Load-balancing & Service Discovery

This tutorial will guide you to perform load-balancing and service discovery across multiple Kubernetes clusters when using Cilium.

Prerequisites

You need to have a functioning Cluster Mesh setup, please follow the guide Setting up Cluster Mesh to set it up.

Load-balancing with Global Services

Establishing load-balancing between clusters is achieved by defining a Kubernetes service with identical name and namespace in each cluster and adding the annotation service.cilium.io/global: "true" to declare it global. Cilium will automatically perform load-balancing to pods in both clusters.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: rebel-base
  annotations:
    service.cilium.io/global: "true"
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  ports:
  - port: 80
  selector:
    name: rebel-base

Disabling Global Service Sharing

By default, a Global Service will load-balance across backends in multiple clusters. This implicitly configures service.cilium.io/shared: "true". To prevent service backends from being shared to other clusters, this option should be disabled.

Below example will expose remote endpoint without sharing local endpoints.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: rebel-base
  annotations:
    service.cilium.io/global: "true"
    service.cilium.io/shared: "false"
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  ports:
  - port: 80
  selector:
    name: rebel-base

Deploying a Simple Example Service

1. In cluster 1, deploy:

   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium/1.13.1/examples/kubernetes/clustermesh/global-service-example/cluster1.yaml

2. In cluster 2, deploy:

   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium/1.13.1/examples/kubernetes/clustermesh/global-service-example/cluster2.yaml

3. From either cluster, access the global service:

   kubectl exec -ti deployment/x-wing -- curl rebel-base
   

   You will see replies from pods in both clusters.

4. In cluster 1, add service.cilium.io/shared="false" to existing global service

   kubectl annotate service rebel-base service.cilium.io/shared="false" --overwrite
   

5. From cluster 1, access the global service one more time:

   kubectl exec -ti deployment/x-wing -- curl rebel-base
   

   You will still see replies from pods in both clusters.

6. From cluster 2, access the global service again:

   kubectl exec -ti deployment/x-wing -- curl rebel-base
   

   You will see replies from pods only from cluster 2, as the global service in cluster 1 is no longer shared.

7. In cluster 1, remove service.cilium.io/shared annotation of existing global service

   kubectl annotate service rebel-base service.cilium.io/shared-
   

8. From either cluster, access the global service:

   kubectl exec -ti deployment/x-wing -- curl rebel-base
   

   You will see replies from pods in both clusters again.

Global and Shared Services Reference

The flow chart below summarizes the overall behavior considering a service present in two clusters (i.e., Cluster1 and Cluster2), and different combinations of the service.cilium.io/global and service.cilium.io/shared annotation values. The terminating nodes represent the endpoints used in each combination by the two clusters for the service under examination.