Service Mesh in Traefik Enterprise¶

Traefik Enterprise uses Traefik Mesh to provide service mesh between your services. Traefik Mesh is a lightweight and simpler service mesh that is designed from the ground up to be straightforward and easy to use.

Moreover, Traefik Mesh is opt-in by default, which means that your existing services are unaffected until you decide to add them to the mesh. For more information about Traefik Mesh, please consult its documentation.

Kubernetes only

The service mesh feature is only available for Kubernetes clusters.

Compatibility

The service mesh feature is compatible with open source Kubernetes and commercial distributions from most vendors and cloud providers, including AKS, EKS, GKE, and others. OpenShift is currently not supported, due to its security constraints and internal incompatibilities.

Architecture¶

Traefik Mesh data plane is deployed to every node of a Kubernetes cluster. Each time a Pod sends a request to another one, it actually sends it first to the local mesh proxy instance, which then forwards the request to the destination Pod.

service mesh architecture

Installing the Service Mesh¶

Service mesh can be installed with Traefik Enterprise by running the teectl setup gen command with the --mesh option, as described in the Kubernetes installation guide. You will then need to also run the teectl setup patch-dns command, which patches your cluster's DNS to add specific rules for the service mesh.

Once the generated installation manifest has been applied to your cluster, you'll also need to enable mesh in your static configuration.

Requests through the Service Mesh¶

Now that service mesh is enabled in your cluster, you can deploy services and make direct requests between your services. In order to specify the traffic type of a service, add the annotation mesh.traefik.io/traffic-type: "http" to your HTTP services and mesh.traefik.io/traffic-type: "tcp" for the TCP services. By default, the traffic type is automatically set to the value defined in the defaultMode option of the mesh static configuration (http by default). Once all of those conditions are met, services can be accessed at servicename.namespace.maesh.

Here is an example using some whoami services and a client Pod:

namespace.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: whoami

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: whoami-server
  namespace: whoami

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: whoami-client
  namespace: whoami

deployment.yaml

---
kind: Deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: whoami
  namespace: whoami
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: whoami
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: whoami
    spec:
      serviceAccount: whoami-server
      containers:
      - name: whoami
        image: traefik/whoami:v1.4.0
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent

---
kind: Deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: whoami-tcp
  namespace: whoami
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: whoami-tcp
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: whoami-tcp
    spec:
      serviceAccount: whoami-server
      containers:
      - name: whoami-tcp
        image: traefik/whoamitcp:latest
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: whoami
  namespace: whoami
  labels:
    app: whoami
  # These annotations enable Traefik Mesh for this service:
  annotations:
    mesh.traefik.io/traffic-type: "http"
    mesh.traefik.io/retry-attempts: "2"
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  ports:
  - port: 80
    name: whoami
  selector:
    app: whoami

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: whoami-tcp
  namespace: whoami
  labels:
    app: whoami-tcp
  # These annotations enable Traefik Mesh for this service:
  annotations:
    mesh.traefik.io/traffic-type: "tcp"
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  ports:
    - port: 8080
      name: whoami-tcp
  selector:
    app: whoami-tcp

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: whoami-client
  namespace: whoami
spec:
  serviceAccountName: whoami-client
  containers:
    - name: whoami-client
      image: giantswarm/tiny-tools:3.9
      command:
      - "sleep"
      - "3600"

Once you apply those files, you should see the following when running kubectl get all -n whoami:

NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/whoami-client                1/1     Running   0          11s
pod/whoami-f4cbd7f9c-lddgq       1/1     Running   0          12s
pod/whoami-f4cbd7f9c-zk4rb       1/1     Running   0          12s
pod/whoami-tcp-7679bc465-ldlt2   1/1     Running   0          12s
pod/whoami-tcp-7679bc465-wf87n   1/1     Running   0          12s

NAME                 TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/whoami       ClusterIP   100.68.109.244   <none>        80/TCP     13s
service/whoami-tcp   ClusterIP   100.68.73.211    <none>        8080/TCP   13s

NAME                         DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/whoami       2         2         2            2           13s
deployment.apps/whoami-tcp   2         2         2            2           13s

NAME                                   DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/whoami-f4cbd7f9c       2         2         2       13s
replicaset.apps/whoami-tcp-7679bc465   2         2         2       13s

You should now be able to make requests between your services. Here is an example to test HTTP traffic:

Command

kubectl -n whoami exec whoami-client -- curl -s whoami.whoami.maesh

Expected Output

Hostname: whoami-84bdf87956-gvbm8
IP: 127.0.0.1
IP: 5.6.7.8
RemoteAddr: 1.2.3.4:12345
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: whoami.whoami.maesh
User-Agent: curl/7.64.0
Accept: */*

Finally, for TCP traffic, you can use netcat and send some data:

Command

kubectl -n whoami exec -ti whoami-client -- nc whoami-tcp.whoami.maesh 8080
my data

Expected Output

Received: my data

Configuration¶

You can configure Traefik Enterprise's service mesh in the static configuration and configure how your services integrate within the mesh using the dynamic configuration.

Static Configuration¶

Here is an example of what you can do with the static configuration for your service mesh:

YAML

# Traefik Enterprise configuration example
providers:
  kubernetesCRD:

log:
  level: INFO

api:
  dashboard: true

# Service Mesh configuration
mesh:
  acl: true
  ignoreNamespaces:
    - mysecretnamespace
    - myothersecretnamespace
  defaultMode: http
  tracing:
    serviceName: myservice
    jaeger:
      samplingServerURL: http://jaeger-agent.traefikee.svc.cluster.local:5778/sampling
      samplingType: foobar
      collector:
        endpoint: http://jaeger-collector.traefikee.svc.cluster.local:14268/api/traces?format=jaeger.thrift
  metrics:
    prometheus: {}

TOML

[providers]

[log]
  level = "INFO"

[api]
  dashboard = true

[mesh]
  acl = true
  ignoreNamespaces = [
    "mysecretnamespace",
    "myothersecretnamespace"
  ]
  defaultMode = "http"

  [mesh.tracing]
    serviceName = "myservice"
    [mesh.tracing.jaeger]
      samplingServerURL = "http://jaeger-agent.traefikee.svc.cluster.local:5778/sampling"
      samplingType = "foobar"

      [mesh.tracing.jaeger.collector]
        endpoint = "http://jaeger-collector.traefikee.svc.cluster.local:14268/api/traces?format=jaeger.thrift"

  [mesh.metrics]
    [mesh.metrics.prometheus]

In this example, we:

Enable the ACL mode, which forbids all traffic unless explicitly authorized using the SMI TrafficTarget resource.
Tells the service mesh to use HTTP as the default traffic type for services within the mesh.
Let the service mesh know which namespaces to ignore within the cluster.
Expose service mesh tracing to Jaeger.
Expose service mesh metrics to Prometheus on port 8080.

Dynamic Configuration¶

Traefik Mesh discovers your Kubernetes resources and automatically builds its configuration from the topology of your Services, Pods, Deployments and TrafficSplits.

Your services can be annotated, as described here, to enable specific features in the service mesh, including rate limiting, circuit breaker, and other middlewares.

Advanced Configuration¶

As shown in the aforementioned example configuration, it is possible to expose metrics and tracing from your service mesh. Supported metrics and tracing integrations are listed in Traefik Proxy's documentation pages for Metrics and Tracing.

The configuration is identical to Traefik Proxy's metrics and tracing configuration, with the exception that it has to be part of the mesh static configuration in Traefik Enterprise: