Use an existing SLB instance to expose an application

Precautions

• When you use an existing SLB instance to expose an application, take note of the following limits:
  • The SLB instance must be created in the SLB console. You cannot use SLB instances that are automatically created by CCM.
  • If you want to use an internal-facing SLB instance in an ACK cluster, the SLB instance and the cluster must be deployed in the same virtual private cloud (VPC).
  • The SLB instance must listen on different Service ports if the SLB instance exposes more than one Service.
• CCM configures SLB instances only for Services of the Type=LoadBalancer type. CCM does not configure SLB instances for other types of Services.
  Notice When a Service is changed from Type=LoadBalancer to another type, CCM deletes the configurations that are added to the SLB instance of the Service. As a result, you cannot use the SLB instance to access the Service.
• CCM uses a declarative API. CCM automatically updates the configurations of an SLB instance to match the configurations of the exposed Service when specific conditions are met. If you set service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-force-override-listeners: to true, the SLB configurations that you update in the SLB console may be overwritten.
  Notice If an SLB instance is created and managed by CCM, we recommend that you do not modify the configurations of the SLB instance in the SLB console. Otherwise, the changes may be overwritten and you cannot use the SLB instance to access the Service.

SLB resource quotas

• CCM creates SLB instances for Services of the Type=LoadBalancer type. By default, you can keep a maximum of 60 SLB instances within each account. If you want to keep more than 60 SLB instances, Submit a ticket.
  Note When you submit a ticket to increase the number of SLB instances that you can keep within each account, describe your request to modify the parameter slb_quota_instances_num in the ticket.
• CCM automatically creates SLB listeners that use Service ports. By default, each SLB instance supports a maximum of 50 listeners. To create more than 50 listeners for an SLB instance, submit a ticket.
  Note When you submit a ticket to increase the number of listeners that can be created for an SLB instance, describe your request to modify the parameter slb_quota_listeners_num in the ticket.
• CCM automatically adds Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances to backend server groups of an SLB instance based on the Service configurations.
  • By default, an ECS instance can be added to up to 50 backend server groups. To add the ECS instance to more than 50 server groups, Submit a ticket.
    Note When you submit a ticket to increase the number of backend server groups to which an ECS instance can be added, describe your request to modify the parameter slb_quota_backendserver_attached_num in the ticket.
  • By default, you can add up to 200 backend servers to an SLB instance. To add more backend servers to an SLB instance, submit a ticket.
    Note When you submit a ticket to increase the number of backend servers that can be added to an SLB instance, describe your request to modify the parameter slb_quota_backendservers_num in the ticket.

  For more information about SLB resource quotas, see Limits. To query SLB resource quotas, go to the Quota Management page in the SLB console.

Step 1: Deploy a sample application

The following section describes how to use the kubectl command-line interface (CLI) to deploy an application. For more information about how to deploy an application in the ACK console. see Use a Deployment to create a stateless application.

1. Use the following YAML template to create a my-nginx.yaml file:

   apiVersion: apps/v1 # for versions before 1.8.0 use apps/v1beta1
   kind: Deployment
   metadata:
     name: my-nginx    #The name of the sample application.
     labels:
       app: nginx
   spec:
     replicas: 3       #The number of replicas.
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         app: nginx     #You must set the same value in the selector of the Service that is used to expose the application.
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           app: nginx
       spec:
       #  nodeSelector:
       #    env: test-team
         containers:
         - name: nginx
           image: registry.aliyuncs.com/acs/netdia:latest     #Replace the value with the image address. Format: <image_name:tags>.
           ports:
           - containerPort: 80               #The port that you want to expose in the Service.

2. Run the following command to deploy the application my-nginx:

   kubectl apply -f my-nginx.yaml

3. Run the following command to verify the state of the application:

   kubectl get deployment my-nginx

   Sample response:

   NAME       READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
   my-nginx   3/3     3            3           50s

Step 2: Use an existing SLB instance to expose an application

You can use the ACK console or kubectl to create a LoadBalancer Service. After the Service is created, you can use the Service to expose the application.

Use the ACK console

1. Log on to the ACK console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane of the ACK console, click Clusters.
3. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and click the name of the cluster or click Details in the Actions column. The details page of the cluster appears.
4. In the left-side navigation pane of the details page, choose Network > Services.
5. On the Services page, click Create in the upper-right corner of the page.
6. In the Create Service dialog box, set the required parameters.
   

   Parameter	Description
   Name	Enter a name for the Service. my-nginx-svc is entered in this example.
   Type	Select a Service type. This parameter determines how the Service is accessed. Choose Server Load Balancer -> Public Access -> Use Existing SLB Instance and select an SLB instance from the drop-down list. Overwrite Existing Listeners: Specify whether to overwrite the listeners of the selected SLB instance. If you select this check box but the SLB instance does not have listeners, the system automatically creates listeners for the SLB instance. In this example, the SLB instance is newly created and therefore you must select this check box to create listeners for the SLB instance. Note If the listeners of the SLB instance are associated with applications, service interruption may occur after the configurations of the listeners are overwritten. CCM supports limited backend configurations and cannot handle complex configurations. If you require complex backend configurations, you can manually modify the listeners in the SLB console without overwriting the existing configurations of the listeners. In both cases, we recommend that you do not overwrite the configurations of the listeners. However, you can overwrite the configuration of a listener if the port of the listener is no longer used.
   Backend	Select the application that you want to associate with the Service. The application my-nginx is selected in this example. If you do not associate the Service with a backend, no Endpoint object is created. You can manually associate the Service with a backend. For more information, see services-without-selectors.
   External Traffic Policy	Select a policy to distribute external network traffic. Local is selected in this example. Local: routes network traffic only to pods on the node where the Service is deployed. Cluster: routes network traffic to the pods on other nodes. Note The External Traffic Policy parameter is available only when you set Type to Node Port or Server Load Balancer.
   Port Mapping	Enter a Service port and a container port. The Service port corresponds to port in the YAML file and the container port corresponds to targetPort in the YAML file. The container port must be the same as the one that is exposed in the backend pod. Both ports are set to 80 in this example.
   Annotations	Add annotations to the Service to modify the configuration of the SLB instance. Valid values: Custom Annotation and Alibaba Cloud Annotation. In this example, the billing method is set to pay-by-bandwidth and the maximum bandwidth is set to 2 Mbit/s to limit the amount of traffic that flows through the Service. For more information, see Use annotations to configure load balancing. Type: Alibaba Cloud Annotation. Name: Set the names of the annotations to service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-charge-type and service.beta.kubernetes.io/alicloud-loadbalancer-bandwidth. Value: Set the values of the annotations to paybybandwidth and 2.
   Label	Add labels to the Service.

7. Click Create.
   On the Services page, you can view the created Service.
8. Click 39.106.xx.xx:80 in the External Endpoint column to access the sample application.

Use Kubectl

1. Use the following YAML template to create a my-nginx-svc.yaml file.
   • Replace the value ${YOUR_LB_ID} of service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-id with the ID of the SLB instance that is created in the SLB console.
   • If you use an existing SLB instance, CCM does not create listeners for the SLB instance or overwrite the listeners of the SLB instance by default. You can set service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-force-override-listeners to true if you want CCM to create or overwrite listeners. In this example, the SLB instance is newly created and therefore you must set this annotation to true to create listeners for the SLB instance. For more information, see Use annotations to configure load balancing.
   • To associate the Service with the backend application, set selector to the value of matchLabels in the my-nginx.yaml file. The value is app: nginx in this example.

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     annotations:
       service.beta.kubernetes.io/alibaba-cloud-loadbalancer-id: ${YOUR_LB_ID}
       service.beta.kubernetes.io/alicloud-loadbalancer-force-override-listeners: 'true'
     labels:
       app: nignx
     name: my-nginx-svc
     namespace: default
   spec:
     ports:
     - port: 80
       protocol: TCP
       targetPort: 80
     selector:
       app: nginx
     type: LoadBalancer

2. Run the following command to create a Service named my-nginx-svc and use the Service to expose the application:

   kubectl apply -f my-nginx-svc.yaml

3. Run the following command to verify that the LoadBalancer Service is created:

   kubectl get svc my-nginx-svc

   Sample response:

   NAME           TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)        AGE
   my-nginx-svc   LoadBalancer   172.21.5.82   39.106.xx.xx     80:30471/TCP   5m

4. Run the curl <YOUR-External-IP> command to access the sample application. Replace <YOUR-External-IP> with the IP address displayed in the EXTERNAL-IP column.

   curl 39.106.xx.xx

   Sample response:

   <! DOCTYPE html>
   <html>
   <head>
   <title>Welcome to nginx! </title>
   <style>
       body {
           width: 35em;
           margin: 0 auto;
           font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
       }
   </style>
   </head>
   <body>
   <h1>Welcome to nginx! </h1>
   <p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
   working. Further configuration is required.</p>
   
   <p>For online documentation and support please refer to
   <a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/>
   Commercial support is available at
   <a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p>
   
   <p><em>Thank you for using nginx.</em></p>
   </body>
   </html>