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Setting Up a Custom Domain on Azure Kubernetes with Ambassador API Gateway

In the world of data science, managing and routing traffic to your applications is a crucial task. Today, we’ll be exploring how to set up a custom domain on Azure Kubernetes using the Ambassador API Gateway. This guide is intended for data scientists who are familiar with Kubernetes and Azure but are new to Ambassador.
By Saturn Cloud | | Miscellaneous

Setting Up a Custom Domain on Azure Kubernetes with Ambassador API Gateway

In the world of data science, managing and routing traffic to your applications is a crucial task. Today, we’ll be exploring how to set up a custom domain on Azure Kubernetes using the Ambassador API Gateway. This guide is intended for data scientists who are familiar with Kubernetes and Azure but are new to Ambassador.

What is Ambassador?

Ambassador is a powerful, open-source API Gateway built on the Envoy Proxy. It’s designed for Kubernetes and provides features like traffic management, authentication, rate limiting, and observability. Ambassador is a great tool for managing microservices and can be easily integrated with Azure Kubernetes.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following:

  • An active Azure account
  • A registered domain name
  • Azure CLI installed on your local machine
  • Kubernetes CLI (kubectl) installed on your local machine
  • Helm, the package manager for Kubernetes

Step 1: Set Up Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

First, we need to create an AKS cluster. You can do this through the Azure portal or using the Azure CLI. Here’s how to do it with the CLI:

az aks create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --node-count 1 --enable-addons monitoring --generate-ssh-keys

Replace myResourceGroup and myAKSCluster with your preferred names.

Step 2: Install Ambassador

Next, we’ll install Ambassador on our AKS cluster using Helm. First, add the Ambassador Helm chart repository:

helm repo add datawire https://www.getambassador.io

Then, install Ambassador:

helm install ambassador datawire/ambassador --namespace ambassador

Step 3: Configure DNS

Now, we need to configure our DNS to point to the IP address of the Ambassador service. First, get the external IP address:

kubectl get svc ambassador -n ambassador

Then, create a DNS A record that points your domain to this IP address.

Step 4: Set Up TLS

For secure communication, we’ll set up TLS using Let’s Encrypt. First, install cert-manager:

kubectl apply --validate=false -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.1.0/cert-manager.yaml

Then, create a ClusterIssuer for Let’s Encrypt:

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-prod
spec:
  acme:
    server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-prod
    solvers:
    - http01:
        ingress:
          class: ambassador

Finally, create a certificate:

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
  name: my-certificate
  namespace: ambassador
spec:
  secretName: my-certificate
  issuerRef:
    name: letsencrypt-prod
    kind: ClusterIssuer
  commonName: www.yourdomain.com
  dnsNames:
  - www.yourdomain.com

Replace www.yourdomain.com with your domain name.

Step 5: Configure Ambassador

Lastly, we’ll configure Ambassador to use our certificate and route traffic to our application. Create a Mapping:

apiVersion: getambassador.io/v2
kind: Mapping
metadata:
  name: my-mapping
spec:
  prefix: /
  service: my-service:80
  host: www.yourdomain.com
  tls: my-certificate

Replace my-service with the name of your service, and www.yourdomain.com with your domain name.

Conclusion

And that’s it! You’ve successfully set up a custom domain on Azure Kubernetes using the Ambassador API Gateway. This setup allows you to manage and route traffic to your applications effectively and securely. As you continue to work with Kubernetes and Ambassador, you’ll find that they offer a powerful combination for managing microservices in a cloud environment.

Remember, this is just the beginning. There’s a lot more you can do with Ambassador and Azure Kubernetes, so don’t hesitate to explore further. Happy coding!

References

Keywords: Azure Kubernetes, Ambassador API Gateway, Custom Domain, Data Science, Microservices, Traffic Management, Kubernetes, Azure, Ambassador, API Gateway, AKS, Helm, DNS, TLS, Let’s Encrypt, Cert-manager, Mapping

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