4141done / nlk_demo

Demo for NGINX Loadbalancer for Kubernetes for use at conferences

kubecon2023

Kubecon 2023 related work

Setup

1. Copy your NGINX Plus certificates to /nginx-plus/etc/ssl/nginx You should have the files nginx-repo.key and nginx-cert.key there.

2. Install kind. asdf is the easiest way to get the exact version this repo is tested with:

   1. Install asdf
   2. Install the kind plugin asdf plugin-add kind https://github.com/reegnz/asdf-kind.git
   3. asdf install
   4. Now you have kind!

3. To just get things up and running just run ./start.sh

Alternately, you can reference the guides: commands.md is a command by command setup that basically does what start.sh does. It also includes some instructions for setting up nginx app protect

DEMO.md is a user-facing explanation of NLK and demonstration flow.

Setup Concepts

Goal

From the Kubernetes docs:

Kubernetes does not directly offer a load balancing component; you must provide one, or you can integrate your Kubernetes cluster with a cloud provider.

Depending on your cloud platform, a LoadBalancer might create:

• AWS: Elastic Load Balancer
• Google Cloud: Google Cloud Load Balancer
• Azure: Azure Load Balancer

TODO: what value do these provide?

If you're not on a cloud provider and need to provide access to your cluster, what do you do?

NLK provides a controller that is deployed to a kubernetes pod and listens for changes to services in the nginx-ingress namespace that have names prefixed with nlk-

flowchart LR
    title[<u>NLK Relationship with Kubernetes and NGINX Plus</u>]
    nlk-->np["NGINX Plus"]
    subgraph Kubernetes Cluster
    nlk["nginx-loadbalancer-kubernetes"]
    end

The potential benefits of this approach are? (TODO: spread of responsibility between the ingress controller and the outside load balancer)

• https://www.baeldung.com/ops/kubernetes-ingress-vs-load-balancer
• https://www.okteto.com/blog/guide-to-the-kubernetes-load-balancer-service/

Pieces

This setup has three main pieces:

1. A Kubernetes cluster
   1. The NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Controller
   2. The nginx-loadbalancer-kubernetes controller
   3. A sample application
2. An instance of NGINX Plus running outside the Kubernetes Cluster

Demo Implementation

1. A Kubernetes cluster -> Kind
   1. The NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Controller -> installed from manifests
   2. The nginx-loadbalancer-kubernetes controller -> installed from manifests
   3. A sample application -> The NGINX Coffeeinstalled from manifests
2. An instance of NGINX Plus running outside the Kubernetes Cluster -> Running in a docker container on the same docker network as the kind cluster