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Configure network proxy using YTT with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)

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I was doing some work with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) 1.2 using my TKG Demo Appliance Fling and the environment that I was working in did not have direct internet access, which is usually the case for most Production environment. I needed to have outbound connectivity from the TKG Worker Nodes so that they could pull down a set of containers as part of attaching to our Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) service.

Luckily, there was an HTTP proxy server that I could use for this connectivity and we just need to update our TKG templates so the TKG worker nodes will have the proxy settings. In the past, when needing to apply such customizations such as adding a network proxy to TKG, it meant I had to manually edit the TKG Dev/Prod YAML files. As previously shared, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) 1.2 now uses the YAML Templating Tool (YTT) tool for customizing TKG plans.

Although the TKG documentation provides an example for YTT template example, it did not actually cover the TKG Worker Nodes which is what I needed but also that I needed to add a command into the postKubeadmCommands for the network proxy to be activated. The issue is that this section no longer exists in the base template like it did in previous versions of TKG and required some additional YTT annotation to get this working.

Here is the complete working ~/.tkg/providers/infrastructure-vsphere/ytt/proxy_nameserver.yaml template that adds the respective HTTP(S) proxy server and No Proxy settings.

#@ load("@ytt:overlay", "overlay")

#@overlay/match by=overlay.subset({"kind":"KubeadmControlPlane"})
---
apiVersion: controlplane.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha3
kind: KubeadmControlPlane
spec:
  kubeadmConfigSpec:
    preKubeadmCommands:
    #! Add HTTP_PROXY to containerd configuration file
    #@overlay/append
    - echo $'[Service]\nEnvironment="HTTP_PROXY=http://1.2.3.4:3128/"' > /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/http-proxy.conf
    #@overlay/append
    - echo 'Environment="HTTPS_PROXY=http://1.2.3.4:3128"' >> /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/http-proxy.conf
    #@overlay/append
    - echo 'Environment="NO_PROXY=localhost,192.168.4.0/24,192.168.3.0/24,registry.rainpole.io,10.2.224.4,.svc,100.64.0.0/13,100.96.0.0/11"' >> /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/http-proxy.conf
    #@overlay/match missing_ok=True
    postKubeadmCommands:
    #@overlay/append
    - systemctl restart containerd

#@overlay/match by=overlay.subset({"kind":"KubeadmConfigTemplate"})
---
apiVersion: bootstrap.cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha3
kind: KubeadmConfigTemplate
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      preKubeadmCommands:
      #! Add HTTP_PROXY to containerd configuration file
      #@overlay/append
      - echo $'[Service]\nEnvironment="HTTP_PROXY=http://1.2.3.4:3128/"' > /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/http-proxy.conf
      #@overlay/append
      - echo 'Environment="HTTPS_PROXY=http://1.2.3.4:3128"' >> /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/http-proxy.conf
      #@overlay/append
      - echo 'Environment="NO_PROXY=localhost,192.168.4.0/24,192.168.3.0/24,registry.rainpole.io,10.2.224.4,.svc,100.64.0.0/13,100.96.0.0/11"' >> /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/http-proxy.conf
      #@overlay/match missing_ok=True
      postKubeadmCommands:
      #@overlay/append
      - systemctl restart containerd

How to configure network proxy with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)?

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Network Proxies are commonly used by customers to provide connectivity from internal servers/services to access external networks like the Internet in a controlled and secured manner. While working on a recent network proxy enhancement for our VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling, I had setup a Squid server which is a popular network proxy solution.

I had noticed a couple of folks were asking about network proxy configuration for Standalone Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) and figure this might be interesting to explore, especially for my recently released TKG Demo Appliance Fling which enables folks to quickly go from zero to Kubernetes in just 30 minutes! I figured this would be another good opportunity to learn a bit more about TKG as well as Kubernetes (K8s) and I jokingly said to myself, how hard could this be!? 😉 Apparently it was not trivial and took a bit of trial/error to figure out the correct combination and below is the procedure that can be followed for both standard deployment of TKG as well as the TKG Demo Appliance Fling.

Proxy Setting configurations for TKG CLI

The TKG CLI uses KinD (Kubernetes in Docker) under the hood to setup the initial K8s bootstrap cluster to deploy the TKG Management Cluster. If you have not already downloaded KinD node image (registry.tkg.vmware.run/kind/node:v1.17.3_vmware.2) or if you need to go through a network proxy to do so, then the following instructions can be followed to make your Docker Client aware of a network proxy.

Here is an example of the error if Docker Client can not download the image:

# docker pull registry.tkg.vmware.run/kind/node:v1.17.3_vmware.2
Error response from daemon: Get https://registry.tkg.vmware.run/v2/: net/http: request canceled while waiting for connection (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)

If you are not using a private container registry with TKG, then you also need to also ensure that the KinD Cluster can connect to your network proxy when it pulls down the required containers from the internet. Luckily, KinD can simply detect the network proxy settings of your operating system. You can either set the proxy using traditional environmental variables (http_proxy, https_proxy and no_proxy) during your use of TKG CLI or you can simply set it globally so you do not forget.

In my setup, TKG CLI is running in a Photon OS VM and global proxy settings are configured in /etc/sysconfig/proxy Proxy settings will vary across operating systems and you should check with the vendor documentation for specific instructions. The following command will set both HTTP and HTTPS proxy variables to use my proxy server and you will also want to make sure you whitelist all networks and addresses which you want to by-pass the proxy.

cat > /etc/sysconfig/proxy << EOF
PROXY_ENABLED="yes"
HTTP_PROXY="http://192.168.1.3:3128"
HTTPS_PROXY="http://192.168.1.3:3128"
NO_PROXY="localhost,192.168.1.0/24,192.168.2.0/24,registry.rainpole.io,10.2.224.4,.svc,100.64.0.0/13,100.96.0.0/11"
EOF

Note: If you are using the TKG Demo Appliance, you only need to configure the Photon OS global proxy settings. In my example, I have white listed my local 192.168.* addresses, registry.rainpole.io which is the embedded Harbor registry, 10.2.224.4 which is the internal IP Address of VMC vCenter Server, *.svc addresses which all the internal K8s services and 100.64.0.0/13 which is the CIDR range used by TKG for the Service networks and 100.96.0.0/11 which is the CIDR range used by TKG Cluster networks.

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Quick Tip - Using HTTP(s) proxy for connecting to 3rd party Content Library in vSphere 6.0

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A couple of weeks back I was asked by a customer who was interested in subscribing to my 3rd Party Content Library which hosted several of my Nested ESXi and VSAN OVF Templates. The problem was that in his environment, like many others, he did not have direct access internet access from within vCenter Server for the Content Library subscription to be created. The customer was wondering if the Content Library feature supported a proxy server which is a very common method for Enterprise customers to provide access to external sites requiring internet access. The Content Library Service does provide a way to configure a proxy server and below are the instructions for configuring both the VCSA and vCenter Server for Windows.

UPDATE (09/27/17): As of vSphere 6.5 Update 1, the Proxy Configurations for the Content Library has been pulled directly into the service itself and you no longer have to manually edit the Java wrapper.conf files. You can now access the proxy configurations by using the vSphere Web Client going to Administration->System Configuration->Services->Content Library Service->Transfer Service as shown in the screenshot below. For 6.0 and 6.5, you will need to continue to follow the instructions below on editing the wrapper.conf file.

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

The configuration file that you will need to edit is /usr/lib/vmware-vdcs/wrapper/conf/wrapper.conf and below are the three lines to add:

wrapper.java.additional.20=-Dhttps.proxySet=true
wrapper.java.additional.21=-Dhttps.proxyHost=proxy.server.com
wrapper.java.additional.22=-Dhttps.proxyPort=8080

Once you have saved your changes, you will need to restart the Content Library service for the changes to go into effect by running the following command:

/etc/init.d/vmware-vdcs restart

The proxy server will now be used and assuming the proper ACL's have been added on the proxy server itself to allow traffic from your vCenter Server to the appropriate destination site, you should now be able to use the Content Library to subscribe to my 3rd Party Content Library.

vCenter Server for Windows

The configuration file that you will need to edit is C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\vdcs\wrapper\conf\wrapper.conf and below are the three lines to add:

wrapper.java.additional.20=-Dhttps.proxySet=true
wrapper.java.additional.21=-Dhttps.proxyHost=proxy.server.com
wrapper.java.additional.22=-Dhttps.proxyPort=8080

Once you have saved your changes, you will need to restart the Content Library service for the changes to go into effect by going to the Windows services panel.

content-library-service