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Configuring ExternalDNS to use the Istio Gateway and/or Istio Virtual Service Source

This tutorial describes how to configure ExternalDNS to use the Istio Gateway source.
It is meant to supplement the other provider-specific setup tutorials.

Note: Using the Istio Gateway source requires Istio >=1.0.0.

  • Manifest (for clusters without RBAC enabled)
  • Manifest (for clusters with RBAC enabled)
  • Update existing ExternalDNS Deployment

Manifest (for clusters without RBAC enabled)

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: external-dns
spec:
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: external-dns
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: external-dns
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: external-dns
        image: registry.k8s.io/external-dns/external-dns:v0.14.1
        args:
        - --source=service
        - --source=ingress
        - --source=istio-gateway        # choose one
        - --source=istio-virtualservice # or both
        - --domain-filter=external-dns-test.my-org.com # will make ExternalDNS see only the hosted zones matching provided domain, omit to process all available hosted zones
        - --provider=aws
        - --policy=upsert-only # would prevent ExternalDNS from deleting any records, omit to enable full synchronization
        - --aws-zone-type=public # only look at public hosted zones (valid values are public, private or no value for both)
        - --registry=txt
        - --txt-owner-id=my-identifier

Manifest (for clusters with RBAC enabled)

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: external-dns
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: external-dns
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["services","endpoints","pods"]
  verbs: ["get","watch","list"]
- apiGroups: ["extensions","networking.k8s.io"]
  resources: ["ingresses"] 
  verbs: ["get","watch","list"]
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["nodes"]
  verbs: ["list"]
- apiGroups: ["networking.istio.io"]
  resources: ["gateways", "virtualservices"]
  verbs: ["get","watch","list"]
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: external-dns-viewer
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: external-dns
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: external-dns
  namespace: default
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: external-dns
spec:
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: external-dns
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: external-dns
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: external-dns
      containers:
      - name: external-dns
        image: registry.k8s.io/external-dns/external-dns:v0.14.1
        args:
        - --source=service
        - --source=ingress
        - --source=istio-gateway
        - --source=istio-virtualservice
        - --domain-filter=external-dns-test.my-org.com # will make ExternalDNS see only the hosted zones matching provided domain, omit to process all available hosted zones
        - --provider=aws
        - --policy=upsert-only # would prevent ExternalDNS from deleting any records, omit to enable full synchronization
        - --aws-zone-type=public # only look at public hosted zones (valid values are public, private or no value for both)
        - --registry=txt
        - --txt-owner-id=my-identifier

Update existing ExternalDNS Deployment

  • For clusters with running external-dns, you can just update the deployment.
  • With access to the kube-system namespace, update the existing external-dns deployment.
  • Add a parameter to the arguments of the container to create dns entries with --source=istio-gateway.

Execute the following command or update the argument.

kubectl patch deployment external-dns --type='json' \
  -p='[{"op": "add", "path": "/spec/template/spec/containers/0/args/2", "value": "--source=istio-gateway" }]'

In case the setup uses a clusterrole, just append a new value to the enable the istio group.

kubectl patch clusterrole external-dns --type='json' \
  -p='[{"op": "add", "path": "/rules/4", "value": { "apiGroups": [ "networking.istio.io"], "resources": ["gateways"],"verbs": ["get", "watch", "list" ]} }]'

Verify that Istio Gateway/VirtualService Source works

Follow the Istio ingress traffic tutorial
to deploy a sample service that will be exposed outside of the service mesh.
The following are relevant snippets from that tutorial.

Install a sample service

With automatic sidecar injection:

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.6/samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml

Otherwise:

$ kubectl apply -f <(istioctl kube-inject -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.6/samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml)

Using a Gateway as a source

Create an Istio Gateway:
$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: httpbin-gateway
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    istio: ingressgateway # use Istio default gateway implementation
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "httpbin.example.com" # this is used by external-dns to extract DNS names
EOF
Configure routes for traffic entering via the Gateway:
$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: httpbin
spec:
  hosts:
  - "httpbin.example.com"
  gateways:
  - istio-system/httpbin-gateway
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        prefix: /status
    - uri:
        prefix: /delay
    route:
    - destination:
        port:
          number: 8000
        host: httpbin
EOF

Using a VirtualService as a source

Create an Istio Gateway:
$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: httpbin-gateway
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  selector:
    istio: ingressgateway # use Istio default gateway implementation
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"
EOF
Configure routes for traffic entering via the Gateway:
$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: httpbin
spec:
  hosts:
  - "httpbin.example.com" # this is used by external-dns to extract DNS names
  gateways:
  - istio-system/httpbin-gateway
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        prefix: /status
    - uri:
        prefix: /delay
    route:
    - destination:
        port:
          number: 8000
        host: httpbin
EOF

To get the targets to the extracted DNS names, external-dns is able to gather information from the kubernetes service of the Istio Ingress Gateway.
Please take a look at the source service documentation for more information on this.

It is also possible to set the targets manually by using the external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/target annotation on the Istio Ingress Gateway resource or the Istio VirtualService.

Access the sample service using curl

$ curl -I http://httpbin.example.com/status/200
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
server: envoy
date: Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:26:47 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
access-control-allow-origin: *
access-control-allow-credentials: true
content-length: 0
x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 5

Accessing any other URL that has not been explicitly exposed should return an HTTP 404 error:

$ curl -I http://httpbin.example.com/headers
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
date: Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:27:48 GMT
server: envoy
transfer-encoding: chunked

Note: The -H flag in the original Istio tutorial is no longer necessary in the curl commands.

Optional Gateway Annotation

To support setups where an Ingress resource is used provision an external LB you can add the following annotation to your Gateway

Note: The Ingress namespace can be omitted if its in the same namespace as the gateway

$ cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: httpbin-gateway
  namespace: istio-system
  annotations:
    "external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/ingress": "$ingressNamespace/$ingressName"
spec:
  selector:
    istio: ingressgateway # use Istio default gateway implementation
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"
EOF

Debug ExternalDNS

  • Look for the deployment pod to see the status

```console$ kubectl get pods | grep external-dns
external-dns-6b84999479-4knv9 1/1 Running 0 3h29m

* Watch for the logs as follows

```console
$ kubectl logs -f external-dns-6b84999479-4knv9

At this point, you can create or update any Istio Gateway object with hosts entries array.

ATTENTION: Make sure to specify those whose account is related to the DNS record.

  • Successful executions will print the following
time="2020-01-17T06:08:08Z" level=info msg="Desired change: CREATE httpbin.example.com A"
time="2020-01-17T06:08:08Z" level=info msg="Desired change: CREATE httpbin.example.com TXT"
time="2020-01-17T06:08:08Z" level=info msg="2 record(s) in zone example.com. were successfully updated"
time="2020-01-17T06:09:08Z" level=info msg="All records are already up to date, there are no changes for the matching hosted zones"
  • If there’s any problem around clusterrole, you would see the errors showing wrong permissions:
source \"gateways\" in API group \"networking.istio.io\" at the cluster scope"
time="2020-01-17T06:07:08Z" level=error msg="gateways.networking.istio.io is forbidden: User \"system:serviceaccount:kube-system:external-dns\" cannot list resource \"gateways\" in API group \"networking.istio.io\" at the cluster scope"
Last update: March 22, 2024
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