Setting up load balancers and DNS

You must set up load balancers and DNS for the Acceptor and Gateway components so that these components can be exposed to the public Internet and allow you to access the Instana UI. Depending on your setup, steps can be different for an Instana backend on Kubernetes and an Instana backend on Red Hat OpenShift.

For Kubernetes, you must either define Ingresses or create Services of type LoadBalancer. For Red Hat OpenShift, you must either define Routes or create Services of type LoadBalancer.

Domain configuration

For both Instana backend on Kubernetes and Instana backend on Red Hat OpenShift, you must set up A records in your DNS for the base_domain, for the Acceptor subdomain domain (usually ingress), for the OTLP Acceptor subdomains (otlp-http and otlp-grpc), and for all tenant unit subdomains:

  • <base_domain>
  • ingress.<base_domain>
  • otlp-http.<base_domain>
  • otlp-grpc.<base_domain>
  • <unit-name>-<tenant-name>.<base_domain>

Then, configure the domains in the CoreSpec as shown in the following code. For more information about CoreSpec, see Creating a Core.

spec:
  agentAcceptorConfig:
    host: ingress.<base_domain>
    port: 443
  baseDomain: <base_domain>

Instana backend on Kubernetes

To set up load balancers for your Instana backend on Kubernetes, use Services of type LoadBalancer as follows:

Acceptor

  1. Create a YAML file such as service.yaml as follows:

    • For Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS):

      apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: instana-core
  annotations:
    # For additional Loadbalancer annotations, kindly refer: https://cloud-provider-azure.sigs.k8s.io/topics/loadbalancer/#loadbalancer-annotations
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-resource-group: <your-resource-group>
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-internal: "false" #if internet facing
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-dns-label-name: <dns-label-name>
  name: loadbalancer-acceptor
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ports:
    - name: http-service
      port: 443
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http-service
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: instana
    app.kubernetes.io/component: acceptor
    instana.io/group: service

    • For Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS):

      apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: instana-core
  annotations:
    # To explore on more service annotations, kindly refer the documentation - https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.8/guide/service/annotations/
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-name: <your-load-balancer-name>
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-subnets: <subnet1-name>,<subnet2-name>,<subnet3-name>
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ip-address-type: ipv4
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: "internet-facing"
  name: loadbalancer-acceptor
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ports:
    - name: http-service
      port: 443
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http-service
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: instana
    app.kubernetes.io/component: acceptor
    instana.io/group: service

    • For Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE):

      apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: instana-core
  annotations:
    # To explore on more service annotations, kindly refer the documentation https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/service-load-balancer
    cloud.google.com/l4-rbs: "enabled"
  name: loadbalancer-acceptor
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  loadBalancerIP: <your_loadbalancer_IP>
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ports:
    - name: http-service
      port: 443
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http-service
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: instana
    app.kubernetes.io/component: acceptor
    instana.io/group: service

      Replace <your_loadbalancer_IP> with the IP address of your load balancer.

  2. Apply the YAML file by running the following command:

    kubectl apply -f service.yaml -n <CORE_NAMESPACE>

    Replace <CORE_NAMESPACE> with the namespace of the Core object.

Gateway

  1. Create a YAML file such as service.yaml, complete one of the following steps:

    • For Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS):

      apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: instana-core
  name: loadbalancer-gateway
  annotations:
    # For additional Loadbalancer annotations, kindly refer: https://cloud-provider-azure.sigs.k8s.io/topics/loadbalancer/#loadbalancer-annotations
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-resource-group: <your-resource-group>
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-internal: "false" #internet facing
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-dns-label-name: <dns-label-name>
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ports:
    - name: https
      port: 443
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: https
    - name: http
      port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: instana
    app.kubernetes.io/component: gateway
    instana.io/group: service

    • For Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS):

    apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: instana-core
  name: loadbalancer-gateway
  annotations:
    # To explore on more service annotations, kindly refer the documentation - https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/aws-load-balancer-controller/v2.8/guide/service/annotations/
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-name: <your-gateway-name>
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ip-address-type: ipv4
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: "internet-facing"
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-subnets: <subnet1-name>,<subnet2-name>,<subnet3-name>
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ports:
    - name: https
      port: 443
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: https
    - name: http
      port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: instana
    app.kubernetes.io/component: gateway
    instana.io/group: service
    • For Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE):
    apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  namespace: instana-core
  name: loadbalancer-gateway
  annotations:
    # To explore on more service annotations, kindly refer the documentation https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/service-load-balancer
    cloud.google.com/l4-rbs: "enabled"
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  loadBalancerIP: <your_loadbalancer_IP>
  externalTrafficPolicy: Local
  ports:
    - name: https
      port: 443
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: https
    - name: http
      port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: http
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: instana
    app.kubernetes.io/component: gateway
    instana.io/group: service

    Replace <your_loadbalancer_IP> with the IP address of your load balancer.

  2. Apply the YAML file by running the following command:

    kubectl apply -f service.yaml -n <CORE_NAMESPACE>

    Replace <CORE_NAMESPACE> with the namespace of the Core object.

Instana backend on Red Hat OpenShift

To set up load balancers for your Instana backend on Red Hat OpenShift, create Routes by running the following commands:

Acceptor

oc create route passthrough acceptor --hostname=<acceptor_subdomain> --service=acceptor  --port=8600 -n instana-core

OTLP Acceptor

oc create route passthrough otlp-http-acceptor --hostname=otlp-http.<base_domain> --service=gateway  --port=https -n instana-core
oc create route passthrough otlp-grpc-acceptor --hostname=otlp-grpc.<base_domain> --service=gateway  --port=https -n instana-core

Gateway

oc create route passthrough base-domain --hostname=<base_domain> --service=gateway --port=https -n instana-core

oc create route passthrough <unitName>-<tenantName>-ui --hostname=<unitName>-<tenantName>.<base_domain> --service=gateway --port=https -n instana-core