External DNS with Amazon EKS using Rafay - Rafay Product Documentation

Part 3: Workload

What Will You Do

Create a K8s YAML workload that will deploy sample application with a hostname in our hosted zone and a service of Type LoadBalancer
Verify we can access the application via the LoadBalancer using the hostname

Step 1: Create Workload YAML

We are using a nginx deployment in this example to create a service of type LoadBalancer.

Copy the K8s YAML manifest below to a file called "nginx-lb.yaml"
Edit line 9 to a hostname for which an A record will be created in our hosted zone

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx
  annotations:
    external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname: nginx-lb.dev.rafay-edge.net
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
  - port: 80
    name: http
    targetPort: 80
  selector:
    app: nginx
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: nginx
        name: nginx
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: http

Step 2: Create Workload

In this step, we will create a workload based on the YAML from the previous step and publish it to our cluster.

Click on Application -> Workloads
Click on "Create New Workload" with the name "nginx-lb"
Select "K8s YAML" for the Package Type
Select "Upload files manually" for Artifact Sync
Select the "external-dns" namespace from the dropdown
Click on "CONTINUE"
Select the file created in the previous step
Click on "SAVE AND GO TO PLACEMENT"
Set the Drift Action to "NotSet"
Select a cluster for the placement policy
Click on "SAVE AND GO TO PUBLISH"
Publish the workload

Step 3: Verify Workload

Click on the Kubectl button on the cluster to open a virtual terminal and run the following kubectl command

kubectl get services -n external-dns

NAME           TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP                                                               PORT(S)        AGE
external-dns   ClusterIP      10.100.217.116   <none>                                                                    7979/TCP       26m
nginx          LoadBalancer   10.100.42.70     a2dbcc64608e54a0d93f31b2cd3bfdee-1212175333.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com   80:31377/TCP   116s

Verify in Route 53 that the records have been properly created
Verify you can securely access the nginx app using your web browser and the newly created FQDN

Step 4: Unpublish Workload

In this step we will unpublish the workload and verify the Route 53 records are properly deleted

Click on Application -> Workloads
Click on the 3 dots of the nginx-lb workload
Select "Unpublish"
You should see similar entries in the external-dns pod log showing that the records have been deleted

time="2023-06-06T05:27:49Z" level=info msg="Desired change: DELETE cname-nginx-lb.dev.rafay-edge.net TXT [Id: /hostedzone/Z1OM749F0P8E4R]"
time="2023-06-06T05:27:49Z" level=info msg="Desired change: DELETE nginx-lb.dev.rafay-edge.net A [Id: /hostedzone/Z1OM749F0P8E4R]"
time="2023-06-06T05:27:49Z" level=info msg="Desired change: DELETE nginx-lb.dev.rafay-edge.net TXT [Id: /hostedzone/Z1OM749F0P8E4R]"
time="2023-06-06T05:27:49Z" level=info msg="3 record(s) in zone dev.rafay-edge.net. [Id: /hostedzone/Z1OM749F0P8E4R] were successfully updated"

Verify in Route 53 that the records have been properly deleted

Recap

Congratulations!
You have successfully created a custom cluster blueprint with the "external-dns" add-on and applied it to a cluster. You have created a service of type LoadBalancer and properly created the corresponding Route 53 A record. You can now use this blueprint on as many clusters as you require.