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Configure a built-in gateway

The built-in gateway is configured using a combination of MeshGateway, MeshHTTPRoute and MeshTCPRoute, and served by Envoy instances represented by Dataplanes configured as built-in gateways. Kuma policies are then used to configure built-in gateways.

New to Kuma? Checkout our guide to get quickly started with builtin gateways!

Deploying gateways

The process for deploying built-in gateways is different depending on whether you’re running in Kubernetes or Universal mode.

For managing gateway instances on Kubernetes, Kuma provides a MeshGatewayInstance CRD.

This resource launches kuma-dp in your cluster. If you are running a multi-zone Kuma, MeshGatewayInstance needs to be created in a specific zone, not the global cluster. See the dedicated section for using built-in gateways on multi-zone.

This resource manages a Kubernetes Deployment and Service suitable for providing service capacity for the MeshGateway.

Heads up! In previous versions of Kuma, setting the kuma.io/service tag directly within a MeshGatewayInstance resource was used to identify the service. However, this practice is deprecated and no longer recommended for security reasons since Kuma version 2.7.0.

We’ve automatically switched to generating the service name for you based on your MeshGatewayInstance resource name and namespace (format: {name}_{namespace}_svc).

apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: MeshGatewayInstance
metadata:
  name: edge-gateway
  namespace: default
spec:
  replicas: 1
  serviceType: LoadBalancer

See the MeshGatewayInstance docs for more options.

You’ll need to create a Dataplane object for your gateway:

type: Dataplane
mesh: default
name: gateway-instance-1
networking:
  address: 127.0.0.1
  gateway:
    type: BUILTIN
    tags:
      kuma.io/service: edge-gateway

Note that this gateway has an identifying kuma.io/service tag.

Now you need to explicitly run kuma-dp:

kuma-dp run \
  --cp-address=https://localhost:5678/ \
  --dns-enabled=false \
  --dataplane-token-file=kuma-token-gateway \ # this needs to be generated like for regular Dataplane
  --dataplane-file=my-gateway.yaml # the Dataplane resource described above

Using MeshGatewayInstance is highly recommended. If for any reason you are unable to use MeshGatewayInstance to deploy builtin gateways, you can manually create a Deployment and Service to manage kuma-dp instances and forward traffic to them. Keep in mind however, that you’ll need to keep the listeners of your MeshGateway in sync with your Service.

These instructions will use the resources created by MeshGatewayInstance with version 2.6.2 as a guide but remember to create a MeshGatewayInstance for your version to configure as much as you can and use it as a basis for these self-managed resources.

Given a MeshGateway spec:

spec:
  conf:
    listeners:
    - port: 80
      protocol: HTTP
  selectors:
  - match:
      kuma.io/service: demo-app_gateway

`Service`

The Service will forward traffic to the kuma-dp we’ll configure in the next section. Its ports need to be in sync with the MeshGateway listeners.

metadata:
  annotations:
    kuma.io/gateway: builtin
  name: demo-app-gateway
  namespace: kuma-demo
spec:
  ports:
  - name: "80"
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: demo-app-gateway

The selector should match the Pod template created in the next section.

`Deployment`

The Deployment we’ll create will manage running some number of kuma-dp instances that are configured to serve traffic for your MeshGateway.

We’ll cover just spec.selector and spec.template here because other parts of the Deployment can be configured arbitrarily. Most importantly you’ll need to change:

kuma.io/tags annotation - must match the MeshGateway selectors
KUMA_CONTROL_PLANE_CA_CERT environment variable - can be retrieved with kubectl get secret kuma-tls-cert -n kuma-system -o=jsonpath='{.data.ca\.crt}' | base64 -d
containers[0].image field - should be the version of Kuma you’re using

Make sure containers[0].resources is appropriate for your use case.

  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: demo-app-gateway
  template:
    metadata:
      annotations:
        kuma.io/gateway: builtin
        kuma.io/mesh: default
        kuma.io/tags: '{"kuma.io/service":"demo-app_gateway"}'
      creationTimestamp: null
      labels:
        app: demo-app-gateway
        kuma.io/sidecar-injection: disabled
    spec:
      containers:
      - args:
        - run
        - --log-level=info
        - --concurrency=2
        env:
        - name: INSTANCE_IP
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: status.podIP
        - name: KUMA_CONTROL_PLANE_CA_CERT
          value: |
            -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
            MIIDDzCCAfegAwIBAgIQJlMQnmK1ZfnjhDt1KvTvQTANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFADAS
            MRAwDgYDVQQDEwdrdW1hLWNhMB4XDTI0MDQxNTEyMzkxNFoXDTM0MDQxMzEyMzkx
            NFowEjEQMA4GA1UEAxMHa3VtYS1jYTCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADggEPADCC
            AQoCggEBALp6skN+nPPRQQ7Z2ZH4eDjcTtKnO/9n/ExM99tRuMgZCdaZe7zp5g6L
            1wvdgi3mtOlplplFaYvLlC9QPn6A7TQSCOPd28vhTIqoUhZ4V7yjr54h0bn6wmH+
            BdVXgnalXDb+mQtyDF4dvAY3f0QyOQAK3TjRp32OX+dYKsGGWtch1yiIPf7VnWPx
            4/K2v4DTjRuDcXg6S0x4GskGZ9zAhR1WJYEa/2uM+XBmy0GmF9INn0WOeje7Jf3c
            G5tCd+fPP6qEk5Q+tBVHd7Pz3xfD9TZjIfY1+h00UkpC50n/yE5FDK8aUpR17SUc
            QKJUskOivKAqRD1pI9zfhnHBJ2URfbcCAwEAAaNhMF8wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgKk
            MB0GA1UdJQQWMBQGCCsGAQUFBwMBBggrBgEFBQcDAjAPBgNVHRMBAf8EBTADAQH/
            MB0GA1UdDgQWBBQRT2hdjPpIt/FzcLJo/EWPFafCQzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFAAOC
            AQEAO0Gfe750KCk+gMtBQHfHzEyQocO2qg2JXfZrBP/+rqeozbjXQj0BLYR9NXnp
            tLrxJHoBHdeE+TOnTFsxB7IRIkF1njEElKX4DVx7MjZCL1qLeWDuaXQmEgtFoWDM
            o4NqPZ4BIyuZZ9IVtYdeod5g5ucRopOP66zWr/RuwKFzdzni79BGaWuA3dNmLWcn
            MdsbZ165hdXstF6b48yPFKFrOdGgLpJheSCLlR/6vp5a+pA03fQZ6qV2j2uSqvAm
            XYl8Q3CdoI/yAX9p4mxkcYK7xaz0fQTrD/UyGD6l2cXgY90NP6LDAW1oYKHSD7Qc
            Y8vutIcexOtJfAdTZ3/GxBxH1Q==
            -----END CERTIFICATE-----
        - name: KUMA_CONTROL_PLANE_URL
          value: https://kuma-control-plane.kuma-system:5678
        - name: KUMA_DATAPLANE_DRAIN_TIME
          value: 30s
        - name: KUMA_DATAPLANE_MESH
          value: default
        - name: KUMA_DATAPLANE_RUNTIME_TOKEN_PATH
          value: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token
        - name: KUMA_DNS_CORE_DNS_BINARY_PATH
          value: coredns
        - name: KUMA_DNS_CORE_DNS_EMPTY_PORT
          value: "15054"
        - name: KUMA_DNS_CORE_DNS_PORT
          value: "15053"
        - name: KUMA_DNS_ENABLED
          value: "true"
        - name: KUMA_DNS_ENABLE_LOGGING
          value: "false"
        - name: KUMA_DNS_ENVOY_DNS_PORT
          value: "15055"
        - name: POD_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: metadata.name
        - name: POD_NAMESPACE
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        - name: KUMA_DATAPLANE_RESOURCES_MAX_MEMORY_BYTES
          valueFrom:
            resourceFieldRef:
              containerName: kuma-gateway
              divisor: "0"
              resource: limits.memory
        image: docker.io/kumahq/kuma-dp:2.6.2
        livenessProbe:
          failureThreshold: 12
          httpGet:
            path: /ready
            port: 9901
            scheme: HTTP
          initialDelaySeconds: 60
          periodSeconds: 5
          successThreshold: 1
          timeoutSeconds: 3
        name: kuma-gateway
        readinessProbe:
          failureThreshold: 12
          httpGet:
            path: /ready
            port: 9901
            scheme: HTTP
          initialDelaySeconds: 1
          periodSeconds: 5
          successThreshold: 1
          timeoutSeconds: 3
        resources:
          limits:
            cpu: "1"
            ephemeral-storage: 1G
            memory: 512Mi
          requests:
            cpu: 50m
            ephemeral-storage: 50M
            memory: 64Mi
        securityContext:
          allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
          runAsGroup: 5678
          runAsUser: 5678
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /tmp
          name: tmp
      securityContext:
        sysctls:
        - name: net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start
          value: "0"
      volumes:
      - emptyDir: {}
        name: tmp

Kuma gateways are configured with the Envoy best practices for edge proxies.

Multi-zone

The Kuma Gateway resource types, MeshGateway, MeshHTTPRoute and MeshTCPRoute, are synced across zones by the Kuma control plane. If you have a multi-zone deployment, follow existing Kuma practice and create any Kuma Gateway resources in the global control plane. Once these resources exist, you can provision serving capacity in the zones where it is needed by deploying built-in gateway Dataplanes (in Universal zones) or MeshGatewayInstances (Kubernetes zones).

See the multi-zone docs for a refresher.