Jan 1, 0001

The Ingress object was added to Kubernetes in version 1.1 to describe properties of a cluster-wide reverse HTTP proxy. Since that time, the Ingress object has not progressed beyond the beta stage, and its stagnation inspired an explosion of annotations to express missing properties of HTTP routing.

The goal of the IngressRoute Custom Resource Definition (CRD) is to expand upon the functionality of the Ingress API to allow for a richer user experience as well as solve shortcomings in the original design.

At this time, Contour is the only Kubernetes Ingress Controller to support the IngressRoute CRD, though there is nothing that inherently prevents other controllers from supporting the design.

Deprecation Notice
IngressRoute has been deprecated and will be removed after Contour 1.0. Please see the documentation for HTTPProxy the successor to IngressRoute. You can also read the IngressRoute to HTTPProxy upgrade guide.

Key IngressRoute Benefits

• Safely supports multi-team Kubernetes clusters, with the ability to limit which Namespaces may configure virtual hosts and TLS credentials.
• Enables delegation of routing configuration for a path or domain to another Namespace.
• Accepts multiple services within a single route and load balances traffic across them.
• Natively allows defining service weighting and load balancing strategy without annotations.
• Validation of IngressRoute objects at creation time and status reporting for post-creation validity.

Ingress to IngressRoute

A minimal Ingress object might look like:

# ingress.yaml
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: basic
spec:
  rules:
  - host: foo-basic.bar.com
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          serviceName: s1
          servicePort: 80

This Ingress object, named basic, will route incoming HTTP traffic with a Host: header for foo-basic.bar.com to a Service named s1 on port 80. Implementing similar behavior using an IngressRoute looks like this:

{% highlight yaml linenos %}

ingressroute.yaml

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1 kind: IngressRoute metadata: name: basic spec: virtualhost: fqdn: foo-basic.bar.com routes: - match: / services: - name: s1 port: 80 {% endhighlight %}

Lines 1-5: As with all other Kubernetes objects, an IngressRoute needs apiVersion, kind, and metadata fields. Note that the IngressRoute API is currently considered beta.

Line 7-8: The presence of the virtualhost field indicates that this is a root IngressRoute that is the top level entry point for this domain. The fqdn field specifies the fully qualified domain name that will be used to match against Host: HTTP headers.

Lines 9-13: IngressRoutes must have one or more routes, each of which must have a path to match against (e.g. /blog) and then one or more services which will handle the HTTP traffic.

Lines 11-13: The services field is an array of named Service & Port combinations that will be used for this IngressRoute path. Ingress HTTP traffic will be sent directly to the Endpoints corresponding to the Service.

Interacting with IngressRoutes

As with all Kubernetes objects, you can use kubectl to create, list, describe, edit, and delete IngressRoute CRDs.

Creating an IngressRoute:

$ kubectl create -f basic.ingressroute.yaml
ingressroute "basic" created

Listing IngressRoutes:

$ kubectl get ingressroute
NAME      AGE
basic     24s

Describing IngressRoutes:

$ kubectl describe ingressroute basic
Name:         basic
Namespace:    default
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration={"apiVersion":"contour.heptio.com/v1beta1","kind":"IngressRoute","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name":"basic","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"routes":[{...
API Version:  contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
Kind:         IngressRoute
Metadata:
  Cluster Name:
  Creation Timestamp:  2018-07-05T19:26:54Z
  Resource Version:    19373717
  Self Link:           /apis/contour.heptio.com/v1beta1/namespaces/default/ingressroutes/basic
  UID:                 6036a9d7-8089-11e8-ab00-f80f4182762e
Spec:
  Routes:
    Match:  /
    Services:
      Name:  s1
      Port:  80
  Virtualhost:
    Fqdn:  foo-basic.bar.com
Events:    <none>

Deleting IngressRoutes:

$ kubectl delete ingressroute basic
ingressroute "basic" deleted

IngressRoute API Specification

There are a number of working examples of IngressRoute objects in the examples/example-workload directory. We will use these examples as a mechanism to describe IngressRoute API functionality.

Virtual Host Configuration

Fully Qualified Domain Name

Similar to Ingress, IngressRoutes support name-based virtual hosting. Name-based virtual hosts use multiple host names with the same IP address.

foo.bar.com --|                 |-> foo.bar.com s1:80
              | 178.91.123.132  |
bar.foo.com --|                 |-> bar.foo.com s2:80

Unlike, Ingress, however, IngressRoutes only support a single root domain per IngressRoute object. As an example, this Ingress object:

# ingress-name.yaml
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: name-example
spec:
  rules:
  - host: foo1.bar.com
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          serviceName: s1
          servicePort: 80
  - host: bar1.bar.com
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          serviceName: s2
          servicePort: 80

must be represented by two different IngressRoute objects:

# ingressroute-name.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: name-example-foo
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: foo1.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80
---
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: name-example-bar
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: bar1.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s2
          port: 80

TLS

IngressRoutes follow a similar pattern to Ingress for configuring TLS credentials.

You can secure an IngressRoute by specifying a secret that contains a TLS private key and certificate. Currently, IngressRoutes only support a single TLS port, 443, and assume TLS termination. If multiple IngressRoute’s utilize the same secret, then the certificate must include the necessary Subject Authority Name (SAN) for each fqdn. Contour (via Envoy) uses the SNI TLS extension to handle this behavior.

Contour also follows a “secure first” approach. When TLS is enabled for a virtual host, any request to the insecure port is redirected to the secure interface with a 301 redirect. Specific routes can be configured to override this behavior and handle insecure requests by enabling the spec.routes.permitInsecure parameter on a Route.

The TLS secret must contain keys named tls.crt and tls.key that contain the certificate and private key to use for TLS, e.g.:

# ingress-tls.secret.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  tls.crt: base64 encoded cert
  tls.key: base64 encoded key
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: testsecret
  namespace: default
type: kubernetes.io/tls

The IngressRoute can be configured to use this secret using tls.secretName property:

# tls.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: tls-example
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: foo2.bar.com
    tls:
      secretName: testsecret
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80

If the tls.secretName property contains a slash, eg. somenamespace/somesecret then, subject to TLS Certificate Delegation, the TLS certificate will be read from somesecret in somenamespace. See TLS Certificate Delegation below for more information.

The TLS Minimum Protocol Version a vhost should negotiate can be specified by setting the spec.virtualhost.tls.minimumProtocolVersion:

• 1.3
• 1.2
• 1.1 (Default)

The IngressRoute can be configured to permit insecure requests to specific Routes. In this example, any request to foo2.bar.com/blog will not receive a 301 redirect to HTTPS, but the / route will:

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata: 
  name: tls-example-insecure
  namespace: default
spec: 
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: foo2.bar.com
    tls:
      secretName: testsecret
  routes: 
    - match: /
      services: 
        - name: s1
          port: 80
    - match: /blog
      permitInsecure: true
      services: 
        - name: s2
          port: 80

Upstream TLS

An IngressRoute route can proxy to an upstream TLS connection by first annotating the upstream Kubernetes service with: contour.heptio.com/upstream-protocol.tls: "443,https". This annotation tells Contour which port should be used for the TLS connection. In this example, the upstream service is named https and uses port 443. Additionally, it is possible for Envoy to verify the backend service’s certificate. The service of an IngressRoute can optionally specify a validation struct which has a mandatory caSecret key as well as an mandatory subjectName.

Note: If spec.routes.services[].validation is present, spec.routes.services[].{name,port} must point to a service with a matching contour.heptio.com/upstream-protocol.tls Service annotation.

Sample YAML

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: secure-backend
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: www.example.com  
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: service
          port: 8443
          validation:
            caSecret: my-certificate-authority
            subjectName: backend.example.com

Error conditions

If the validation spec is defined on a service, but the secret which it references does not exist, Contour will rejct the update and set the status of the IngressRoute object accordingly. This is to help prevent the case of proxying to an upstream where validation is requested, but not yet available.

Status:
  Current Status:  invalid
  Description:     route "/": service "tls-nginx": upstreamValidation requested but secret not found or misconfigured

TLS Certificate Delegation

In order to support wildcard certificates, TLS certificates for a *.somedomain.com, which are stored in a namespace controlled by the cluster administrator, Contour supports a facility known as TLS Certificate Delegation. This facility allows the owner of a TLS certificate to delegate, for the purposes of reference the TLS certificate, the when processing an IngressRoute to Contour will reference the Secret object from another namespace.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: TLSCertificateDelegation
metadata:
  name: example-com-wildcard
  namespace: www-admin
spec:
  delegations:
    - secretName: example-com-wildcard
      targetNamespaces:
      - example-com
---
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: www
  namespace: example-com
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: foo2.bar.com
    tls:
      secretName: www-admin/example-com-wildcard
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80

In this example, the permission for Contour to reference the Secret example-com-wildcard in the admin namespace has been delegated to IngressRoute objects in the example-com namespace.

Routing

Each route entry in an IngressRoute must start with a prefix match.

Multiple Routes

IngressRoutes must have at least one route defined, but may support more. Paths defined are matched using prefix rules. In this example, any requests to multi-path.bar.com/blog or multi-path.bar.com/blog/* will be routed to the Service s2. All other requests to the host multi-path.bar.com will be routed to the Service s1.

# multiple-paths.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: multiple-paths
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: multi-path.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: / # matches everything else
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80
    - match: /blog # matches `multi-path.bar.com/blog` or `multi-path.bar.com/blog/*`
      services:
        - name: s2
          port: 80

Multiple Upstreams

One of the key IngressRoute features is the ability to support multiple services for a given path:

# multiple-upstreams.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: multiple-upstreams
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: multi.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80
        - name: s2
          port: 80

In this example, requests for multi.bar.com/ will be load balanced across two Kubernetes Services, s1, and s2. This is helpful when you need to split traffic for a given URL across two different versions of an application.

Upstream Weighting

Building on multiple upstreams is the ability to define relative weights for upstream Services. This is commonly used for canary testing of new versions of an application when you want to send a small fraction of traffic to a specific Service.

# weight-shifting.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: weight-shifting
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: weights.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80
          weight: 10
        - name: s2
          port: 80
          weight: 90

In this example, we are sending 10% of the traffic to Service s1, while Service s2 receives the other 90% of traffic.

IngressRoute weighting follows some specific rules:

• If no weights are specified for a given route, it’s assumed even distribution across the Services.
• Weights are relative and do not need to add up to 100. If all weights for a route are specified, then the “total” weight is the sum of those specified. As an example, if weights are 20, 30, 20 for three upstreams, the total weight would be 70. In this example, a weight of 30 would receive approximately 42.9% of traffic (30/70 = .4285).
• If some weights are specified but others are not, then it’s assumed that upstreams without weights have an implicit weight of zero, and thus will not receive traffic.

Request Timeout

Each Route can be configured to have a timeout policy and a retry policy as shown:

# request-timeout.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: request-timeout
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: timeout.bar.com
  routes:
  - match: /
    timeoutPolicy:
      request: 1s
    retryPolicy:
      count: 3
      perTryTimeout: 150ms
    services:
    - name: s1
      port: 80

In this example, requests to timeout.bar.com/ will have a request timeout policy of 1s. This refers to the time that spans between the point at which complete client request has been processed by the proxy, and when the response from the server has been completely processed.

• timeoutPolicy.request This field can be any positive time period or “infinity”. The time period of 0s will also be treated as infinity. By default, Envoy has a 15 second timeout for a backend service to respond. More information can be found in Envoy’s documentation.

• retryPolicy: A retry will be attempted if the server returns an error code in the 5xx range, or if the server takes more than retryPolicy.perTryTimeout to process a request.

  • retryPolicy.count specifies the maximum number of retries allowed. This parameter is optional and defaults to 1.
  • retryPolicy.perTryTimeout specifies the timeout per retry. If this field is greater than the request timeout, it is ignored. This parameter is optional. If left unspecified, timeoutPolicy.request will be used.

Load Balancing Strategy

Each upstream service can have a load balancing strategy applied to determine which of its Endpoints is selected for the request. The following list are the options available to choose from:

• RoundRobin: Each healthy upstream Endpoint is selected in round robin order (Default strategy if none selected).
• WeightedLeastRequest: The least request strategy uses an O(1) algorithm which selects two random healthy Endpoints and picks the Endpoint which has fewer active requests. Note: This algorithm is simple and sufficient for load testing. It should not be used where true weighted least request behavior is desired.
• Random: The random strategy selects a random healthy Endpoints.

More information on the load balancing strategy can be found in Envoy’s documentation.

The following example IngressRoute defines the strategy for Service s2-strategy as WeightedLeastRequest. Service s1-strategy does not have an explicit strategy defined so it will use the strategy of RoundRobin.

# lb-strategy.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: lb-strategy
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: strategy.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1-strategy
          port: 80
        - name: s2-strategy
          port: 80
          strategy: WeightedLeastRequest

Session Affinity

Session affinity, also known as sticky sessions, is a load balancing strategy whereby a sequence of requests from a single client are consistently routed to the same application backend. Contour supports session affinity with the strategy: Cookie key on a per service basis.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: httpbin
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: httpbin.davecheney.com
  routes:
  - match: /
    services:
    - name: httpbin
      port: 8080
      strategy: Cookie

Limitations

Session affinity is based on the premise that the backend servers are robust, do not change ordering, or grow and shrink according to load. None of these properties are guaranteed by a Kubernetes cluster and will be visible to applications that rely heavily on session affinity.

Any pertibation in the set of pods backing a service risks redistributing backends around the hash ring. This is an unavoidable consiquence of Envoy’s session affinity implementation and the pods-as-cattle approach of Kubernetes.

Per-Upstream Active Health Checking

Active health checking can be configured on a per-upstream Service basis. Contour supports HTTP health checking and can be configured with various settings to tune the behavior.

During HTTP health checking Envoy will send an HTTP request to the upstream Endpoints. It expects a 200 response if the host is healthy. The upstream host can return 503 if it wants to immediately notify Envoy to no longer forward traffic to it. It is important to note that these are health checks which Envoy implements and are separate from any other system such as those that exist in Kubernetes.

# health-checks.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: health-check
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: health.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1-health
          port: 80
          healthCheck:
            path: /healthy
            intervalSeconds: 5
            timeoutSeconds: 2
            unhealthyThresholdCount: 3
            healthyThresholdCount: 5
        - name: s2-health # no health-check defined for this service
          port: 80

Health check configuration parameters:

• path: HTTP endpoint used to perform health checks on upstream service (e.g. /healthz). It expects a 200 response if the host is healthy. The upstream host can return 503 if it wants to immediately notify downstream hosts to no longer forward traffic to it.
• host: The value of the host header in the HTTP health check request. If left empty (default value), the name “contour-envoy-healthcheck” will be used.
• intervalSeconds: The interval (seconds) between health checks. Defaults to 5 seconds if not set.
• timeoutSeconds: The time to wait (seconds) for a health check response. If the timeout is reached the health check attempt will be considered a failure. Defaults to 2 seconds if not set.
• unhealthyThresholdCount: The number of unhealthy health checks required before a host is marked unhealthy. Note that for http health checking if a host responds with 503 this threshold is ignored and the host is considered unhealthy immediately. Defaults to 3 if not defined.
• healthyThresholdCount: The number of healthy health checks required before a host is marked healthy. Note that during startup, only a single successful health check is required to mark a host healthy.

IngressRoute Default Health Checking (Not supported in beta.1)

In order to reduce the amount of duplicated configuration, the IngressRoute specification supports a default health check that will be applied to all Services. You may still override this default on a per-Service basis.

# default-health-checks.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: health-check
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: health.bar.com
  healthCheck:
    path: /healthy
    intervalSeconds: 5
    timeoutSeconds: 2
    unhealthyThresholdCount: 3
    healthyThresholdCount: 5
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1-def-health
          port: 80
        - name: s2-def-health
          port: 80

WebSocket Support

WebSocket support can be enabled on specific routes using the EnableWebsockets field:

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: chat
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: chat.example.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: chat-app
          port: 80
    - match: /websocket
      enableWebsockets: true # Setting this to true enables websocket for all paths that match /websocket
      services:
        - name: chat-app
          port: 80

Prefix Rewrite Support

Indicates that during forwarding, the matched prefix (or path) should be swapped with this value. This option allows application URLs to be rooted at a different path from those exposed at the reverse proxy layer. The original path before rewrite will be placed into the into the x-envoy-original-path header.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: app
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: app.example.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: app
          port: 80
    - match: /service2
      prefixRewrite: "/" # Setting this rewrites the request from `/service2` to `/`
      services:
        - name: app-service
          port: 80

Permit Insecure

IngressRoutes support allowing HTTP alongside HTTPS. This way, the path responds to insecure requests over HTTP which are normally not permitted when a virtualhost.tls block is present.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: permit-insecure
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: foo-basic.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      permitInsecure: true
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80

ExternalName

IngressRoute supports routing traffic to service types ExternalName. Contour looks at the spec.externalName field of the service and configures the route to use that DNS name instead of utilizing EDS.

There’s nothing specific in the IngressRoute object that needs configured other than referencing a service of type ExternalName.

NOTE: The ports are required to be specified.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    run: externaldns
  name: externaldns
  namespace: default
spec:
  externalName: foo-basic.bar.com
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 80
  type: ExternalName

IngressRoute Delegation

A key feature of the IngressRoute specification is route delegation which follows the working model of DNS:

As the owner of a DNS domain, for example whitehouse.gov, I delegate to another nameserver the responsibility for handing the subdomain treasury.whitehouse.gov. Any nameserver can hold a record for treasury.whitehouse.gov, but without the linkage from the parent whitehouse.gov nameserver, its information is unreachable and non authoritative.

The “root” IngressRoute is the only entry point for an ingress virtual host and is used as the top level configuration of a cluster’s ingress resources. Each root IngressRoute defines a virtualhost key, which describes properties such as the fully qualified name of the virtual host, TLS configuration, etc.

IngressRoutes that have been delegated to do not contain virtual host information, as they will inherit the properties of the parent IngressRoute. This permits the owner of an IngressRoute root to both delegate the authority to publish a service on a portion of the route space inside a virtual host, and to further delegate authority to publish and delegate.

In practice, the linkage, or delegation, from root IngressRoute to child IngressRoute is performed with a specific route action. You can think of this as routing traffic to another IngressRoute object for further processing, rather than routing traffic directly to a Service.

Delegation within a namespace

IngressRoutes can delegate to other IngressRoute objects in the namespace by specifying the action of a route path as delegate and providing the name of the IngressRoute to delegate the path to.

In this example, the IngressRoute delegation-root has delegated the configuration for paths matching /service2 to the IngressRoute named service2 in the same namespace as delegation-root (the default namespace). It’s important to note that service2 IngressRoute has not defined a virtualhost property as it is NOT a root IngressRoute.

# root.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: delegation-root
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: root.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80
    # delegate the path, `/service2` to the IngressRoute object in this namespace with the name `service2`
    - match: /service2
      delegate:
        name: service2
---
# service2.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: service2
  namespace: default
spec:
  routes:
    - match: /service2
      services:
        - name: s2
          port: 80
    - match: /service2/blog
      services:
        - name: blog
          port: 80

Virtualhost aliases

To present the same set of routes under multiple dns entries, for example www.example.com and example.com, delegation of the root route, / can be used.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: www-example-com
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: www.example.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      delegate:
        name: example-root
---
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: example-com
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: example.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      delegate:
        name: example-root
---
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: example-root
  namespace: default
spec:
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: example-service
          port: 8080
    - match: /static
      services:
        - name: example-static
          port: 8080

Across namespaces

Delegation can also happen across Namespaces by specifying a namespace property for the delegate. This is a particularly powerful paradigm for enabling multi-team Ingress management.

In this example, the root IngressRoute has delegated configuration of paths matching /blog to the blog IngressRoute object in the marketing namespace.

# root.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: namespace-delegation-root
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: ns-root.bar.com
  routes:
    - match: /
      services:
        - name: s1
          port: 80
# delegate the subpath, `/blog` to the IngressRoute object in the marketing namespace with the name `blog`
    - match: /blog
      delegate:
        name: blog
        namespace: marketing
---
# blog.ingressroute.yaml
apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: blog
  namespace: marketing
spec:
  routes:
    - match: /blog
      services:
        - name: s2
          port: 80

Orphaned IngressRoutes

It is possible for IngressRoute objects to exist that have not been delegated to by another IngressRoute. These objects are considered “orphaned” and will be ignored by Contour in determining ingress configuration.

Restricted root namespaces

IngressRoute delegation allows for Administrators to limit which users/namespaces may configure routes for a given domain, but it does not restrict where root IngressRoutes may be created. Contour has an enforcing mode which accepts a list of namespaces where root IngressRoutes are valid. Only users permitted to operate in those namespaces can therefore create IngressRoutes with the virtualhost field.

This restricted mode is enabled in Contour by specifying a command line flag, --ingressroute-root-namespaces, which will restrict Contour to only searching the defined namespaces for root IngressRoutes. This CLI flag accepts a comma separated list of namespaces where IngressRoutes are valid (e.g. --ingressroute-root-namespaces=default,kube-system,my-admin-namespace).

IngressRoutes with a defined virtualhost field that are not in one of the allowed root namespaces will be flagged as invalid and will be ignored by Contour.

Additionally, when defined, Contour will only watch for Kubernetes secrets in these namespaces ignoring changes in all other namespaces. Proper RBAC rules should also be created to restrict what namespaces Contour has access matching the namespaces passed to the command line flag. An example of this is included in the examples directory and shows how you might create a namespace called root-ingressroutes.

NOTE: The restricted root namespace feature is only supported for IngressRoute CRDs. --ingressroute-root-namespaces does not affect the operation of v1beta1.Ingress objects

TCP Proxying

Ingressroute supports proxying of TLS encapsulated TCP sessions.

Note: The TCP session must be encrypted with TLS. This is necessary so that Envoy can use SNI to route the incoming request to the correct service.

TLS Termination at the edge

If spec.virtualhost.tls.secretName is present then that secret will be used to decrypt the TCP traffic at the edge.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: example
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: tcp.example.com
    tls:
      secretName: secret
  tcpproxy:
    services:
    - name: tcpservice
      port: 8080
    - name: otherservice
      port: 9999
      weight: 20
  routes:
  - match: /
    services:
    - name: kuard
      port: 80

The spec.tcpproxy key indicates that this root IngressRoute will forward the de-encrypted TCP traffic to the backend service.

TLS passthrough to the backend service

If you wish to handle the TLS handshake at the backend service set spec.virtualhost.tls.passthrough: true indicates that once SNI demuxing is performed, the encrypted connection will be forwarded to the backend service. The backend service is expected to have a key which matches the SNI header received at the edge, and be capable of completing the TLS handshake. This is called SSL/TLS Passthrough.

apiVersion: contour.heptio.com/v1beta1
kind: IngressRoute
metadata:
  name: example
  namespace: default
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: tcp.example.com
    tls:
      passthrough: true
  tcpproxy:
    services:
    - name: tcpservice
      port: 8080
    - name: otherservice
      port: 9999
      weight: 20
  routes:
  - match: /
    services:
    - name: kuard
      port: 80

Limitations

The current limitations are present in Contour 0.8. These will be addressed in later Contour versions.

• TCP Proxying is not available on Kubernetes Ingress objects.
• A dummy spec.routes entry is required for input validation.

Status Reporting

There are many misconfigurations that could cause an IngressRoute or delegation to be invalid. To aid users in resolving these issues, Contour updates a status field in all IngressRoute objects. In the current specification, invalid IngressRoutes are ignored by Contour and will not be used in the ingress routing configuration.

If an IngressRoute object is valid, it will have a status property that looks like this:

status:
  currentStatus: valid
  description: valid IngressRoute

If the IngressRoute is invalid, the currentStatus field will be invalid and the description field will provide a description of the issue.

As an example, if an IngressRoute object has specified a negative value for weighting, the IngressRoute status will be:

status:
  currentStatus: invalid
  description: "route '/foo': service 'home': weight must be greater than or equal to zero"

Some examples of invalid configurations that Contour provides statuses for:

• Negative weight provided in the route definition.
• Invalid port number provided for service.
• Prefix in parent does not match route in delegated route.
• Root IngressRoute created in a namespace other than the allowed root namespaces.
• A given Route of an IngressRoute both delegates to another IngressRoute and has a list of services.
• Orphaned route.
• Delegation chain produces a cycle.
• Root IngressRoute does not specify fqdn.