Deploying a simple Gateway

The simplest possible deployment is a Gateway and Route resource which are deployed together by the same owner. This represents a similar kind of model used for Ingress. In this guide, a Gateway and HTTPRoute are deployed which match all HTTP traffic and directs it to a single Service named foo-svc.

apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: prod-web
spec:
  gatewayClassName: example
  listeners:
  - protocol: HTTP
    port: 80
    name: prod-web-gw
    allowedRoutes:
      namespaces:
        from: Same

The Gateway represents the instantiation of a logical load balancer and the GatewayClass defines the load balancer template when users create a Gateway. The example Gateway is templated from a hypothetical example GatewayClass, which is meant to be a placeholder and substitued by users. Here is a list of available Gateway Implementation that can be used to determine the correct GatewayClass based on the specific infrastructure provider.

The Gateway listens for HTTP traffic on port 80. This particular GatewayClass automatically assigns an IP address which will be shown in the Gateway.status after it has been deployed.

Route resources specify the Gateways they want to attach to using ParentRefs. As long as the Gateway allows this attachment (by default Routes from the same namespace are trusted), this will allow the Route to receive traffic from the parent Gateway. BackendRefs define the backends that traffic will be sent to. More complex bi-directional matching and permissions are possible and explained in other guides.

The following HTTPRoute defines how traffic from the Gateway listener is routed to backends. Because there are no host routes or paths specified, this HTTPRoute will match all HTTP traffic that arrives at port 80 of the load balancer and send it to the foo-svc Pods.

apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  name: foo
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - name: prod-web
  rules:
  - backendRefs:
    - name: foo-svc
      port: 8080

While Route resources are often used to filter traffic to many different backends (potentially with different owners), this demonstrates the simplest possible route with a single Service backend. This example shows how a service owner can deploy both the Gateway and the HTTPRoute for their usage alone, giving them more control and autonomy for how the service is exposed.