Creating a LoadBalancer Service_Cloud Container Engine

Scenario

LoadBalancer Services can access workloads from the public network through a load balancer, which is more reliable than EIP-based access. The LoadBalancer access address is in the format of IP address of public network load balancer:Access port, for example, 10.117.117.117:80.

In this access mode, requests are transmitted through an ELB load balancer to a node and then forwarded to the destination pod through the Service.

Figure 1 LoadBalancer
Click to enlarge

Notes and Constraints

LoadBalancer Services allow workloads to be accessed from public networks through ELB. This access mode has the following restrictions:
- Automatically created load balancers should not be used by other resources. Otherwise, these load balancers cannot be completely deleted.
- Do not change the listener name for the load balancer in clusters of v1.15 and earlier. Otherwise, the load balancer cannot be accessed.
After a Service is created, if the affinity setting is switched from the cluster level to the node level, the connection tracing table will not be cleared. Do not modify the Service affinity setting after the Service is created. To modify it, create a Service again.
If service affinity is set to the node level (that is, externalTrafficPolicy is set to Local), the cluster may fail to access the Service by using the ELB address. For details, see Why a Service Fail to Be Accessed from Within the Cluster.
When the cluster service forwarding (proxy) mode is IPVS, the node IP cannot be configured as the external IP of the Service. Otherwise, the node is unavailable.
In a cluster using the IPVS proxy mode, if the ingress and Service use the same ELB load balancer, the ingress cannot be accessed from the nodes and containers in the cluster because kube-proxy mounts the LoadBalancer Service address to the ipvs-0 bridge. This bridge intercepts the traffic of the load balancer connected to the ingress. Use different load balancers for the ingress and Service.

Using the Console

Log in to the CCE console and click the cluster name to access the cluster console.
In the navigation pane, choose Services & Ingresses. In the upper right corner, click Create Service.

Configure parameters.

Service Name: Specify a Service name, which can be the same as the workload name.
Service Type: Select LoadBalancer.
Namespace: namespace that the workload belongs to.
Service Affinity: For details, see externalTrafficPolicy (Service Affinity).
- Cluster level: The IP addresses and access ports of all nodes in a cluster can access the workload associated with the Service. Service access will cause performance loss due to route redirection, and the source IP address of the client cannot be obtained.
- Node level: Only the IP address and access port of the node where the workload is located can access the workload associated with the Service. Service access will not cause performance loss due to route redirection, and the source IP address of the client can be obtained.
Selector: Add a label and click Confirm. The Service will use this label to select pods. You can also click Reference Workload Label to use the label of an existing workload. In the dialog box that is displayed, select a workload and click OK.

Load Balancer: Select a load balancer type and creation mode.

A load balancer can be dedicated or shared. A dedicated load balancer supports Network (TCP/UDP), Application (HTTP/HTTPS), or Network (TCP/UDP) & Application (HTTP/HTTPS).

You can select Use existing or Auto create to obtain a load balancer. For details about the configuration of different creation modes, see Table 1.

**Table 1** Load balancer configurations
How to Create	Configuration
Use existing	Only the load balancers in the same VPC as the cluster can be selected. If no load balancer is available, click Create Load Balancer to create one on the ELB console.
Auto create	Instance Name: Enter a load balancer name. EIP: If you select Auto create, you can configure the size of the public network bandwidth. Resource Tag: You can add resource tags to classify resources. You can create predefined tags on the TMS console. The predefined tags are available to all resources that support tags. You can use these tags to improve the tag creation and resource migration efficiency.

Set ELB: You can click Edit and configure the load balancing algorithm and sticky session.

Algorithm: Three algorithms are available: weighted round robin, weighted least connections algorithm, or source IP hash.
- Weighted round robin: Requests are forwarded to different servers based on their weights, which indicate server processing performance. Backend servers with higher weights receive proportionately more requests, whereas equal-weighted servers receive the same number of requests. This algorithm is often used for short connections, such as HTTP services.
- Weighted least connections: In addition to the weight assigned to each server, the number of connections processed by each backend server is considered. Requests are forwarded to the server with the lowest connections-to-weight ratio. Building on least connections, the weighted least connections algorithm assigns a weight to each server based on their processing capability. This algorithm is often used for persistent connections, such as database connections.
- Source IP hash: The source IP address of each request is calculated using the hash algorithm to obtain a unique hash key, and all backend servers are numbered. The generated key allocates the client to a particular server. This enables requests from different clients to be distributed in load balancing mode and ensures that requests from the same client are forwarded to the same server. This algorithm applies to TCP connections without cookies.
Sticky Session: This function is disabled by default. You can use source IP addresses. Source IP address-based sticky session means that access requests from the same IP address are forwarded to the same backend server.

When the distribution policy uses the source IP hash, sticky session cannot be set.

Health Check: Configure health check for the load balancer.

Global health check: applies only to ports using the same protocol. You are advised to select Custom health check.
Custom health check: applies to ports using different protocols. For details about the YAML configuration for custom health check, see Configuring Health Check on Multiple Ports of a LoadBalancer Service.

**Table 2** Health check parameters
Parameter	Description
Protocol	When the protocol of Port is set to TCP, the TCP and HTTP protocols are supported. When the protocol of Port is set to UDP, the UDP protocol is supported. Check Path (supported only by HTTP for health check): specifies the health check URL. The check path must start with a slash (/) and contain 1 to 80 characters.
Port	By default, the service port (NodePort or container port of the Service) is used for health check. You can also specify another port for health check. After the port is specified, a service port named cce-healthz will be added for the Service. Node Port: If a shared load balancer is used or no ENI instance is associated, the node port is used as the health check port. If this parameter is not specified, a random port is used. The value ranges from 30000 to 32767. Container Port: When a dedicated load balancer is associated with an ENI instance, the container port is used for health check. The value ranges from 1 to 65535.
Check Period (s)	Specifies the maximum interval between health checks. The value ranges from 1 to 50.
Timeout (s)	Specifies the maximum timeout duration for each health check. The value ranges from 1 to 50.
Max. Retries	Specifies the maximum number of health check retries. The value ranges from 1 to 10.

Ports
- Protocol: protocol used by the Service.
- Container Port: listener port of the workload. For example, Nginx uses port 80 by default.
- Service Port: port used by the Service. The port number ranges from 1 to 65535.
- Frontend Protocol: the frontend protocol of the load balancer listener for establishing a traffic distribution connection with the client. When a dedicated load balancer is selected, HTTP/HTTPS can be configured only when Application (HTTP/HTTPS) is selected.
- Health Check: If Health Check is set to Custom health check, you can configure health check for ports using different protocols. For details, see Table 2.
When a LoadBalancer Service is created, a random node port number (NodePort) is automatically generated.

Listener

Server Certificate: If HTTPS/TLS is enabled on the listener port, you must select a server certificate.
SNI: If HTTPS/TLS is enabled on the listener port, you must determine whether to add an SNI certificate. Before adding an SNI certificate, ensure the certificate contains a domain name.
If an SNI certificate cannot be found based on the domain name requested by the client, the server certificate will be returned by default.

Advanced Options

Configuration	Description	Restrictions
Idle Timeout (s)	Timeout for an idle client connection. If there are no requests reaching the load balancer during the timeout duration, the load balancer will disconnect the connection from the client and establish a new connection when there is a new request.	This configuration is not supported if the port of a shared load balancer uses UDP.
Request Timeout (s)	Timeout for waiting for a request from a client. There are two cases: If the client fails to send a request header to the load balancer during the timeout duration, the request will be interrupted. If the interval between two consecutive request bodies reaching the load balancer is greater than the timeout duration, the connection will be disconnected.	This parameter is available only after HTTP/HTTPS is enabled on ports.
Response Timeout (s)	Timeout for waiting for a response from a backend server. After a request is forwarded to the backend server, if the backend server does not respond during the timeout duration, the load balancer will stop waiting and return HTTP 504 Gateway Timeout.	This parameter is available only after HTTP/HTTPS is enabled on ports.
HTTP2	Whether to use HTTP/2 for a client to communicate with a load balancer. Request forwarding using HTTP/2 improves the access performance between your application and the load balancer. However, the load balancer still uses HTTP/1.x to forward requests to the backend server.	This parameter is available only after HTTPS is enabled on ports.

Annotation: The LoadBalancer Service has some advanced CCE functions, which are implemented by annotations. For details, see Configuring LoadBalancer Services Using Annotations.

Click OK.

Using kubectl to Create a Service (Using an Existing Load Balancer)

You can configure Service access using kubectl when creating a workload. This section uses an Nginx workload as an example to describe how to add a LoadBalancer Service using kubectl.

Use kubectl to access the cluster. For details, see Connecting to a Cluster Using kubectl.

Create and edit the nginx-deployment.yaml and nginx-elb-svc.yaml files.

The file names are user-defined. nginx-deployment.yaml and nginx-elb-svc.yaml are merely example file names.

vi nginx-deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: nginx 
        name: nginx
      imagePullSecrets:
      - name: default-secret

vi nginx-elb-svc.yaml

To enable sticky session, ensure anti-affinity is configured for the workload pods so that the pods are deployed onto different nodes. For details, see Configuring Workload Affinity or Anti-affinity Scheduling (podAffinity or podAntiAffinity).

apiVersion: v1 
kind: Service 
metadata: 
  name: nginx
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/elb.id: <your_elb_id>                         # Load balancer ID. Replace it with the actual value.
    kubernetes.io/elb.class:                    # Load balancer type
    kubernetes.io/elb.lb-algorithm: ROUND_ROBIN                   # Load balancer algorithm
    kubernetes.io/elb.session-affinity-mode: SOURCE_IP          # The sticky session type is source IP address.
    kubernetes.io/elb.session-affinity-option: '{"persistence_timeout": "30"}'     # Stickiness duration (min)
    kubernetes.io/elb.health-check-flag: 'on'                   # Enable ELB health check.
    kubernetes.io/elb.health-check-option: '{
      "protocol":"TCP",
      "delay":"5",
      "timeout":"10",
      "max_retries":"3"
    }'
spec:
  selector: 
     app: nginx
  ports: 
  - name: service0 
    port: 80     # Port for accessing the Service, which is also the listener port on the load balancer.
    protocol: TCP 
    targetPort: 80  # Port used by a Service to access the target container. This port is closely related to the applications running in a container.
    nodePort: 31128  # Port number of the node. If this parameter is not specified, a random port number ranging from 30000 to 32767 is generated.
  type: LoadBalancer

The preceding example uses annotations to implement some advanced functions of load balancing, such as sticky session and health check. For details, see Table 3.

For more annotations and examples related to advanced functions, see Configuring LoadBalancer Services Using Annotations.

**Table 3** annotations parameters
Parameter	Mandatory	Type	Description
kubernetes.io/elb.id	Yes	String	ID of a load balancer. Mandatory when an existing load balancer is to be associated. How to obtain: On the management console, click Service List, and choose Networking > Elastic Load Balance. Click the name of the target load balancer. On the Summary tab page, find and copy the ID. NOTE: The system preferentially connects to the load balancer based on the kubernetes.io/elb.id field. If this field is not specified, the spec.loadBalancerIP field is used (optional and available only in 1.23 and earlier versions). Do not use the spec.loadBalancerIP field to connect to the load balancer. This field will be discarded by Kubernetes. For details, see Deprecation.
kubernetes.io/elb.class	Yes	String	Select a proper load balancer type. The value can be: performance: dedicated load balancer, which can be used only in clusters of v1.17 and later. NOTE: If a LoadBalancer Service accesses an existing dedicated load balancer, the dedicated load balancer must support TCP/UDP networking.
kubernetes.io/elb.lb-algorithm	No	String	Specifies the load balancing algorithm of the backend server group. The default value is ROUND_ROBIN. Options: ROUND_ROBIN: weighted round robin algorithm LEAST_CONNECTIONS: weighted least connections algorithm SOURCE_IP: source IP hash algorithm NOTE: If this parameter is set to SOURCE_IP, the weight setting (weight field) of backend servers bound to the backend server group is invalid, and sticky session cannot be enabled.
kubernetes.io/elb.session-affinity-mode	No	String	Source IP address-based sticky session means that access requests from the same IP address are forwarded to the same backend server. Disabling sticky session: Do not configure this parameter. Enabling sticky session: Set this parameter to SOURCE_IP, indicating that the sticky session is based on the source IP address. NOTE: When kubernetes.io/elb.lb-algorithm is set to SOURCE_IP (source IP hash), sticky session cannot be enabled.
kubernetes.io/elb.session-affinity-option	No	Table 4 object	Sticky session timeout.
kubernetes.io/elb.health-check-flag	No	String	Whether to enable the ELB health check. Enabling health check: Leave blank this parameter or set it to on. Disabling health check: Set this parameter to off. If this parameter is enabled, the kubernetes.io/elb.health-check-option field must also be specified at the same time.
kubernetes.io/elb.health-check-option	No	Table 5 object	ELB health check configuration items.

**Table 4** elb.session-affinity-option data structure
Parameter	Mandatory	Type	Description
persistence_timeout	Yes	String	Sticky session timeout, in minutes. This parameter is valid only when elb.session-affinity-mode is set to SOURCE_IP. Value range: 1 to 60. Default value: 60

**Table 5** elb.health-check-option data structure
Parameter	Mandatory	Type	Description
delay	No	String	Health check interval (s) Value range: 1 to 50. Default value: 5
timeout	No	String	Health check timeout, in seconds. Value range: 1 to 50. Default value: 10
max_retries	No	String	Maximum number of health check retries. Value range: 1 to 10. Default value: 3
protocol	No	String	Health check protocol. Value options: TCP or HTTP
path	No	String	Health check URL. This parameter needs to be configured when the protocol is HTTP. Default value: / Value range: 1-80 characters

Create a workload.

kubectl create -f nginx-deployment.yaml

If information similar to the following is displayed, the workload has been created.
```
deployment/nginx created
```
kubectl get pod

If information similar to the following is displayed, the workload is running.
```
NAME                     READY     STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-2601814895-c1xhw   1/1       Running            0          6s
```

Create a Service.

kubectl create -f nginx-elb-svc.yaml

If information similar to the following is displayed, the Service has been created.

service/nginx created

kubectl get svc

If information similar to the following is displayed, the workload's access mode has been configured.

NAME         TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
kubernetes   ClusterIP      10.247.0.1       <none>        443/TCP        3d
nginx        LoadBalancer   10.247.130.196   10.78.42.242   80:31540/TCP   51s

Enter the URL in the address box of the browser, for example, 10.78.42.242:80. 10.78.42.242 indicates the IP address of the load balancer, and 80 indicates the access port displayed on the CCE console.

The Nginx is accessible.

Figure 2 Accessing Nginx through the LoadBalancer Service

Using kubectl to Create a Service (Automatically Creating a Load Balancer)