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Setting up Traefik v2 and cert-manager on Kapsule

Reviewed on 10 May 2021 • Published on 01 July 2020
  • kubernetes
  • k8s
  • kapsule
  • kube
  • traefik

Traefik - Overview

Traefik (pronounced traffic) is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer designed to make the deploying of microservices easy. Traefik integrates with any HTTP and TCP-based applications and every major cluster technology.

Our goal in this tutorial is to:

  • Expose Traefik 2 using a Scaleway LoadBalancer
  • Deploy a test application on our cluster
  • Expose this test application through an ingress object, using Traefik 2 (deployed by Kapsule)
  • Expose this application securely (with https and Let’s Encrypt, using cert-manager)

This tutorial is divided in two parts:

  • First, we will check how to expose the Traefik 2 ingress controller shipped with Kapsule with a Scaleway LoadBalancer.
  • In the second part, we will deploy a test application expose it in http with a DNS managed by Scaleway DNS, then use cert-manager to create a Let’s Encrypt certificate and expose this application securely in https.
Requirements:

Creating a service to deploy a LoadBalancer in front of Traefik 2

Important:

You need a Kubernetes Kapsule Cluster deployed with Traefik 2 to follow this tutorial. To deploy your cluster with Traefik 2 preinstalled, enter the Advanced Options during cluster creation, set Deploy an ingress controller to Yes and select Traefik 2 from the drop down list:

To expose Traefik 2 with a Scaleway LoadBalancer, deploy the following yaml file on your cluster:

  1. Create and open the file traefik-loadbalancer.yml in your favorite text editor and copy the following content into it:

    apiVersion: v1
    kind: Service
    metadata:
      name: traefik-ingress
      namespace: kube-system
      labels:
        k8s.scw.cloud/ingress: traefik2
    spec:
      type: LoadBalancer
      ports:
        - port: 80
          name: http
          targetPort: 8000
        - port: 443
          name: https
          targetPort: 8443
      selector:
        app.kubernetes.io/name: traefik

  2. Use kubectl to deploy the configuration:

    $ kubectl create -f traefik-loadbalancer.yml
    service/traefik-ingress created

  3. Verify that your LoadBalancer has been deployed correctly:

    $ kubectl get svc -n kube-system
    traefik-ingress   LoadBalancer   10.37.89.202    195.154.68.108   80:30509/TCP,443:32138/TCP   43s

    You can see here that the IP address of your LoadBalancer is 195.154.68.108. If you ‘curl’ it you can reach the default backend (saying “404 page not found”) as no ingress objects are created and you are reaching it through the IP address:

    $ curl 195.154.68.108
    404 page not found
Note:

It may take some minutes until your cluster is fully deployed and Traefik becomes availale.

Creating a wildcard DNS record and pointing your domain name to the IP address

We will be using the new DNS product, available on Scaleway Elements, to create a wildcard record pointing to this IP address (the domain used in this tutorial will be “mytest.com”). A wildcard record (*.mydomain.com) allows you to point any sub-domain of your domain to the configured IP address.

Verify that the domain is pointed to the IP address of your LoadBalancer:

$ host foobar.mytest.com
foobar.mytest.com has address 195.154.68.108

Your domain is now pointing to your LoadBalancer IP, you can resolve any of your subdomain with that IP.

Deploying a test application

In this step, we deploy a test application called “tea coffee” which is only printing tea or coffee depending on the subpath you will reach.

  1. Use kubectl to create the application

    $ kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress/master/examples/complete-example/cafe.yaml

  2. Create an associated ingress object pointing to teacoffee.mytest.com by creating and editing the file ingress-teacoffee.yml in your favorite text editor:

    apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
    kind: Ingress
    metadata:
      name: cafe-ingress
    spec:
      rules:
        - host: teacoffee.mytest.com
          http:
            paths:
              - path: /tea
                pathType: Prefix
                backend:
                  service:
                    name: tea-svc
                    port:
                      number: 80
              - path: /coffee
                pathType: Prefix
                backend:
                  service:
                    name: coffee-svc
                    port:
                      number: 80

  3. Run the folowing command to setup the configuration:

    $ kubectl create -f ingress-teacoffee.yml
    ingress.networking.k8s.io/cafe-ingress created

  4. You can now use curl to send a HTTP request this URL. Traefik 2 is working correctly with your wildcard DNS in plain, unencrypted HTTP (web unsecure).

    $ curl teacoffee.mytest.com/tea
    Server address: 100.64.0.240:8080
    Server name: tea-69c99ff568-c2lc2
    Date: 29/Jun/2020:13:01:19 +0000
    URI: /tea
    Request ID: f3b7f1bcd5dd841d420236906146af9f

  5. To proceed with the tutorial, delete the ingress object created. It will be replaced in future steps.

    $ kubectl delete ing cafe-ingress

Deploying Cert Manager

Cert-manager is in charge of creating Let’s Encrypt TLS certificates to make your website secure, to sum-up:

- Create an ingress object for a specific subdomain (for instance foobar.mytest.com)
- Let's Encrypt must be sure that the domain belongs to you. For this reason, Let's Encrypt requests a "challenge", in our case, an HTTP challenge. Meaning here that Let's Encrypt will try to reach `foobar.mytest.com`, and is able to see a specific hash on this page.
- Cert-manager is serving this page for you by creating an ingress object and using an HTTP server.
- When the challenge is ok, the certificate is created and added in a certificate object.
- You can then use this certificate object to serve your website securely (HTTPS).
Note:

Any modification to the Traefik2 deployed by Kapsule may be overwritten by the reconciliation process, consider installing it yourself for a production usage.

  1. Modify the default Traefik 2 daemonset running on Kapsule to do that, add --providers.kubernetesIngress.ingressClass=traefik-cert-manager in the cmd stanza.

    $ kubectl edit ds traefik -n kube-system
    daemonset.apps/traefik edited
    []
            - --global.checknewversion
            - --global.sendanonymoususage
            - --entryPoints.traefik.address=:9000
            - --entryPoints.web.address=:8000
            - --entryPoints.websecure.address=:8443
            - --providers.kubernetesIngress.ingressClass=traefik-cert-manager
            - --api.dashboard=true
            - --ping=true
            - --providers.kubernetescrd
            - --providers.kubernetesingress
    []

  2. Delete the existing Traefik pods in order to get the new arguments.

    $ kubectl -n kube-system delete pod -l app.kubernetes.io/name=traefik

  3. Use the command below to install cert-manager and its needed CRD (Custom Resource Definitions):

    $ kubectl apply --validate=false -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.1.1/cert-manager.yaml
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/certificaterequests.cert-manager.io created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/certificates.cert-manager.io created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/challenges.acme.cert-manager.io created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/clusterissuers.cert-manager.io created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/issuers.cert-manager.io created
    customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/orders.acme.cert-manager.io created
    namespace/cert-manager created
    serviceaccount/cert-manager-cainjector created
    serviceaccount/cert-manager created
    serviceaccount/cert-manager-webhook created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-cainjector created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-issuers created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-clusterissuers created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-certificates created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-orders created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-challenges created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-ingress-shim created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-view created
    clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-edit created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-cainjector created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-issuers created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-clusterissuers created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-certificates created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-orders created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-challenges created
    clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-controller-ingress-shim created
    role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-cainjector:leaderelection created
    role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager:leaderelection created
    role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-webhook:dynamic-serving created
    rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-cainjector:leaderelection created
    rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager:leaderelection created
    rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cert-manager-webhook:dynamic-serving created
    service/cert-manager created
    service/cert-manager-webhook created
    deployment.apps/cert-manager-cainjector created
    deployment.apps/cert-manager created
    deployment.apps/cert-manager-webhook created
    mutatingwebhookconfiguration.admissionregistration.k8s.io/cert-manager-webhook created
    validatingwebhookconfiguration.admissionregistration.k8s.io/cert-manager-webhook created

Creating the Let’s Encrypt issuer

  1. Create a cluster issuer that allow you to specify:

    • the Let’s Encrypt server, if you want to replace the production environment with the staging one.
    • the mail used by Let’s Encrypt to warn you about certificate expiration.

    Copy and paste the following configuration in the file cluster-issuer.yaml using your favorite text editor:

    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: ClusterIssuer
    metadata:
      name: letsencrypt-prod
    spec:
      acme:
        # You must replace this email address with your own.
        # Let's Encrypt will use this to contact you about expiring
        # certificates, and issues related to your account.
        email: mymail@test.com
        server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
        privateKeySecretRef:
          # Secret resource used to store the account's private key.
          name: issuer-account-key
        # Add a single challenge solver, HTTP01
        solvers:
          - http01:
              ingress:
                class: traefik-cert-manager

  2. Use kubectl to apply the configuration:

    $ kubectl create -f cluster-issuer.yaml
    clusterissuer.cert-manager.io/letsencrypt-prod created

Creating and using a Let’s Encrypt certificate to serve your website in HTTPS

In this step you will create the Let’s Encrypt certificate by specifying:

- The secret name where the certificate will be stored.
- The subdomain for which you want to create a certificate.
- The issuer created before (letsencrypt-prod).

  1. Create a edit a file mycert.yaml as follows:

    apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
    kind: Certificate
    metadata:
      name: teacoffee-cert
      namespace: default
    spec:
      commonName: teacoffee.mytest.com
      secretName: teacoffee-cert
      dnsNames:
        - teacoffee.mytest.com
      issuerRef:
        name: letsencrypt-prod
        kind: ClusterIssuer

  2. Apply the configuration using kubectl:

    $ kubectl create -f mycert.yaml
    certificate.cert-manager.io/teacoffee-cert created

  3. Check the certificate has been correctly created (you should see “Ready” in the condition):

    $ kubectl describe certificate -n default teacoffee-cert
    Spec:
      Common Name:  teacoffee.mytest.org
      Dns Names:
        teacoffee.mytest.org
      Issuer Ref:
        Kind:       ClusterIssuer
        Name:       letsencrypt-prod
      Secret Name:  teacoffee-cert
    Status:
      Conditions:
        Last Transition Time:  2021-02-24T16:50:42Z
        Message:               Certificate is up to date and has not expired
        Reason:                Ready
        Status:                True
        Type:                  Ready
      Not After:               2021-05-25T15:50:41Z
      Not Before:              2021-02-24T15:50:41Z
      Renewal Time:            2021-04-25T15:50:41Z
      Revision:                1
    Events:
      Type    Reason     Age   From          Message
      ----    ------     ----  ----          -------
      Normal  Requested  11m   cert-manager  Created new CertificateRequest resource "teacoffee-cert-4271191437"
      Normal  Issued     48s   cert-manager  Certificate issued successfully

  4. Create a Traefik IngressRoute, with TLS enabled (with the name of the secret created by the creation of the certificate, in our case: teacoffee-cert). To do so create file mysite.yaml, copy the following content into it and run kubectl with the collowing command: kubectl create -f mysite.yaml

    apiVersion: traefik.containo.us/v1alpha1
    kind: IngressRoute
    metadata:
      name: testcoffee
      namespace: default
    spec:
      entryPoints:
        - websecure
      routes:
        - match: Host(`teacoffee.mytest.com`) && PathPrefix(`/tea`)
          kind: Rule
          services:
            - name: tea-svc
              port: 80
        - match: Host(`teacoffee.mytest.com`) && PathPrefix(`/coffee`)
          kind: Rule
          services:
            - name: coffee-svc
              port: 80
      tls:
        secretName: teacoffee-cert

  5. Check your website is accessible in HTTPS:

    curl -v https://teacoffee.mytest.com/tea
    *   Trying 195.154.68.108...
    * TCP_NODELAY set
    * Connected to teacoffee.mytest.com (195.154.68.108) port 443 (#0)
    * successfully set certificate verify locations:
    *   CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
      CApath: /etc/ssl/certs
    [..]
    * Server certificate:
    *  subject: CN=teacoffee.mytest.com
    *  start date: Jun 29 12:46:04 2020 GMT
    *  expire date: Sep 27 12:46:04 2020 GMT
    *  subjectAltName: host "teacoffee.mytest.com" matched cert's "teacoffee.mytest.com"
    *  issuer: C=US; O=Let's Encrypt; CN=Let's Encrypt Authority X3
    *  SSL certificate verify ok.
    [..]
    > GET /tea HTTP/2
    > Host: teacoffee.mytest.com
    > User-Agent: curl/7.58.0
    > Accept: */*
    >
    [..]
    Server address: 100.64.0.240:8080
    Server name: tea-69c99ff568-c2lc2
    Date: 29/Jun/2020:13:52:42 +0000
    URI: /tea
    Request ID: b7a45b7b20bd712df75f8ce8596db50d
    * Connection #0 to host teacoffee.mytest.com left intact

  6. Access the Traefik 2 dashboard by using this command:

    $ kubectl port-forward -n kube-system $(kubectl get pods -n kube-system --selector "app.kubernetes.io/name=traefik" --output=name | head -n 1) 9000:9000

  7. You can then access the Traefik 2 dashboard with this address: http://127.0.0.1:9000/dashboard/ (Note the trailing /.)

    To go further, you might be interested in the following pages: