Deploy Frontend/VirtualGateway

Deploy the Frontend Service

Since we want to visualize the automated canary deployment, we need an UI for which, we will use frontend service. This frontend service will call the backend service detail to get the vendor information. In order to expose the frontend service outside the mesh we will use AWS AppMesh VirtualGateway affiliated with Network Load Balancer. Lets deploy the frontend service.

export APP_VERSION=1.0
envsubst < flagger/frontend.yaml | kubectl apply -f - 


deployment.apps/frontend created
service/frontend created
virtualnode.appmesh.k8s.aws/frontend created
virtualservice.appmesh.k8s.aws/frontend created

Deploy the AppMesh VirtualGateway

helm upgrade -i appmesh-gateway eks/appmesh-gateway \
	--namespace flagger \
    --set serviceAccount.create=false \
    --set serviceAccount.name=flagger-envoy-proxies

  
Release "appmesh-gateway" does not exist. Installing it now.
NAME: appmesh-gateway
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Mar 23 01:58:55 2021
NAMESPACE: flagger
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
AWS App Mesh Gateway installed!

Create the GatewayRoute

In this GatewayRoute, we are routing the traffic coming into the VirtualGateway to frontend VirtualService.

kubectl apply -f flagger/gateway.yaml 

  
gatewayroute.appmesh.k8s.aws/frontend created

Get all the resources for AppMesh VirtualGateway appmesh-gateway

kubectl get all  -n flagger -o wide | grep appmesh-gateway

  
pod/appmesh-gateway-65bc4cb47d-l6m6d      2/2     Running   0          19h     192.168.6.246    ip-192-168-19-33.us-east-2.compute.internal   <none>           <none>

service/appmesh-gateway      LoadBalancer   10.100.235.124   a21cab1223ac9414da4c97dee2f2c245-XXXXX.elb.us-east-2.amazonaws.com   80:30249/TCP   19h     app.kubernetes.io/name=appmesh-gateway

deployment.apps/appmesh-gateway      1/1     1            1           19h     envoy        840364872350.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/aws-appmesh-envoy:v1.15.1.0-prod       app.kubernetes.io/name=appmesh-gateway

replicaset.apps/appmesh-gateway-65bc4cb47d      1         1         1       19h     envoy        840364872350.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/aws-appmesh-envoy:v1.15.1.0-prod       app.kubernetes.io/name=appmesh-gateway,pod-template-hash=65bc4cb47d

virtualgateway.appmesh.k8s.aws/appmesh-gateway   arn:aws:appmesh:us-east-2:$ACCOUNT_ID:mesh/flagger/virtualGateway/appmesh-gateway_flagger   19h

gatewayroute.appmesh.k8s.aws/frontend   arn:aws:appmesh:us-east-2:$ACCOUNT_ID:mesh/flagger/virtualGateway/appmesh-gateway_flagger/gatewayRoute/frontend_flagger   19h

It takes 3 to 5 minutes to set up the Load Balancer.

Testing Setup

Find the AppMesh VirtualGateway public endpoint:

export URL="http://$(kubectl -n flagger get svc/appmesh-gateway -ojson | jq -r ".status.loadBalancer.ingress[].hostname")"
echo $URL

  
http://a21cab1223ac9414da4c97dee2f2c245-XXXXXXXX.elb.us-east-2.amazonaws.com

Wait for the NLB to become active:

watch curl -sS $URL

Once the LoadBalancer is active, access the LoadBalancer endpoint in browser lb

You can see that our frontend service is exposed via VirtualGateway using Network LoadBalancer. And this frontend service communicates with backend service detail to get the vendor information.

Congratulations on exposing the frontend service via App Mesh VirtualGateway!

Let’s test the Automated Canary Deployment for detail backend service.