Kubernetes Ingress Controller

Use Pomerium as a first-class secure-by-default Ingress Controller. The Pomerium Ingress Controller enables workflows more native to Kubernetes environments, such as Git-Ops style actions based on pull requests. Dynamically provision routes from Ingress resources and set policy based on annotations. By defining routes as Ingress resources you can independently create and remove them from Pomerium's configuration.

Prerequisites

• A certificate management solution. If you do not already have one in place, this article covers using cert-manager.
• A Redis backend with high persistence is highly recommended.

System Requirements

• Kubernetes v1.19.0+
• Pomerium Helm Chart v25.0.0+

Limitations

caution

Only one Ingress Controller instance is supported per Pomerium cluster.

Installation

Helm

Our instructions for Installing Pomerium Using Helm includes the Ingress Controller as part of the documented configuration. You can confirm by looking for this line in pomerium-values.yaml:

ingressController:
  enabled: true

Docker Image

You may deploy the Ingress controller from your own manifests by using the pomerium/ingress-controller docker image.

Configuration

Flag	Description
--databroker-service-url	The databroker service url
--databroker-tls-ca	base64 encoded TLS CA
--databroker-tls-ca-file	TLS CA file path for the databroker connection connection
--health-probe-bind-address	The address the probe endpoint binds to. (default ":8081")
--metrics-bind-address	The address the metric endpoint binds to. (default ":8080")
--name	IngressClass controller name (default "pomerium.io/ingress-controller")
--namespaces	Namespaces to watch, omit to watch all namespaces
--prefix	Ingress annotation prefix (default "ingress.pomerium.io")
--shared-secret	base64 encoded shared secret for communicating with databroker
--update-status-from-service	Update ingress status from given service status (pomerium-proxy)

The helm chart exposes a subset of these flags for appropriate customization.

Usage

Defining Routes

If you've tested Pomerium using the all-in-one binary, you're probably familiar with configuring routes in Pomerium's config.yaml. When using the Pomerium Ingress Controller, each route is defined as an Ingress resource in the Kubernetes API.

The Ingress Controller will monitor Ingress resources in the cluster, creating a Pomerium route definition for each one. Policy and other configuration options for the route are set by using annotations starting with ingress.pomerium.io/.

Example:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    ingress.pomerium.io/policy: '[{"allow":{"and":[{"email":{"is":"user@yourdomain.com"}}]}}]' # This can also be a yaml block quote
spec:
  rules:
  - host: hello.localhost.pomerium.io
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          service:
            name: nginx-hello
            port:
              name: http
        path: /
        pathType: Prefix

Becomes:

routes:
  - from: https://hello.localhost.pomerium.io
    to: http://nginx-hello.default.svc.cluster.local
    policy:
    - allow:
        and:
          - email:
              is: user@yourdomain.com

Write Policies in YAML

You can also define a route's policies using YAML:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: name
  annotations:
    ingress.pomerium.io/policy: |
      - allow:
          or:
            - domain:
                is: pomerium.com

tip

Routes are sorted and applied in the following order.

1. Ascending by from.
2. Descending by path.
3. Descending by regex.
4. Descending by prefix.
5. Ascending by id.

This sorting order helps ensure that more restrictive routes for specific paths and regexes are applied correctly.

Supported Annotations

Most configuration keys in non-Kubernetes deployments can be specified as annotation in an Ingress Resource definition. The format is ingress.pomerium.io/${OPTION_NAME}. The expandable list below contains the annotations available, which behave as described in our reference documentation (with links to the appropriate reference documentation).

Pomerium-Standard Annotations

• ingress.pomerium.io/allow_any_authenticated_user
• ingress.pomerium.io/allow_public_unauthenticated_access
• ingress.pomerium.io/allow_spdy
• ingress.pomerium.io/allow_websockets
• ingress.pomerium.io/allowed_domains
• ingress.pomerium.io/allowed_groups
• ingress.pomerium.io/allowed_idp_claims
• ingress.pomerium.io/allowed_users
• ingress.pomerium.io/cors_allow_preflight
• ingress.pomerium.io/host_path_regex_rewrite_pattern
• ingress.pomerium.io/host_path_regex_rewrite_substitution
• ingress.pomerium.io/host_rewrite
• ingress.pomerium.io/host_rewrite_header
• ingress.pomerium.io/idle_timeout
• ingress.pomerium.io/outlier_detection
• ingress.pomerium.io/pass_identity_headers
• ingress.pomerium.io/policy
• ingress.pomerium.io/prefix_rewrite
• ingress.pomerium.io/preserve_host_header
• ingress.pomerium.io/regex_rewrite_pattern
• ingress.pomerium.io/regex_rewrite_substitution
• ingress.pomerium.io/remove_request_headers
• ingress.pomerium.io/rewrite_response_headers
• ingress.pomerium.io/set_request_headers
• ingress.pomerium.io/set_response_headers
• ingress.pomerium.io/timeout
• ingress.pomerium.io/tls_server_name
• ingress.pomerium.io/tls_skip_verify

The remaining annotations are specific to or behave differently than they do when using Pomerium without the Ingress Controller:

Annotation	Description
ingress.pomerium.io/kubernetes_service_account_token	Name of a Kubernetes token Secret containing a Kubernetes Service Account Token.
ingress.pomerium.io/path_regex	When set to "true" enables path regex matching. See the Regular Expressions Path Matching section for more information.
ingress.pomerium.io/secure_upstream	When set to "true", use https when connecting to the upstream endpoint.
ingress.pomerium.io/set_request_headers_secret	Name of Kubernetes Secret containing the contents of the request header to send upstream. When used, ingress.pomerium.io/set_request_headers should not contain overlapping keys.
ingress.pomerium.io/set_response_headers_secret	Name of Kubernetes Secret containing the contents of the response header to send downstream. When used, ingress.pomerium.io/set_response_headers should not contain overlapping keys.
ingress.pomerium.io/service_proxy_upstream	When set to "true" forces Pomerium to connect to upstreams through the k8s service proxy, and not individual endpoints. This is useful when deploying Pomerium inside a service mesh.
ingress.pomerium.io/tcp_upstream	When set to "true", defines the route as supporting a TCP tunnel. See the example below for more information.
ingress.pomerium.io/tls_client_secret	Name of Kubernetes tls Secret containing a client certificate for connecting to the upstream.
ingress.pomerium.io/tls_custom_ca_secret	Name of Kubernetes tls Secret containing a custom CA certificate for the upstream.
ingress.pomerium.io/tls_downstream_client_ca_secret	Name of Kubernetes tls Secret containing a Client CA for validating downstream clients.

tip

Every value for the annotations above must be in string format.

cert-manager Integration

Pomerium Ingress Controller can use cert-manager to automatically provision certificates. These may come from the ingress-shim or explicitly configured Certificate resources.

To use HTTP01 Challenges with your Issuer, configure the solver class to match the Ingress Controller. The Ingress Controller will automatically configure policy to facilitate the HTTP01 challenge:

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: example-issuer
spec:
  acme:
    server: https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: example-issuer-account-key
    solvers:
    - http01:
       ingress:
         class: pomerium

An example of using the ingress-shim with an Ingress resource managed by Pomerium:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/issuer: example-issuer
    ingress.pomerium.io/policy: '[{"allow":{"and":[{"email":{"is":"user@exampledomain.com"}}]}}]'
  name: example
spec:
  ingressClassName: pomerium
  rules:
  - host: example.localhost.pomerium.io
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          service:
            name: example
            port:
              name: http
        path: /
        pathType: Prefix
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - example.localhost.pomerium.io
    secretName: example-tls

HTTPS Endpoints

The Ingress spec assumes that all communications to the upstream service is sent in plaintext. For more information, see the TLS section of the Ingress API documentation. Pomerium supports HTTPS communication with upstream endpoints, including mTLS.

Annotate your Ingress with

ingress.pomerium.io/secure_upstream: true

Additional TLS certificates may be supplied by creating a Kubernetes secret(s) in the same namespaces as the Ingress resource. Please note that we do not support file paths or embedded secret references.

• ingress.pomerium.io/tls_client_secret
• ingress.pomerium.io/tls_custom_ca_secret
• ingress.pomerium.io/tls_downstream_client_ca_secret

Please note that the referenced tls_client_secret must be a TLS Kubernetes secret. tls_custom_ca_secret and tls_downstream_client_ca_secret must contain ca.crt containing a .PEM encoded (base64-encoded DER format) public certificate.

External Services

You may refer to external services by defining a Service with externalName.

I.e. if you have https://my-existing-service.corp.com:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: external
spec:
  type: ExternalName
  externalName: "my-existing-service.corp.com"
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      name: https
      port: 443
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: external
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod-http
    ingress.pomerium.io/secure_upstream: "true"
    ingress.pomerium.io/policy: |
      - allow:
          and:
            - domain:
                is: pomerium.com
spec:
  ingressClassName: pomerium
  tls:
    - hosts:
        - "external.localhost.pomerium.io"
      secretName: external-localhost-pomerium.io
  rules:
    - host: "external.localhost.pomerium.io"
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: external
                port:
                  name: https

Regular Expressions Path Matching

You can use a re2 regular expression To create an Ingress that matches multiple paths.

1. Set the path_regex annotation to "true"
2. Set pathType to ImplementationSpecific
3. Set path to an re2 expression matching the full path. It must include the ^/ prefix and $ suffix. Any query strings should be removed.

tip

Check out this example expression at regex101.com for a more detailed explanation and example paths, both matching and not.

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/issuer: example-issuer
    ingress.pomerium.io/allowed_domains: '["exampledomain.com"]'
    ingress.pomerium.io/path_regex: "true"
  name: example
spec:
  ingressClassName: pomerium
  rules:
  - host: example.localhost.pomerium.io
    http:
      paths:
      - backend:
          service:
            name: example
            port:
              name: http
        path: ^/(admin|superuser)/.*$
        pathType: ImplementationSpecific
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - example.localhost.pomerium.io
    secretName: example-tls

TCP Endpoints

The example route below defines a route providing a tunneled TCP connection to an upstream service listening for non-web traffic:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: tcp-example
  annotations:
    ingress.pomerium.io/tcp_upstream: "true"
spec:
  ingressClassName: pomerium
  rules:
    - host: "tcp.localhost.pomerium.io"
      http:
        paths:
          - pathType: ImplementationSpecific
            backend:
              service:
                name: tcp-service
                port:
                  name: app

The important points to note in this example:

• The annotation ingress.pomerium.io/tcp_upstream: is set to "true",
• spec.rules.[].http.paths.[].path is omitted,
• spec.rules.[].http.paths.[].pathType is set to ImplementationSpecific,
• spec.rules.[].host and spec.rules.[].paths.[].backend.service.port.name/number together define the address used when connecting to the route using the Pomerium Desktop or CLI clients,
• You may apply standard access control annotations to define access restrictions to your port.

Unlike a standalone Pomerium configuration, you may not create multiple TCP routes using the same hostname with different ports. This limitation was made to avoid confusion, and because additional configuration parameters, such as the Ingress resource, do not allow passing port numbers in the spec.rules.host parameter.

Troubleshooting

View Event History

Pomerium Ingress Controller will add events to the Ingress objects as it processes them.

kubectl describe ingress/my-ingress

Events:
  Type    Reason   Age   From              Message
  ----    ------   ----  ----              -------
  Normal  Updated  18s   pomerium-ingress  updated pomerium configuration

If an error occurs, it may be reflected in the events:

Events:
  Type     Reason       Age                 From              Message
  ----     ------       ----                ----              -------
  Normal   Updated      5m53s               pomerium-ingress  updated pomerium configuration
  Warning  UpdateError  3s                  pomerium-ingress  upsert routes: parsing ingress: annotations: applying policy annotations: parsing policy: invalid rules in policy: unsupported conditional "maybe", only and, or, not, nor and action are allowed

HSTS

If your domain has HSTS enabled and you visit an endpoint while Pomerium is using the self-signed bootstrap certificate or a LetsEncrypt staging certificate (before cert-manager has provisioned a production certificate), the untrusted certificate may be pinned in your browser and would need to be reset. See this article for more information.

More Information

For more information on the Pomerium Ingress Controller or the Kubernetes concepts discussed, see:

• Ingress (Kubernetes Docs)
• Pomerium Helm Chart README: Pomerium Ingress Controller
• Pomerium Kubernetes Ingress Controller (code repository)