Using Kubernetes external load balancer feature¶
In a Kubernetes cluster, all masters and minions are connected to a private Neutron subnet, which in turn is connected by a router to the public network. This allows the nodes to access each other and the external internet.
All Kubernetes pods and services created in the cluster are connected to a private container network which by default is Flannel, an overlay network that runs on top of the Neutron private subnet. The pods and services are assigned IP addresses from this container network and they can access each other and the external internet. However, these IP addresses are not accessible from an external network.
To publish a service endpoint externally so that the service can be accessed from the external network, Kubernetes provides the external load balancer feature. This is done by simply specifying the attribute “type: LoadBalancer” in the service manifest. When the service is created, Kubernetes will add an external load balancer in front of the service so that the service will have an external IP address in addition to the internal IP address on the container network. The service endpoint can then be accessed with this external IP address. Refer to the Kubernetes guide for more details:
http://kubernetes.io/v1.0/docs/user-guide/services.html#external-services
A Kubernetes cluster deployed by Magnum will have all the necessary configuration required for the external load balancer. This document describes how to use this feature.
Steps for the cluster administrator¶
Because the Kubernetes master needs to interface with OpenStack to create and manage the Neutron load balancer, we need to provide a credential for Kubernetes to use.
In the current implementation, the cluster administrator needs to manually perform this step. We are looking into several ways to let Magnum automate this step in a secure manner. This means that after the Kubernetes cluster is initially deployed, the load balancer support is disabled. If the administrator does not want to enable this feature, no further action is required. All the services will be created normally; services that specify the load balancer will also be created successfully, but a load balancer will not be created.
Note that different versions of Kubernetes require different versions of Neutron LBaaS plugin running on the OpenStack instance:
============================ ==============================
Kubernetes Version on Master Neutron LBaaS Version Required
============================ ==============================
1.2 LBaaS v1
1.3 or later LBaaS v2
============================ ==============================
Before enabling the Kubernetes load balancer feature, confirm that the OpenStack instance is running the required version of Neutron LBaaS plugin. To determine if your OpenStack instance is running LBaaS v1, try running the following command from your OpenStack control node:
neutron lb-pool-list
Or look for the following configuration in neutron.conf or neutron_lbaas.conf:
service_provider = LOADBALANCER:Haproxy:neutron_lbaas.services.loadbalancer.drivers.haproxy.plugin_driver.HaproxyOnHostPluginDriver:default
To determine if your OpenStack instance is running LBaaS v2, try running the following command from your OpenStack control node:
neutron lbaas-pool-list
Or look for the following configuration in neutron.conf or neutron_lbaas.conf:
service_plugins = neutron.plugins.services.agent_loadbalancer.plugin.LoadBalancerPluginv2
To configure LBaaS v1 or v2, refer to the Neutron documentation.
Before deleting the Kubernetes cluster, make sure to delete all the services that created load balancers. Because the Neutron objects created by Kubernetes are not managed by Heat, they will not be deleted by Heat and this will cause the cluster-delete operation to fail. If this occurs, delete the neutron objects manually (lb-pool, lb-vip, lb-member, lb-healthmonitor) and then run cluster-delete again.
Steps for the users¶
This feature requires the OpenStack cloud provider to be enabled. To do so, enable the cinder support (–volume-driver cinder).
For the user, publishing the service endpoint externally involves the following 2 steps:
- Specify “type: LoadBalancer” in the service manifest
- After the service is created, associate a floating IP with the VIP of the load balancer pool.
The following example illustrates how to create an external endpoint for a pod running nginx.
Create a file (e.g nginx.yaml) describing a pod running nginx:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: nginx
labels:
app: nginx
spec:
containers:
- name: nginx
image: nginx
ports:
- containerPort: 80
Create a file (e.g nginx-service.yaml) describing a service for the nginx pod:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: nginxservice
labels:
app: nginx
spec:
ports:
- port: 80
targetPort: 80
protocol: TCP
selector:
app: nginx
type: LoadBalancer
Assuming that a Kubernetes cluster named k8sclusterv1 has been created, deploy the pod and service by the commands. Please refer to the quickstart guide on how to connect to Kubernetes running on the launched cluster.:
kubectl create -f nginx.yaml
kubectl create -f nginx-service.yaml
For more details on verifying the load balancer in OpenStack, refer to the following section on how it works.
Next, associate a floating IP to the load balancer. This can be done easily on Horizon by navigating to:
Compute -> Access & Security -> Floating IPs
Click on “Allocate IP To Project” and then on “Associate” for the new floating IP.
Alternatively, associating a floating IP can be done on the command line by allocating a floating IP, finding the port of the VIP, and associating the floating IP to the port. The commands shown below are for illustration purpose and assume that there is only one service with load balancer running in the cluster and no other load balancers exist except for those created for the cluster.
First create a floating IP on the public network:
neutron floatingip-create public
Created a new floatingip:
+---------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Field | Value |
+---------------------+--------------------------------------+
| fixed_ip_address | |
| floating_ip_address | 172.24.4.78 |
| floating_network_id | 4808eacb-e1a0-40aa-97b6-ecb745af2a4d |
| id | b170eb7a-41d0-4c00-9207-18ad1c30fecf |
| port_id | |
| router_id | |
| status | DOWN |
| tenant_id | 012722667dc64de6bf161556f49b8a62 |
+---------------------+--------------------------------------+
Note the floating IP 172.24.4.78 that has been allocated. The ID for this floating IP is shown above, but it can also be queried by:
FLOATING_ID=$(neutron floatingip-list | grep "172.24.4.78" | awk '{print $2}')
Next find the VIP for the load balancer:
VIP_ID=$(neutron lb-vip-list | grep TCP | grep -v pool | awk '{print $2}')
Find the port for this VIP:
PORT_ID=$(neutron lb-vip-show $VIP_ID | grep port_id | awk '{print $4}')
Finally associate the floating IP with the port of the VIP:
neutron floatingip-associate $FLOATING_ID $PORT_ID
The endpoint for nginx can now be accessed on a browser at this floating IP:
http://172.24.4.78:80
Alternatively, you can check for the nginx ‘welcome’ message by:
curl http://172.24.4.78:80
NOTE: it is not necessary to indicate port :80 here but it is shown to correlate with the port that was specified in the service manifest.
How it works¶
Kubernetes is designed to work with different Clouds such as Google Compute Engine (GCE), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and OpenStack; therefore, different load balancers need to be created on the particular Cloud for the services. This is done through a plugin for each Cloud and the OpenStack plugin was developed by Angus Lees:
https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/release-1.0/pkg/cloudprovider/openstack/openstack.go
When the Kubernetes components kube-apiserver and kube-controller-manager start up, they will use the credential provided to authenticate a client to interface with OpenStack.
When a service with load balancer is created, the plugin code will interface with Neutron in this sequence:
- Create lb-pool for the Kubernetes service
- Create lb-member for the minions
- Create lb-healthmonitor
- Create lb-vip on the private network of the Kubernetes cluster
These Neutron objects can be verified as follows. For the load balancer pool:
neutron lb-pool-list
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+----------+-------------+----------+----------------+--------+
| id | name | provider | lb_method | protocol | admin_state_up | status |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+----------+-------------+----------+----------------+--------+
| 241357b3-2a8f-442e-b534-bde7cd6ba7e4 | a1f03e40f634011e59c9efa163eae8ab | haproxy | ROUND_ROBIN | TCP | True | ACTIVE |
| 82b39251-1455-4eb6-a81e-802b54c2df29 | k8sclusterv1-iypacicrskib-api_pool-fydshw7uvr7h | haproxy | ROUND_ROBIN | HTTP | True | ACTIVE |
| e59ea983-c6e8-4cec-975d-89ade6b59e50 | k8sclusterv1-iypacicrskib-etcd_pool-qbpo43ew2m3x | haproxy | ROUND_ROBIN | HTTP | True | ACTIVE |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+----------+-------------+----------+----------------+--------+
Note that 2 load balancers already exist to implement high availability for the cluster (api and ectd). The new load balancer for the Kubernetes service uses the TCP protocol and has a name assigned by Kubernetes.
For the members of the pool:
neutron lb-member-list
+--------------------------------------+----------+---------------+--------+----------------+--------+
| id | address | protocol_port | weight | admin_state_up | status |
+--------------------------------------+----------+---------------+--------+----------------+--------+
| 9ab7dcd7-6e10-4d9f-ba66-861f4d4d627c | 10.0.0.5 | 8080 | 1 | True | ACTIVE |
| b179c1ad-456d-44b2-bf83-9cdc127c2b27 | 10.0.0.5 | 2379 | 1 | True | ACTIVE |
| f222b60e-e4a9-4767-bc44-ffa66ec22afe | 10.0.0.6 | 31157 | 1 | True | ACTIVE |
+--------------------------------------+----------+---------------+--------+----------------+--------+
Again, 2 members already exist for high availability and they serve the master node at 10.0.0.5. The new member serves the minion at 10.0.0.6, which hosts the Kubernetes service.
For the monitor of the pool:
neutron lb-healthmonitor-list
+--------------------------------------+------+----------------+
| id | type | admin_state_up |
+--------------------------------------+------+----------------+
| 381d3d35-7912-40da-9dc9-b2322d5dda47 | TCP | True |
| 67f2ae8f-ffc6-4f86-ba5f-1a135f4af85c | TCP | True |
| d55ff0f3-9149-44e7-9b52-2e055c27d1d3 | TCP | True |
+--------------------------------------+------+----------------+
For the VIP of the pool:
neutron lb-vip-list
+--------------------------------------+----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------------+--------+
| id | name | address | protocol | admin_state_up | status |
+--------------------------------------+----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------------+--------+
| 9ae2ebfb-b409-4167-9583-4a3588d2ff42 | api_pool.vip | 10.0.0.3 | HTTP | True | ACTIVE |
| c318aec6-8b7b-485c-a419-1285a7561152 | a1f03e40f634011e59c9efa163eae8ab | 10.0.0.7 | TCP | True | ACTIVE |
| fc62cf40-46ad-47bd-aa1e-48339b95b011 | etcd_pool.vip | 10.0.0.4 | HTTP | True | ACTIVE |
+--------------------------------------+----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------------+--------+
Note that the VIP is created on the private network of the cluster; therefore it has an internal IP address of 10.0.0.7. This address is also associated as the “external address” of the Kubernetes service. You can verify in Kubernetes by running the kubectl command:
kubectl get services
NAME LABELS SELECTOR IP(S) PORT(S)
kubernetes component=apiserver,provider=kubernetes <none> 10.254.0.1 443/TCP
nginxservice app=nginx app=nginx 10.254.122.191 80/TCP
10.0.0.7
On GCE, the networking implementation gives the load balancer an external address automatically. On OpenStack, we need to take the additional step of associating a floating IP to the load balancer.