Ngnix IngressController with gRPC

In this guide we are going:

• Configure nginx IngressController on GKE (GCP kubernetes service)
• Deploy a gRPC service behind the nginx IngressContoller
• Test the gRPC service using a gRPC client

The content of this guide is based on the following material:

• https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-1-13-10-grpc/
• https://github.com/nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress/blob/master/docs/installation.md
• https://grpc.io/docs/quickstart/go.html

Let's get started from the very early stage in case you don't have the environment ready.

• Install the gcloud CLI https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/quickstart-macos

• Initialize the environment

$ gcloud init

• Install kubectl

$ gcloud components install kubectl

• Configure some useful environment variables (change these values accordingly what makes sense for you)

$ export MY_REGION=us-east1 \
export MY_ZONE=us-east1-b \
export CLUSTER_NAME=cluster_name \
export PROJECT_ID=project_id \ #this ID must be the same as your project on GCP
export SERVICE_ACCOUNT=service-account #for the purpose of this guide it could be the email address you use to access GCP

• Configure gcloud

$ gcloud config set project $PROJECT_ID \
gcloud config set compute/region $MY_REGION \
gcloud config set compute/zone $MY_ZONE

• Check your configuration

$ gcloud config list

• Create the cluster (If it's the first time you are using GKE in this project ID then you'll need to activate "Kubernetes Engine API")

$ gcloud container clusters create $CLUSTER_NAME --num-nodes 3

• Get the credentials to work with kubectl

$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials $CLUSTER_NAME --zone $MY_ZONE --project $PROJECT_ID

• Now, lets start configuring the IngressController. Clone this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/soeirosantos/nginx-k8s-grpc.git | cd nginx-k8s-grpc

• Create a service account, a secret with the certificate and configure nginx to use HTTP2

$ kubectl apply -f ./ingress-install/common/ns-and-sa.yaml
$ kubectl apply -f ./ingress-install/common/default-server-secret.yaml # self signed certificate
$ kubectl apply -f ./ingress-install/common/nginx-config.yaml # http2: True

• Bind admin credentials to your account

$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding $SERVICE_ACCOUNT-cluster-admin-binding --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=$SERVICE_ACCOUNT

• And then configure the roles to the nginx-ingress service account

$ kubectl apply -f ./ingress-install/rbac/rbac.yaml

• Deploy the nginx IngressController

$ kubectl apply -f ./ingress-install/deployment/nginx-ingress.yaml

• Check if it's running

$ kubectl get pods --namespace=nginx-ingress

• Create the service to get access to the IngressController

$ kubectl apply -f ./ingress-install/service/loadbalancer.yaml

• Get the External IP address

$ kubectl get svc nginx-ingress --namespace=nginx-ingress # repeat until the external ip is set

• Edit the file /etc/hosts file and add this IP to the end of the file using this host: grpc.example.com

• Now we are going to deploy the gRPC service and expose it through the nginx Ingress.

$ kubectl create -f grpc-hello.yaml
$ kubectl create -f grpc-ingress-tls.yaml

• Run the golang gRPC client to test the configuration

$ go run grpc/greeter_client/main.go

If you have question about how to run the Golang gRPC client, access this page: https://grpc.io/docs/quickstart/go.html