Configure an Egress Gateway

This task uses the new v1alpha3 traffic management API. The old API has been deprecated and will be removed in the next Istio release. If you need to use the old version, follow the docs here. Note that this task introduces a new concept, namely Egress Gateway, that was not present in previous Istio versions.

The Control Egress Traffic task demonstrates how external (outside the Kubernetes cluster) HTTP and HTTPS services can be accessed from applications inside the mesh. A quick reminder: by default, Istio-enabled applications are unable to access URLs outside the cluster. To enable such access, a ServiceEntry for the external service must be defined, or, alternatively, direct access to external services must be configured.

The TLS Origination for Egress Traffic task demonstrates how to allow the applications to send HTTP requests to external servers that require HTTPS.

This task describes how to configure Istio to direct the egress traffic through a dedicated service called Egress Gateway. We achieve the same functionality as described in the TLS Origination for Egress Traffic task, only this time we accomplish it with the addition of an egress gateway.

Use case

Consider an organization that has strict security requirements. According to these requirements all the traffic that leaves the service mesh must flow through a set of dedicated nodes. These nodes will run on dedicated machines, separately from the rest of the nodes used for running applications in the cluster. The special nodes will serve for policy enforcement on the egress traffic and will be monitored more thoroughly than the rest of the nodes.

Istio 0.8 introduced the concept of ingress and egress gateways. Ingress gateways allow one to define entrance points into the service mesh that all incoming traffic flows through. Egress gateway is a symmetrical concept, it defines exit points for the mesh. An egress gateway allows Istio features, for example, monitoring and route rules, to be applied to traffic exiting the mesh.

Another use case is a cluster where the application nodes do not have public IPs, so the in-mesh services that run on them cannot access the Internet. Defining an egress gateway, directing all the egress traffic through it and allocating public IPs to the egress gateway nodes allows the application nodes to access external services in a controlled way.

Before you begin

  • Setup Istio by following the instructions in the Installation guide.

  • Start the sleep sample which will be used as a test source for external calls.

    If you have enabled automatic sidecar injection, do

    $ kubectl apply -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@

    otherwise, you have to manually inject the sidecar before deploying the sleep application:

    $ kubectl apply -f <(istioctl kube-inject -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@)

    Note that any pod that you can exec and curl from would do.

  • Create a shell variable to hold the name of the source pod for sending requests to external services. If we used the sleep sample, we run:

    $ export SOURCE_POD=$(kubectl get pod -l app=sleep -o jsonpath={.items..metadata.name})

Define an egress Gateway and direct HTTP traffic through it

First let's direct HTTP traffic without TLS origination

  1. Create an egress Gateway for edition.cnn.com, port 80:

        cat <<EOF | istioctl create -f -
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: Gateway
    metadata:
      name: istio-egressgateway
    spec:
      selector:
        istio: egressgateway
      servers:
      - port:
          number: 80
          name: http
          protocol: HTTP
        hosts:
        - "edition.cnn.com"
EOF

  2. Define a ServiceEntry for edition.cnn.com and a VirtualService to direct the traffic through the egress gateway:

        cat <<EOF | istioctl create -f -
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: ServiceEntry
    metadata:
      name: cnn
    spec:
      hosts:
      - edition.cnn.com
      ports:
      - number: 80
        name: http-port
        protocol: HTTP
      - number: 443
        name: https
        protocol: HTTPS
      resolution: DNS
    ---
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: VirtualService
    metadata:
      name: direct-through-egress-gateway
    spec:
      hosts:
      - edition.cnn.com
      gateways:
      - istio-egressgateway
      - mesh
      http:
      - match:
        - gateways:
          - mesh
          port: 80
        route:
        - destination:
            host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local
            port:
              number: 80
          weight: 100
      - match:
        - gateways:
          - istio-egressgateway
          port: 80
        route:
        - destination:
            host: edition.cnn.com
            port:
              number: 80
          weight: 100
    EOF

  3. Send an HTTP request to http://edition.cnn.com/politics.

    $ kubectl exec -it $SOURCE_POD -c sleep -- curl -sL -o /dev/null -D - http://edition.cnn.com/politics
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
...
location: https://edition.cnn.com/politics
...

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
...
Content-Length: 151654
...

    The output should be the same as in the TLS Origination for Egress Traffic task, without TLS origination.

  4. Check the log of the istio-egressgateway pod and see a line corresponding to our request. If Istio is deployed in the istio-system namespace, the command to print the log is:

    $ kubectl logs $(kubectl get pod -l istio=egressgateway -n istio-system -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') egressgateway -n istio-system | tail

    We should see a line related to our request, similar to the following:

    [2018-06-14T11:46:23.596Z] "GET /politics HTTP/1.1" 301 - 0 0 3 1 "172.30.146.87" "curl/7.35.0" "ab7be694-e367-94c5-83d1-086eca996dae" "edition.cnn.com" "151.101.193.67:80"

    Note that we redirected only the traffic from the port 80 to the egress gateway, the HTTPS traffic to the port 443 went directly to edition.cnn.com.

Let's clean up

Let's remove the previous definitions before proceeding to the next step:

$ istioctl delete gateway istio-egressgateway
$ istioctl delete serviceentry cnn
$ istioctl delete virtualservice direct-through-egress-gateway

Perform TLS origination with the egress Gateway

Let's perform TLS origination with the egress Gateway, similar to the TLS Origination for Egress Traffic task. Note that in this case the TLS origination will be done by the egress Gateway server, as opposed to by the sidecar in the previous task.

  1. Create an egress Gateway for edition.cnn.com, port 443:

        cat <<EOF | istioctl create -f -
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: Gateway
    metadata:
      name: istio-egressgateway
    spec:
      selector:
        istio: egressgateway
      servers:
      - port:
          number: 443
          name: http-port-for-tls-origination
          protocol: HTTP
        hosts:
        - "edition.cnn.com"
EOF

  2. Define a ServiceEntry for edition.cnn.com and a VirtualService to direct the traffic through the egress gateway:

        cat <<EOF | istioctl create -f -
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: ServiceEntry
    metadata:
      name: cnn
    spec:
      hosts:
      - edition.cnn.com
      ports:
      - number: 80
        name: http-port
        protocol: HTTP
      - number: 443
        name: http-port-for-tls-origination
        protocol: HTTP
      resolution: DNS
    ---
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: VirtualService
    metadata:
      name: direct-through-egress-gateway
    spec:
      hosts:
      - edition.cnn.com
      gateways:
      - istio-egressgateway
      - mesh
      http:
      - match:
        - gateways:
          - mesh
          port: 80
        route:
        - destination:
            host: istio-egressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local
            port:
              number: 443
          weight: 100
      - match:
        - gateways:
          - istio-egressgateway
          port: 443
        route:
        - destination:
            host: edition.cnn.com
            port:
              number: 443
          weight: 100
    ---
    apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
    kind: DestinationRule
    metadata:
      name: originate-tls-for-edition-cnn-com
    spec:
      host: edition.cnn.com
      trafficPolicy:
        loadBalancer:
          simple: ROUND_ROBIN
        portLevelSettings:
        - port:
            number: 443
          tls:
            mode: SIMPLE # initiates HTTPS for connections to edition.cnn.com
    EOF

  3. Send an HTTP request to http://edition.cnn.com/politics.

    $ kubectl exec -it $SOURCE_POD -c sleep -- curl -sL -o /dev/null -D - http://edition.cnn.com/politics
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
content-length: 150793
...

    The output should be the same as in the TLS Origination for Egress Traffic task, with TLS origination: without the 301 Moved Permanently message.

  4. Check the log of istio-egressgateway pod and see a line corresponding to our request. If Istio is deployed in the istio-system namespace, the command to print the log is:

    $ kubectl logs $(kubectl get pod -l istio=egressgateway -n istio-system -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') egressgateway -n istio-system | tail

    We should see a line related to our request, similar to the following:

    "[2018-06-14T13:49:36.340Z] "GET /politics HTTP/1.1" 200 - 0 148528 5096 90 "172.30.146.87" "curl/7.35.0" "c6bfdfc3-07ec-9c30-8957-6904230fd037" "edition.cnn.com" "151.101.65.67:443"

Additional security considerations

Note that defining an egress Gateway in Istio does not in itself provides any special treatment for the nodes on which the egress gateway service runs. It is up to the cluster administrator or the cloud provider to deploy the egress gateways on dedicated nodes and to introduce additional security measures to make these nodes more secure than the rest of the mesh.

Also note that Istio itself cannot securely enforce that all the egress traffic will actually flow through the egress gateways, Istio only enables such flow by its sidecar proxies. If a malicious application would attack the sidecar proxy attached to the application's pod, it could bypass the sidecar proxy. Having bypassed the sidecar proxy, the malicious application could try to exit the service mesh bypassing the egress gateway, to escape the control and monitoring by Istio. It is up to the cluster administrator or the cloud provider to enforce that no traffic leaves the mesh bypassing the egress gateway. Such enforcement must be performed by mechanisms external to Istio. For example, a firewall can deny all the traffic whose source is not the egress gateway. Kubernetes network policies can also forbid all the egress traffic that does not originate in the egress gateway. Another possible security measure involves configuring the network in such a way that the application nodes are unable to access the Internet without directing the egress traffic through the gateway where it will be monitored and controlled. One example of such network configuration is allocating public IPs exclusively to the gateways.

Cleanup

  1. Remove the Istio configuration items we created:

    $ istioctl delete gateway istio-egressgateway
$ istioctl delete serviceentry cnn
$ istioctl delete virtualservice rewrite-port-for-edition-cnn-com
$ istioctl delete destinationrule originate-tls-for-edition-cnn-com

  2. Shutdown the sleep service:

    $ kubectl delete -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@

What's next



TLS Origination for Egress Traffic
Circuit Breaking