress-nginx

Deploy the manifest.

kubectl apply -f admission-service-account.yaml

Create Validating Webhook Configuration

Create a file named validating-webhook.yaml and copy the following contents.

---
apiVersion: admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1
kind: ValidatingWebhookConfiguration
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission
webhooks:
- admissionReviewVersions:
  - v1
  clientConfig:
    service:
      name: ingress-nginx-controller-admission
      namespace: ingress-nginx
      path: /networking/v1/ingresses
  failurePolicy: Fail
  matchPolicy: Equivalent
  name: validate.nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io
  rules:
  - apiGroups:
    - networking.k8s.io
    apiVersions:
    - v1
    operations:
    - CREATE
    - UPDATE
    resources:
    - ingresses
  sideEffects: None

Create the ValidatingWebhookConfiguration

kubectl apply -f validating-webhook.yaml

Deploy Jobs To Update Webhook Certificates

The ValidatingWebhookConfiguration works only over HTTPS. So it needs a CA bundle.

We use kube-webhook-certgen to generate a CA cert bundle with the first job. The generated CA certs are stored in a secret named ingress-nginx-admission

The second job patches the ValidatingWebhookConfiguration object with the CA bundle.

Create a file named jobs.yaml and copy the following contents.


---
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission-create
  namespace: ingress-nginx
spec:
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
        app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
        app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
      name: ingress-nginx-admission-create
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - create
        - --host=ingress-nginx-controller-admission,ingress-nginx-controller-admission.$(POD_NAMESPACE).svc
        - --namespace=$(POD_NAMESPACE)
        - --secret-name=ingress-nginx-admission
        env:
        - name: POD_NAMESPACE
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        image: k8s.gcr.io/ingress-nginx/kube-webhook-certgen:v1.1.1
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: create
        securityContext:
          allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: linux
      restartPolicy: OnFailure
      securityContext:
        runAsNonRoot: true
        runAsUser: 2000
      serviceAccountName: ingress-nginx-admission
---
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-admission-patch
  namespace: ingress-nginx
spec:
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
        app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
        app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
      name: ingress-nginx-admission-patch
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - patch
        - --webhook-name=ingress-nginx-admission
        - --namespace=$(POD_NAMESPACE)
        - --patch-mutating=false
        - --secret-name=ingress-nginx-admission
        - --patch-failure-policy=Fail
        env:
        - name: POD_NAMESPACE
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        image: k8s.gcr.io/ingress-nginx/kube-webhook-certgen:v1.1.1
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: patch
        securityContext:
          allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: linux
      restartPolicy: OnFailure
      securityContext:
        runAsNonRoot: true
        runAsUser: 2000
      serviceAccountName: ingress-nginx-admission

Once the jobs are executed, you can describe the ValidatingWebhookConfigurationand, you will see the patched bundle.

kubectl describe ValidatingWebhookConfiguration ingress-nginx-admission

Create Ingress Controller Roles & Service Account

Create a file named ingress-service-account.yaml and copy the following contents.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: admission-webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx
  namespace: ingress-nginx

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx
  namespace: ingress-nginx
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - namespaces
  verbs:
  - get
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - configmaps
  - pods
  - secrets
  - endpoints
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - services
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - ingresses
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - ingresses/status
  verbs:
  - update
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - ingressclasses
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resourceNames:
  - ingress-controller-leader
  resources:
  - configmaps
  verbs:
  - get
  - update
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - configmaps
  verbs:
  - create
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - events
  verbs:
  - create
  - patch

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx
  namespace: ingress-nginx
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Role
  name: ingress-nginx
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: ingress-nginx
  namespace: ingress-nginx

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - configmaps
  - endpoints
  - nodes
  - pods
  - secrets
  - namespaces
  verbs:
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - nodes
  verbs:
  - get
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - services
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - ingresses
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - events
  verbs:
  - create
  - patch
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - ingresses/status
  verbs:
  - update
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - ingressclasses
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: ingress-nginx
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: ingress-nginx
  namespace: ingress-nginx

Deploy the manifest.

 kubectl apply -f ingress-service-account.yaml

Create Configmap

With this configmap, you can customize the Nginx settings. For example, you can set custom headers and most of the Nginx settings. Please refer to the official community documentation for all the supported configurations.

Create a file named configmap.yaml and copy the following contents.

---
apiVersion: v1
data:
  allow-snippet-annotations: "true"
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-controller
  namespace: ingress-nginx

Create the configmap.

kubectl apply -f configmap.yaml

Create Ingress Controller & Admission Controller Services

Create a file named services.yaml and copy the following contents.

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-controller
  namespace: ingress-nginx
spec:
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ipFamilies:
  - IPv4
  ipFamilyPolicy: SingleStack
  ports:
  - appProtocol: http
    name: http
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: http
  - appProtocol: https
    name: https
    port: 443
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: https
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  type: LoadBalancer
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-controller-admission
  namespace: ingress-nginx
spec:
  ports:
  - appProtocol: https
    name: https-webhook
    port: 443
    targetPort: webhook
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  type: ClusterIP

Create the services.

kubectl apply -f services.yaml

ingress-nginx-controller creates a Loadbalancer in the respective cloud platform you are deploying.

You can get the load balancer IP/DNS using the following command.

kubectl --namespace ingress-nginx get services -o wide -w ingress-nginx-controller

Note: For each cloud provider there are specific annotations you can use to map static IP address and other configs to the Loadbalancer. Check out GCP annotations here and AWS annoatations here.

Create Ingress Controller Deployment

Create a file named deployment.yaml and copy the following contents.

---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
    app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  name: ingress-nginx-controller
  namespace: ingress-nginx
spec:
  minReadySeconds: 0
  revisionHistoryLimit: 10
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
      app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
      app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
        app.kubernetes.io/instance: ingress-nginx
        app.kubernetes.io/name: ingress-nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - /nginx-ingress-controller
        - --publish-service=$(POD_NAMESPACE)/ingress-nginx-controller
        - --election-id=ingress-controller-leader
        - --controller-class=k8s.io/ingress-nginx
        - --configmap=$(POD_NAMESPACE)/ingress-nginx-controller
        - --validating-webhook=:8443
        - --validating-webhook-certificate=/usr/local/certificates/cert
        - --validating-webhook-key=/usr/local/certificates/key
        env:
        - name: POD_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.name
        - name: POD_NAMESPACE
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        - name: LD_PRELOAD
          value: /usr/local/lib/libmimalloc.so
        image: k8s.gcr.io/ingress-nginx/controller:v1.1.1
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        lifecycle:
          preStop:
            exec:
              command:
              - /wait-shutdown
        livenessProbe:
          failureThreshold: 5
          httpGet:
            path: /healthz
            port: 10254
            scheme: HTTP
          initialDelaySeconds: 10
          periodSeconds: 10
          successThreshold: 1
          timeoutSeconds: 1
        name: controller
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: http
          protocol: TCP
        - containerPort: 443
          name: https
          protocol: TCP
        - containerPort: 8443
          name: webhook
          protocol: TCP
        readinessProbe:
          failureThreshold: 3
          httpGet:
            path: /healthz
            port: 10254
            scheme: HTTP
          initialDelaySeconds: 10
          periodSeconds: 10
          successThreshold: 1
          timeoutSeconds: 1
        resources:
          requests:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 90Mi
        securityContext:
          allowPrivilegeEscalation: true
          capabilities:
            add:
            - NET_BIND_SERVICE
            drop:
            - ALL
          runAsUser: 101
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /usr/local/certificates/
          name: webhook-cert
          readOnly: true
      dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
      nodeSelector:
        kubernetes.io/os: linux
      serviceAccountName: ingress-nginx
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 300
      volumes:
      - name: webhook-cert
        secret:
          secretName: ingress-nginx-admission

Create the deployment.

kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

To ensure that deployment is working, check the pod status.

kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx

Nginx Ingress Controller Helm Deployment

If you are a Helm user, you can deploy the ingress controller using the community helm chart. ValidatingWebhookConfiguration is disabled by default in values.yaml.

Deploy the helm chart. It will create the namespace ingress-nginx if not present.

helm upgrade --install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx \
  --repo https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx \
  --namespace ingress-nginx --create-namespace

Verify the helm release.

helm list -n ingress-nginx

To clean up the resources, uninstall the release.

 helm uninstall ingress-nginx -n ingress-nginx

Map a Domain Name To Ingress Loadbalancer IP

The primary goal of Ingress is to receive external traffic to services running on Kubernetes. Ideally in projects, a DNS would be mapped to the ingress controller Loadbalancer IP.

This can be done via the respective DNS provider with the domain name you own.

Info: For internet-facing apps, it will be public DNS pointing to the public IP of the load balancer. If it’s an internal app, it will be an organization’s private DNS mapped to a private load balancer IP.

Single DNS Mapping

You can map a single domain directly as an A record to the load balancer IP. Using this you can have only one domain for the ingress controller and multiple path-based traffic routing.

For example,

www.example.com --> Loadbalancer IP

You can also have path-based routing using this model.

Few examples,

http://www.example.com/app1
http://www.example.com/app2
http://www.example.com/app1/api
http://www.example.com/app2/api

Wildcard DNS Mapping

If you map a wildcard DNS to the load balancer, you can have dynamic DNS endpoints through ingress.

Once you add the wildcard entry in the DNS records, you need to mention the required DNS in the ingress object and the Nginx ingress controller will take care of routing it to the required service endpoint.

For example, check the following two mappings. 

*.example.com --> Loadbalancer IP
*.apps.example.com --> Loadbalancer IP

This way you can have multiple dynamic subdomains through a single ingress controller and each DNS can have its own path-based routing.

Few examples,

#URL one

http://demo1.example.com/api
http://demo1.example.com/api/v1
http://demo1.example.com/api/v2

#app specific urls

http://grafana.apps.example.com
http://prometheus.apps.example.com

#URL two

http://demo2.apps.example.com/api
http://demo2.apps.example.com/api/v1
http://demo2.apps.example.com/api/v2

For demo purposes, I have mapped a wildcard DNS to the LoadBalancer IP. Based on your DNS provider, you can add the DNS record.

The following image shows the DNS records I used for this blog demo. I used EKS so instead of Loadnbalacer IP, I have a DNS of network load balancer endpoint which will be a CNAME. In the case of GKE, you will get an IP and in that case, you need to create an A record.

nginx ingress controller DNS mapping

Deploy a Demo Application

For testing ingress, we will deploy a demo application and add a ClusterIp service to it. This application will be accessible only within the cluster without ingress.

Step 1: Create a namespace named dev

kubectl create namespace dev

Step 2: Create a file named hello-app.yaml

Step 3: Copy the following contents and save the file.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: hello-app
  namespace: dev
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: hello
  replicas: 3
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: hello
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: hello
        image: "gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:2.0"

Step 4: Create the deployment using kubectl

kubectl create -f hello-app.yaml

Check the deployment status.

kubectl get deployments -n dev

Step 5: Create a file named hello-app-service.yaml

Step 6: Copy the following contents and save the file.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: hello-service
  namespace: dev
  labels:
    app: hello
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  selector:
    app: hello
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
    protocol: TCP

Step 7: Create the service using kubectl.

kubectl create -f hello-app-service.yaml

Create Ingress Object for Application

Now let’s create an ingress object to access our hello app using a DNS. An ingress object is nothing but a setup of routing rules.

If you are wondering how the ingress object is connected to the Nginx controller, the ingress controller pod connects to the Ingress API to check for rules and it updates its nginx.conf accordingly.

Since I have wildcard DNS mapped (*.apps.mlopshub.com) with the DNS provider, I will use demo.apps.mlopshub.com to point to the hello app service.

Step 1: Create a file named ingress.yaml

Step 2: Copy the following contents and save the file.

Replace demo.apps.mlopshub.com with your domain name. Also, we are creating this ingress object in the dev namespace as the hello app is running in the dev namespace.

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: test-ingress
  namespace: dev
spec:
  ingressClassName: nginx
  rules:
  - host: "demo.apps.mlopshub.com"
    http:
      paths:
        - pathType: Prefix
          path: "/"
          backend:
            service:
              name: hello-service
              port:
                number: 80

Step 3: Describe created ingress object created to check the configurations.

kubectl describe ingress  -n dev

Now if I try to access demo.apps.mlopshub.com  domain, I will be able to access the hello app as shown below. (You should replace it with your domain name)

image 1

TLS With Nginx Ingress

You can configure TLS certificates with each ingress object. The TLS gets terminated at the ingress controller level.

The following image shows the ingress TLS config. The TLS certificate needs to be added as a secret object.

Nginx controller SSL/TLS certificates

I have written a detailed article on Ingress TLS configuration.

👉 Take a look at the guide to configure ingress TLS on Kubernetes.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learned how to set up the Nginx ingress controller.

It is very easy to get started. However, for project implementation ensure that you got through all Nginx configurations and tune them according to the requirements.

With the Nginx controller configmap, you can configure all the Nginx settings without redeploying the controller.

I hope you enjoyed this guide on Nginx ingress controller.

Let me know your thoughts and queries in the comment section.

Also, if you are learning Kubernetes, check out my 30+ comprehensive Kubernetes tutorials.

Bibin Wilson is a cloud and DevOps consultant with over 10 years of IT experience. He has extensive hands-on experience with public cloud platforms, cloud hosting, Kubernetes and OpenShift deployments in production. He has authored over 300 tech tutorials, providing valuable insights to the DevOps community. His courses on techiescamp.com offer practical guidance and real-world examples for professionals aiming to excel in cloud, DevOps, and infrastructure automation.

29 comments

  1. I see quite a bit of comments on failing with LB external IP in pending state. This is the result of use of the kubeadm built clusters that do not have LB functionality at all. The same thing happens in EKS Anywhere – no LB. I recently stumbled over kubeadm build addition that adds LB functionality – https://metallb.universe.tf. I managed to complete your setup with wild card DNS access to the hello-world app using that metallb. Thanks so much for a great article!

    Reply

  2. THANK YOU. Tried several other tutorials and finally something I was able to follow all the way through. Running this on localhost with rancher desktop to learn.

    Reply

  3. Great article Bibin! I followed all the steps mentioned. Only difference in my environment is I use microk8s installed in a Azure VM, and not anything like AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service).

    That being the case, when I create the service in ingress-nginx namespace, external IPs are pending. I did some reading in SO, looks like in microk8s we will not an external IP. Can you guide as to how to handle this situation? Many thanks.

    Reply

    1. Hi Sam,

      I am not aware of microK8s implementation. Will have to practically try it 🙂 You can try the microK8s community. Would like to know the solution if you find any.

      Reply

  4. Jo again 🙂

    I’m puzzled with “LoadBalancer IP” as it is requiring external one we didn’t define along the tuto. So I understand all DNS mapping but my service for loadbalancer is still waiting in “pending” state for External-ip

    Any clarification here will be helpfull.

    cheers

    Reply

    1. Hi Jo,

      If the load balancer provisioning is pending state, you need to check the permissions. If the load balancer is provided, you can use the IP in DNS.

      Ideally, when you deploy a service with type Loadbalancer, it will deploy a Loadbalancer in the respect cloud platform and its IP will be associated with the service.

      Reply

  5. Hello

    Quite good but as many many tuto, Some missing steps (not the worst one btw).

    In : Create Ingress Object for Application
    after step 2, what we do with “ingress yaml” ?
    Step 3 give “No resources found in dev namespace” so I tried:
    #> kubectl create -f ingress.yaml
    and got below error message

    Error from server (InternalError): error when creating “ingress.yaml”: Internal error occurred: failed calling webhook “validate.nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io”: failed to call webhook: Post “https://ingress-nginx-controller-admission.ingress-nginx.svc:443/networking/v1/ingresses?timeout=10s”: dial tcp 10.98.37.172:443: connect: connection refused

    So at this stage, don’t know if it works as expected.
    Any help possible ? Yes i’m newbie and still need some clarification at this stage of my learning path;

    Reply

  7. In the Ingress Object, this property:

    ingressClassName: nginx

    What is “ngnix” in reference to? What ties this Ingress Object to the Ingress Controller that is created?

    Reply

    1. Hi CKA,

      ingressClassName: nginx is the default ingress class Name. It ties the ingress controllers to the object.If don’t specify the class, the ingress object refers to the default ingress class, ie nginx.

      If you want to have multiple Nginx ingress controllers, you need to create a ingressclass object that has the same name as --controller-class parameters referenced in the controller deployment.

      I will add the section and object to the blog. Thanks for the comment.

      Reply

  9. minikube start
    minikube v1.25.2 on Ubuntu 22.04
    …
    Preparing Kubernetes v1.23.3 on Docker 20.10.12 …
    …
    Done!

    kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.1.1/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

    minikube addons enable ingress

    Error:
    Exiting due to MK_ADDON_ENABLE: run callbacks: running callbacks: [sudo KUBECONFIG=/var/lib/minikube/kubeconfig /var/lib/minikube/binaries/v1.23.3/kubectl apply -f /etc/kubernetes/addons/ingress-deploy.yaml: Process exited with status 1

    p.s. AWS on EKS

    Reply

  10. Thanks for the article.
    It is still unclear how ingress controller connected to application in dev namespace. When I’m trying to reproduce steps in article I get 404 from ingress load balancer.

    Reply

    1. HI Lans,

      The controller can be in any namespace. But the ingress object we create should be in the same namespace where were have the application.

      How are you trying to access the endpoint? do you have a DNS configured? If you can provide you setup details, i can help

      Reply

  14. I have followed the same steps to configure the nginx ingress controller and service type loadbalancer, which created the ELB at aws. But when i try to access from ELB IP, i am getting ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE on my browser. Please help.

    Reply

  15. How do I know which one is my domain ?
    I deployed the image to aws ecr , and the cluster is also deployed at aws.
    Some help would be highly appreciated since I’ve been stuck at that stage for a ridiculously long time

    Reply

        1. Looks like the URL has changed..Updated the latest URL. 

          https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/blob/master/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

          Please try and let us know.

          Reply
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