Feature Request: Support AWS RAM Resource Sharing for VPC Lattice Services in Gateway API Controller

[gadiener]

The Gateway API controller automatically associates VPC Lattice services with a service network. However, according to the AWS documentation on the "Centralized VPC Lattice service network" model, providers are encouraged to share VPC Lattice services across different accounts using AWS RAM. This means the service should first be shared with the network account, allowing them to handle network associations, see Centralized VPC Lattice service network.

Currently, the Gateway API controller does not support this AWS RAM sharing process. As a result, it automatically tries to associate the VPC Lattice service with the service network, which limits the ability to follow the recommended centralized management approach.

It would be great to have the option in the Gateway API controller to create an AWS RAM resource share for VPC Lattice services created via HTTPRoute. This feature would enable:

• Providers to share VPC Lattice services with a specified network account via AWS RAM.
• The network management account to handle service network associations independently using their own automation tools.

There's already an ongoing issue focused on preventing automatic network associations for VPC Lattice services, which you can track here: #691

[rlymbur]

As a workaround, we have decided to prioritize #691 and surface the service ARN to alleviate the need to support full RAM sharing within the controller.

[gadiener]

@rlymbur This issue still seems relevant. While #691 addresses part of the problem, RAM sharing remains necessary to fully support the Centralized VPC Lattice service network architecture.

Currently, this has to be handled outside of EKS through a custom workflow, but integrating it into the controller logic would significantly simplify the implementation, especially since this pattern is directly recommended by AWS solution architects.

Could we reopen this issue and consider adding it to the product roadmap?

[rlymbur]

Hi @gadiener, thank you for your feedback. I see @dlutsch has actually submitted #843 addressing this issue. We are reviewing it now to include in the next release.