Tag: apimanagement

Publishing and securing your API with Kong and Azure Front Door

In the post, Securing your API with Kong and CloudFlare, I exposed a dummy API on Kubernetes with Kong and published it securely with CloudFlare. The breadth of features and its ease of use made CloudFlare a joy to work with. It didn’t take long before I got the question: “can’t you do that with Azure only?”. The answer is obvious: “Of course you can!”

In this post, the traffic flow is as follows:

Consumer -- HTTPS --> Azure Front Door with WAF policy -- HTTPS --> Kong (exposed with Azure Load Balancer) -- HTTP --> API Kubernetes service --> API pods

Similarly to CloudFlare, Azure Front Door provides a fully trusted certificate for consumers of the API. In contrast to CloudFlare, Azure Front Door does not provide origin certificates which are trusted by Front Door. That’s easy to solve though by using a fully trusted Let’s Encrypt certificate which is stored as a Kubernetes secret and used in the Kubernetes Ingress definition. For this post, I requested a wildcard certificate for *.baeke.info via https://www.sslforfree.com/

Let’s take it step-by-step, starting at the API and Kong level.

APIs and Kong

Just like in the previous posts, we have a Kubernetes service called func and back-end pods that host the API implemented via Azure Functions in a container. Below you see the API pods in the default namespace. For convenience, Kong is also deployed in that namespace (not recommended in production):

A view on the API pods and Kong via k9s

The ingress definition is shown below:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: func
  namespace: default
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: kong
    plugins.konghq.com: http-auth
spec:
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - api-o.baeke.info
    secretName: wildcard-baeke.info.tls
  rules:
    - host: api-o.baeke.info
      http:
        paths:
        - path: /users
          backend:
            serviceName: func
            servicePort: 80

Kong will pick up the above definition and configure itself accordingly.

The API is exposed publicly via https://api-o.baeke.info where the o stands for origin. The secret wildcard-baeke.info.tls refers to a secret which contains the wildcard certificate for *.baeke.info:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: wildcard-baeke.info.tls
  namespace: default
type: kubernetes.io/tls
data:
  tls.crt: certificate
  tls.key: key

Naturally, certificate and key should be replaced with the base64-encoded strings of the certificate and key you have obtained (in this case from https://www.sslforfree.com).

At the DNS level, api-o.baeke.info should refer to the external IP address of the exposed Kong Ingress Controller (proxy):

The service kong-kong-proxy is exposed via a public IP address (service of type LoadBalancer)

For the rest, the Kong configuration is not very different from the configuration in Securing your API with Kong and CloudFlare. I did remove the whitelisting configuration, which needs to be updated for Azure Front Door.

Great, we now have our API listening on https://api-o.baeke.info but it is not exposed via Azure Front Door and it does not have a WAF policy. Let’s change that.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Policy

You can create a WAF policy from the portal:

WAF Policy

The above policy is set to detection only. No custom rules have been defined, but a managed rule set is activated:

Managed rule set for OWASP

The WAF policy was saved as baekeapiwaf. It will be attached to an Azure Front Door frontend. When a policy is attached to a frontend, it will be shown in the policy:

Associated frontends (Front Door front-ends)

Azure Front Door

We will now add Azure Front Door to obtain the following flow:

Consumer ---> https://api.baeke.info (Front Door + WAF) --> https://api-o.baeke.info

The final configuration in Front Door Designer looks like this:

Front Door Designer

When a request comes in for api.baeke.info, the response from api-o.baeke.info is served. Caching was not enabled. The frontend and backend are tied together via the routing rule.

The first thing you need to do is to add the azurefd.net frontend which is baeke-api.azurefd.net in the above config. There’s not much to say about that. Just click the blue plus next to Frontend hosts and follow the prompts. I did not attach a WAF policy to that frontend because it will not forward requests to the backend. We will use a custom domain for that.

Next, click the blue plus again to add the custom domain (here api.baeke.info). In your DNS zone, create a CNAME record that maps api.yourdomain.com to the azurefd.net name:

Mapping of custom domain to azurefd.net domain in CloudFlare DNS

I attached the WAF policy baekeapiwaf to the front-end domain:

WAF policy with OWASP rules to protect the API

Next, I added a certificate. When you select Front Door managed, you will get a Digicert managed image. If the CNAME mapping is not complete, you will get an e-mail from Digicert to approve certificate issuance. Make sure you check your e-mails if it takes long to issue the certificate. It will take a long time either way so be patient! 💤💤💤

Now that we have the frontend, specify the backend that Front Door needs to connect to:

Backend pool

The backend pool uses the API exposed at api-o.baeke.info as defined earlier. With only one backend, priority and weight are of no importance. It should be clear that you can add multiple backends, potentially in different regions, and load balance between them.

You will also need a health probe to check for healthy and unhealthy backends:

Health probes of the backend

Note that the above health check does NOT return a 200 OK status code. That is the only status code that would result in a healthy endpoint. With the above config, Kong will respond with a “no Route matched” 404 Not Found error instead. That does not mean that Front Door will not route to this endpoint though! When all endpoints are in a failed state, Front Door considers them healthy anyway 😲😲😲 and routes traffic using round-robin. See the documentation for more info.

Now that we have the frontend and the backend, let’s tie the two together with a rule:

First part of routing rule

In the first part of the rule, we specify that we listen for requests to api.baeke.info (and not the azurefd.net domain) and that we only accept https. The pattern /* basically forwards everything to the backend.

In the route details, we specify the backend to route to:

Backend to route to

Clearly, we want to route to the api-o backend we defined earlier. We only connect to the backend via HTTPS. It only accepts HTTPS anyway, as defined at the Kong level via a KongIngress resource.

Note that it is possible to create a HTTP to HTTPS redirect rule. See the post Azure Front Door Revisited for more information. Without the rule, you will get the following warning:

Please disregard this warning 😎

Test, test, test

Let’s call the API via the http tool:

Clearly, Azure Front Door has served this request as indicated by the X-Azure-Ref header. Let’s try http:

Azure Front Door throws the above error because the routing rule only accepts https on api.baeke.info!

White listing Azure Front Door

To restrict calls to the backend to Azure Front Door, I used the following KongPlugin definition:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: whitelist-fd
  namespace: default
config:
  whitelist: 
  - 147.243.0.0/16
plugin: ip-restriction

The IP range is documented here. Note that the IP range can and probably will change in the future.

In the ingress definition, I added the plugin via the annotations:

annotations:
  kubernetes.io/ingress.class: kong
  plugins.konghq.com: http-auth, whitelist-fd

Calling the backend API directly will now fail:

That’s a no no! Please use the Front Door!

Conclusion

Publishing APIs (or any web app), whether they are running on Kubernetes or other systems, is easy to do with the combination of Azure Front Door and Web Application Firewall policies. Do take pricing into account though. It’s a mixture of relatively low fixed prices with variable pricing per GB and requests processed. In general, CloudFlare has the upper hand here, from both a pricing and features perspective. On the other hand, Front Door has advantages when it comes to automating its deployment together with other Azure resources. As always: plan, plan, plan and choose wisely! 🦉

Azure API Management with public APIs on Kubernetes

In my previous blog post, I looked at Azure API Management in combination with private APIs hosted on Kubernetes. The APIs were exposed via Traefik and an internal load balancer. To make that scenario work, the Azure API Management premium SKU is required, which is quite costly.

This post describes another approach where the APIs are exposed on the public Internet via an Ingress Controller that requires HTTPS in addition to restricting the API caller to the IP address of the Azure API Management instance. Something like this:

Internet client -> Azure API Management --> Ingress Controller (with IP whitelisting per ingress) --> API service (Kubernetes) --> API pods (Kubernetes, part of a Deployment)

Let’s see how this works, shall we?

API Management

Deploy Azure API management from the portal. In this case, you can use the other SKUs such as Basic and Standard. Note the IP address of the Azure API Management instance on the Overview page:

IP address of API Management

Ingress Controller

As usual, let’s use Traefik. When you have Helm installed, use the following command:

helm install stable/traefik --name traefik --set serviceType=LoadBalancer,rbac.enabled=true,ssl.enabled=true,ssl.enforced=true,acme.enabled=true,acme.email=name@domain.com,onHostRule=true,acme.challengeType=tls-alpn-01,acme.staging=false,dashboard.enabled=true,externalTrafficPolicy=Local --namespace kube-system

Note the use of externalTrafficPolicy=Local. This lets Traefik know the IP address of the actual caller, which is required because we want to restrict access to the IP address of API Management.

Ingress object

When your API is deployed via a deployment and a service of type ClusterIP, use the following ingress definition:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: func
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: traefik
    traefik.ingress.kubernetes.io/whitelist-source-range: "YOURIP/32"
spec:
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - api.domain.com
  rules:
    - host: api.domain.com
      http:
        paths:
        - path: /
          backend:
            serviceName: func
            servicePort: 80

The above ingress object, exposes the internal service func via Traefik. The whitelist-source-range annotation is used to limit access to this resource to the IP address of Azure API Management. Replace YOURIP with that IP address. Obviously, replace the host api.domain.com with a host that resolves to the external IP of the load balancer that provides access to Traefik. The Let’s Encrypt configuration automatically provisions a valid certificate to the service.

When I navigate to the API on my local computer, the following happens:

No access to the API if the request does not come from API management

When I test the API from API Management (after setting the back-end correctly):

API management can call the back-end API

Conclusion

What do you do when you do not want to spend money on the premium SKU? The answer is clear: use the lower SKUs if possible and restrict access to the back-end APIs with other means such as IP whitelisting. Other possibilities include using some form of authentication such as basic authentication etc…

Azure API Management and Azure Kubernetes Service

You have decided to host your APIs in Kubernetes in combination with an API management solution? You are surely not the only one! In an Azure context, one way of doing this is combining Azure API Management and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This post describes one of the ways to get this done. We will use the following services:

  • Virtual Network: AKS will use advanced networking and Azure CNI
  • Private DNS: to host a private DNS zone (private.baeke.info) ; note that private DNS is in public preview
  • AKS: deployed in a subnet of the virtual network
  • Traefik: Ingress Controller deployed on AKS, configured to use an internal load balancer in a dedicated subnet of the virtual network
  • Azure API Management: with virtual network integration which requires Developer or Premium; note that Premium comes at a hefty price though

Let’s take it step by step but note that this post does not contain all the detailed steps. I might do a video later with more details. Check the YouTube channel for more information.

We will setup something like this:

Consumer --> Azure API Management public IP --> ILB (in private VNET) --> Traefik (in Kubernetes) --> API (in Kubernetes - ClusterIP service in front of a deployment)

Virtual Network

Create a virtual network in a resource group. We will add a private DNS zone to this network. You should not add resources such as virtual machines to this virtual network before you add the private DNS zone.

I will call my network privdns and add a few subnets (besides default):

  • aks: used by AKS
  • traefik: for the internal load balancer (ILB) and the front-end IP addresses
  • apim: to give API management access to the virtual network

Private DNS

Add a private DNS zone to the virtual network with Azure CLI:

az network dns zone create -g rg-ingress -n private.baeke.info --zone-type Private --resolution-vnets privdns

You can now add records to this private DNS zone:

az network dns record-set a add-record \
   -g rg-ingress \
   -z private.baeke.info \
   -n test \
   -a 1.1.1.1

To test name resolution, deploy a small Linux virtual machine and ping test.private.baeke.info:

Testing the private DNS zone

Update for June 27th, 2019: the above commands use the old API; please see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/dns/private-dns-getstarted-cli for the new syntax to create a zone and to link it to an existing VNET; these zones should be viewable in the portal via Private DNS Zones:

Private DNS zones in the portal

Azure Kubernetes Service

Deploy AKS and use advanced networking. Use the aks subnet when asked. Each node you deploy will get 30 IP address in the subnet:

First IP addresses of one of the nodes

Traefik

To expose the APIs over an internal IP we will use ingress objects, which require an Ingress Controller. Traefik is just one of the choices available. Any Ingress Controller will work.

Instead of using ingresses, you could also expose your APIs via services of type LoadBalancer and use an internal load balancer. The latter approach would require one IP per API where the ingress approach only requires one IP in total. That IP resolves to Traefik which uses the host header to route to the APIs.

We will install Traefik with Helm. Check my previous post for more info about Traefik and Helm. In this case, I will download and untar the Helm chart and modify values.yaml. To download and untar the Helm chart use the following command:

helm fetch stable/traefik --untar

You will now have a traefik folder, which contains values.yaml. Modify values.yaml as follows:

Changes to values.yaml

This will instruct Helm to add the above annotations to the Traefik service object. It instructs the Azure cloud integration components to use an internal load balancer. In addition, the load balancer should be created in the traefik subnet. Make sure that your AKS service principal has the RBAC role on the virtual network to perform this operation.

Now you can install Traefik on AKS. Make sure you are in the traefik folder where the Helm chart was untarred:

helm install . --name traefik --set serviceType=LoadBalancer,rbac.enabled=true,dashboard.enabled=true --namespace kube-system

When the installation is finished, there should be an internal load balancer in the resource group that is behind your AKS cluster:

ILB deployed

The result of kubectl get svc -n kube-system should result in something like:

EXTERNAL-IP is the front-end IP on the ILB for the traefik service

We can now reach Treafik on the virtual network and create an A record that resolves to this IP. The func.private.baeke.info I will use later, resolves to the above IP.

Azure API Management

Deploy API Management from the portal. API Management will need access to the virtual network which means we need a version (SKU) that has virtual network support. This is needed simply because the APIs are not exposed on the public Internet.

For testing, use the Developer SKU. In production, you should use the Premium SKU although it is very expensive. Microsoft should really make the virtual network integration part of every SKU since it is such a common scenario! Come on Microsoft, you know it’s the right thing to do! 😉

API Management virtual network integration

Above, API Management is configured to use the apim subnet of the virtual network. It will also be able to resolve private DNS names via this integration. Note that configuring the network integration takes quite some time.

Deploy a service and ingress

I deployed the following sample API with a simple deployment and service. Save this as func.yaml and run kubectl apply -f func.yaml. You will end up with two pods running a super simple and stupid API plus a service object of type ClusterIP, which is only reachable inside Kubernetes:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: func
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: func
  type: ClusterIP
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: func
spec:
  replicas: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: func
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: func
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: func
        image: gbaeke/ingfunc
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

Next, deploy an ingress:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: func
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: traefik
spec:
  rules:
    - host: func.private.baeke.info
      http:
        paths:
        - path: /
          backend:
            serviceName: func
            servicePort: 80

Notice I used func.private.baeke.info! Naturally, that name should resolve to the IP address on the ILB that routes to Traefik.

Testing the API from API Management

In API Management, I created an API that uses func.private.baeke.info as the backend. Yes, I know, the API name is bad. It’s just a sample ok? 😎

API with backend func.private.baeke.info

Let’s test the GET operation I created:

Great success! API management can reach the Kubernetes-hosted API via Traefik

Conclusion

In this post, we looked at one way to expose Kubernetes-hosted APIs to the outside world via Azure API Management. The traffic flow is as follows:

Consumer --> Azure API Management public IP --> ILB (in private VNET) --> Traefik (in Kubernetes) --> API (in Kubernetes - ClusterIP service in front of a deployment)

Because we have to use host names in ingress definitions, we added a private DNS zone to the virtual network. We can create multiple A records, one for each API, and provide access to these APIs with ingress objects.

As stated above, you can also expose each API via an internal load balancer. In that case, you do not need an Ingress Controller such as Traefik. Alternatively, you could also replace Azure API Management with a solution such as Kong. I have used Kong in the past and it is quite good! The choice for one or the other will depend on several factors such as cost, features, ease of use, support, etc…

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