Managed NGINX ingress with the application routing add-on

One way to route Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and secure (HTTPS) traffic to applications running on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster is to use the Kubernetes Ingress object. When you enable the application routing add-on with NGINX, it creates, configures, and manages an Ingress controller in your AKS cluster.

This article shows you how to enable the managed NGINX Ingress controller and configure an Ingress object to route traffic to an application in your AKS cluster.

Application routing add-on with NGINX features

The application routing add-on with NGINX delivers the following:

• Easy configuration of managed NGINX Ingress controllers based on Kubernetes NGINX Ingress controller.
• Integration with Azure DNS for public and private zone management.
• SSL termination with certificates stored in Azure Key Vault.

For other configurations, see:

• DNS and SSL configuration.
• Application routing add-on configuration.
• Configure internal NGINX ingress controller for Azure private DNS zone.

Prerequisites

• An Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, you can create a free account.
• Azure CLI version 2.54.0 or later installed and configured. Run az --version to find the version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

Limitations

• The application routing add-on supports up to five Azure DNS zones.

• The application routing add-on can only be enabled on AKS clusters with managed identity.

• All global Azure DNS zones integrated with the add-on have to be in the same resource group.

• All private Azure DNS zones integrated with the add-on have to be in the same resource group.

• Editing the ingress-nginx ConfigMap in the app-routing-system namespace isn't supported.

• If a snippet annotation value matches any of the following blocked values, the Ingress isn't configured:

  Blocked value	Effect
  load_module	The Ingress isn't configured.
  lua_package	The Ingress isn't configured.
  _by_lua	The Ingress isn't configured.
  location	The Ingress isn't configured.
  root	The Ingress isn't configured.
  proxy_pass	The Ingress isn't configured.
  serviceaccount	The Ingress isn't configured.
  {	The Ingress isn't configured.
  }	The Ingress isn't configured.
  '	The Ingress isn't configured.

• The add-on doesn't officially support injecting non-Microsoft-managed sidecars (for example, custom telemetry, logging, or security agents) into the ingress-nginx proxy pods that it manages. If you choose to inject your own sidecar into a managed proxy pod, Microsoft provides only best-effort support for any issues you encounter.

Enable the application routing add-on using Azure CLI

Enable on a new cluster

To enable application routing on a new cluster, use the az aks create command, specifying the --enable-app-routing flag.

az aks create \
    --resource-group <resource-group-name> \
    --name <cluster-name> \
    --location <location> \
    --enable-app-routing \
    --generate-ssh-keys

Enable on an existing cluster

To enable application routing on an existing cluster, use the az aks approuting enable command.

az aks approuting enable --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <cluster-name>

Connect to your AKS cluster

To connect to the Kubernetes cluster from your local computer, you use kubectl, the Kubernetes command-line client. You can install it locally using the az aks install-cli command. If you use the Azure Cloud Shell, kubectl is already installed.

Configure kubectl to connect to your Kubernetes cluster using the az aks get-credentials command.

az aks get-credentials --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <cluster-name>

Deploy an application

Kubernetes Ingress objects define routing rules for an Ingress controller. Use the application routing add-on's managed Ingress class and supported annotations to configure how its controller handles traffic.

1. Create the application namespace called aks-store to run the example pods using the kubectl create namespace command.

   kubectl create namespace aks-store
   

2. Deploy the AKS store application using the following YAML manifest file:

   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/aks-store-demo/main/sample-manifests/docs/app-routing/aks-store-deployments-and-services.yaml -n aks-store
   

This manifest creates rabbitmq, order-service, product-service, and store-front Deployments and corresponding Services. The store-front Service exposes port 80, which the Ingress routes to in the next section.

Create the Ingress object

When you enable the application routing add-on, it creates an Ingress class named webapprouting.kubernetes.azure.com. Specify this class in an Ingress object to use the add-on's managed NGINX Ingress controller.

1. Copy the following YAML manifest into a new file named ingress.yaml and save the file to your local computer.

   apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
   kind: Ingress
   metadata:
     name: store-front
     namespace: aks-store
   spec:
     ingressClassName: webapprouting.kubernetes.azure.com
     rules:
     - http:
         paths:
         - backend:
             service:
               name: store-front
               port:
                 number: 80
           path: /
           pathType: Prefix
   

2. Create the ingress resource using the kubectl apply command.

   kubectl apply -f ingress.yaml -n aks-store
   

   The following example output shows the created resource:

   ingress.networking.k8s.io/store-front created
   

Verify the managed Ingress resource

You can verify the managed Ingress was created using the kubectl get ingress command.

kubectl get ingress -n aks-store

The following example output shows the created managed Ingress:

NAME          CLASS                                HOSTS   ADDRESS       PORTS   AGE
store-front   webapprouting.kubernetes.azure.com   *       51.8.10.109   80      110s

You can verify that the AKS store works by pointing your browser to the public IP address of the Ingress controller. The following command retrieves the external IP address assigned by the load balancer to the managed NGINX ingress controller's nginx Service in the app-routing-system namespace:

kubectl get service -n app-routing-system nginx -o jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}"

Remove the application routing add-on

To remove the associated namespace, use the kubectl delete namespace command.

kubectl delete namespace aks-store

To remove the application routing add-on from your cluster, use the az aks approuting disable command.

az aks approuting disable --name <cluster-name> --resource-group <resource-group-name>

Related content

• Enable the application routing Gateway API implementation to manage ingress traffic with the Kubernetes Gateway API.
• Configure custom ingress configurations shows how to create an advanced Ingress configuration. Configure a custom domain using Azure DNS to manage DNS zones and setup a secure ingress.
• To integrate with an Azure internal load balancer and configure a private Azure DNS zone to enable DNS resolution for the private endpoints to resolve specific domains, see Configure internal NGINX ingress controller for Azure private DNS zone.
• Learn about monitoring the ingress-nginx controller metrics included with the application routing add-on with Prometheus in Grafana (preview) as part of analyzing the performance and usage of your application.