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Installing Gloo Edge Enterprise

Installing the Gloo Edge on Kubernetes

These directions assume you’ve prepared your Kubernetes cluster appropriately. Full details on setting up your Kubernetes cluster here.

Note: For certain providers with more strict multi-tenant security, like OpenShift, be sure to follow the cluster set up accordingly.

Install command line tool (CLI)

The glooctl command line provides useful functions to install, configure, and debug Gloo Edge, though it is not required to use Gloo Edge.

You can verify the glooctl CLI is installed and running correctly by executing the command:

glooctl version

The command returns your client version and a missing server version (we have not installed Gloo Edge yet!):

Client: {"version":"1.2.3"}
Server: version undefined, could not find any version of gloo running

Update glooctl CLI version

You should always try to use the same minor glooctl version as the version of Gloo Edge installed in your cluster, i.e., if you’re using Gloo Edge 1.6.x, you should use a 1.6.x release of glooctl.

Fortunately, glooctl is able to update itself to different versions. To change the version of glooctl you currently have installed, you can run:

glooctl upgrade --release v1.6.0

Note: The glooctl upgrade command can also be used to roll back your glooctl version to previous releases. This can be convenient if you are using an older version of Gloo Edge and want to use the same verison of glooctl to ensure compatability.

To install Gloo Edge Enterprise you need a License Key. If you don’t have one, go to https://solo.io/gloo and request a trial now. Once you request a trial, an e-mail will be sent to you with your unique License Key that you will need as part of installing Gloo Edge.

Each Key is valid for 31 days. You can request a new key if your current key has expired. The License Key is required only during the installation process. Once you install, a secret will be created to hold your unique key.

Before starting installation, please ensure that you’ve prepared your Kubernetes cluster per the community Prep Kubernetes instructions.

Installing on Kubernetes with glooctl

Once your Kubernetes cluster is up and running, run the following command to deploy the Gloo Edge to the gloo-system namespace:

glooctl install gateway enterprise --license-key YOUR_LICENSE_KEY
Special Instructions to Install Gloo Edge Enterprise on Kind If you followed the cluster setup instructions for Kind here, then you should have exposed custom ports 31500 (for http) and 32500 (https) from your cluster's Docker container to its host machine. The purpose of this is to make it easier to access your service endpoints from your host workstation. Use the following custom installation for Gloo Edge to publish those same ports from the proxy as well. 
cat <<EOF | glooctl install gateway enterprise --license-key YOUR_LICENSE_KEY --values -
gloo:
  gatewayProxies:
    gatewayProxy:
      service:
        type: NodePort
        httpPort: 31500
        httpsPort: 32500
        httpNodePort: 31500
        httpsNodePort: 32500
EOF

Creating namespace gloo-system... Done.
Starting Gloo Edge Enterprise installation...

Gloo Edge Enterprise was successfully installed!

Note also that the url to invoke services published via Gloo Edge will be slightly different with Kind-hosted clusters. Much of the Gloo Edge documentation instructs you to use $(glooctl proxy url) as the header for your service url. This will not work with kind. For example, instead of using curl commands like this:

curl $(glooctl proxy url)/all-pets

You will instead route your request to the custom port that you configured above for your docker container to publish. For example:

curl http://localhost:31500/all-pets

Once you’ve installed Gloo Edge, please be sure to verify your installation.

You can run the command with the flag --dry-run to output the Kubernetes manifests (as yaml) that glooctl will apply to the cluster instead of installing them.

Installing on Kubernetes with Helm

This is the recommended method for installing Gloo Edge to your production environment as it offers rich customization to the Gloo Edge control plane and the proxies Gloo Edge manages.

As a first step, you have to add the Gloo Edge repository to the list of known chart repositories:

helm repo add glooe https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-ee-helm

Finally, install Gloo Edge using the following command:

helm install gloo glooe/gloo-ee --namespace gloo-system \
  --create-namespace --set-string license_key=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY

Using Helm 2 is not supported in Gloo Edge v1.8.0.

Once you’ve installed Gloo Edge, please be sure to verify your installation.

Customizing your installation with Helm

You can customize the Gloo Edge installation by providing your own value file.

For example, you can create a file named value-overrides.yaml with the following content:

global:
  glooRbac:
    # do not create kubernetes rbac resources
    create: false
settings:
  # configure gloo to write generated custom resources to a custom namespace
  writeNamespace: my-custom-namespace

and use it to override default values in the Gloo Edge Helm chart with Helm 3:

helm install gloo glooe/gloo-ee --namespace gloo-system \
  -f value-overrides.yaml --create-namespace --set-string license_key=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY

Using Helm 2 is not supported in Gloo Edge v1.8.0.

List of Gloo Edge Helm chart values

The table below describes the most important enterprise-only values that you can override in your custom values file.

The table for gloo open-source overrides (also available in enterprise) is here. To make customizations that are not part of the helm chart, please see our advanced customization guide

Open source helm values in Gloo Edge enterprise must be prefixed with gloo, unless they are the Gloo Edge settings (i.e., settings.<rest of helm value>).

option type description
grafana.defaultInstallationEnabled bool deploy grafana in your gloo system namespace. default is true
prometheus.enabled bool deploy prometheus in your gloo system namespace. default is true
rateLimit.enabled bool deploy rate-limiting in your gloo system namespace. default is true
global.extensions.extAuth.enabled bool deploy ext-auth in your gloo system namespace. default is true
global.extensions.extAuth.envoySidecar bool deploy ext-auth in the gateway-proxy pod, as a sidecar to envoy. communicates over unix domain socket instead of TCP. default is false
observability.enabled bool deploy observability in your gloo system namespace. default is true
observability.customGrafana.enabled bool indicate you’ll be using your own instance of grafana rather than the one shipped with Gloo Edge. default is false
observability.customGrafana.username string set this and the password field to authenticate to the custom grafana instance using basic auth
observability.customGrafana.password string set this and the username field to authenticate to the custom grafana instance using basic auth
observability.customGrafana.apiKey string authenticate to the custom grafana instance using this api key
observability.customGrafana.url string the URL for the custom grafana instance

Verify your Installation

Check that the Gloo Edge pods and services have been created. Depending on your install option, you may see some differences from the following example. And if you choose to install Gloo Edge into a different namespace than the default gloo-system, then you will need to query your chosen namespace instead.

kubectl --namespace gloo-system get all

NAME                                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/api-server-56fcb78878-d9mxt                            2/2     Running   0          5m21s
pod/discovery-759bd6cf85-sphjb                             1/1     Running   0          5m22s
pod/extauth-679d587db8-l9k56                               1/1     Running   0          5m21s
pod/gateway-568bfd477c-487zw                               1/1     Running   0          5m22s
pod/gateway-proxy-c84cbd647-n9kz2                          1/1     Running   0          5m22s
pod/gloo-6979c5bd8-2dfrj                                   1/1     Running   0          5m22s
pod/glooe-grafana-86445b465b-mnn8t                         1/1     Running   0          5m22s
pod/glooe-prometheus-kube-state-metrics-8587f58df6-954pw   1/1     Running   0          5m22s
pod/glooe-prometheus-server-6bd6f4667d-zqffp               2/2     Running   0          5m21s
pod/observability-6db6c659dd-v4bkp                         1/1     Running   0          5m21s
pod/rate-limit-6b847b95c8-kwcbd                            1/1     Running   1          5m21s
pod/redis-7f6954b84d-ff4ck                                 1/1     Running   0          5m21s

NAME                                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                      AGE
service/extauth                               ClusterIP      10.109.93.97     <none>        8080/TCP                     5m22s
service/gateway-proxy                         LoadBalancer   10.106.26.131    <pending>     80:31627/TCP,443:30931/TCP   5m22s
service/gloo                                  ClusterIP      10.103.56.88     <none>        9977/TCP                     5m22s
service/glooe-grafana                         ClusterIP      10.103.252.250   <none>        80/TCP                       5m22s
service/glooe-prometheus-kube-state-metrics   ClusterIP      None             <none>        80/TCP                       5m22s
service/glooe-prometheus-server               ClusterIP      10.100.244.136   <none>        80/TCP                       5m22s
service/rate-limit                            ClusterIP      10.100.54.112    <none>        18081/TCP                    5m22s
service/redis                                 ClusterIP      10.97.72.199     <none>        6379/TCP                     5m22s

NAME                                                  READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/api-server                            1/1     1            1           5m21s
deployment.apps/discovery                             1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/extauth                               1/1     1            1           5m21s
deployment.apps/gateway                               1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/gateway-proxy                         1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/gloo                                  1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/glooe-grafana                         1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/glooe-prometheus-kube-state-metrics   1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/glooe-prometheus-server               1/1     1            1           5m22s
deployment.apps/observability                         1/1     1            1           5m21s
deployment.apps/rate-limit                            1/1     1            1           5m21s
deployment.apps/redis                                 1/1     1            1           5m21s

NAME                                                             DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/api-server-56fcb78878                            1         1         1       5m21s
replicaset.apps/discovery-759bd6cf85                             1         1         1       5m22s
replicaset.apps/extauth-679d587db8                               1         1         1       5m21s
replicaset.apps/gateway-568bfd477c                               1         1         1       5m22s
replicaset.apps/gateway-proxy-c84cbd647                          1         1         1       5m22s
replicaset.apps/gloo-6979c5bd8                                   1         1         1       5m22s
replicaset.apps/glooe-grafana-86445b465b                         1         1         1       5m22s
replicaset.apps/glooe-prometheus-kube-state-metrics-8587f58df6   1         1         1       5m22s
replicaset.apps/glooe-prometheus-server-6bd6f4667d               1         1         1       5m21s
replicaset.apps/observability-6db6c659dd                         1         1         1       5m21s
replicaset.apps/rate-limit-6b847b95c8                            1         1         1       5m21s
replicaset.apps/redis-7f6954b84d                                 1         1         1       5m21s

kubectl --namespace gloo-fed get all

NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/gloo-fed-695d6dd44c-v2l64           1/1     Running   0          57m
pod/gloo-fed-console-774f958867-j7bwc   3/3     Running   0          57m

NAME                       TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                       AGE
service/gloo-fed-console   ClusterIP   10.96.107.54   <none>        10101/TCP,8090/TCP,8081/TCP   72m

NAME                               READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/gloo-fed           1/1     1            1           72m
deployment.apps/gloo-fed-console   1/1     1            1           72m

NAME                                          DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/gloo-fed-695d6dd44c           1         1         1       72m
replicaset.apps/gloo-fed-console-774f958867   1         1         1       72m

Looking for opened ports?

You will NOT have any open ports listening on a default install. For Envoy to open the ports and actually listen, you need to have a Route defined in one of the VirtualServices that will be associated with that particular Gateway/Listener. Please see the Hello World tutorial to get started.

NOT opening the listener ports when there are no listeners (routes) is by design with the intention of not over-exposing your cluster by accident (for security). If you feel this behavior is not justified, please let us know.

Uninstall

To uninstall Gloo Edge and all related components, simply run the following.

glooctl uninstall

If you installed Gloo Edge to a different namespace, you will have to specify that namespace using the -n option:

glooctl uninstall -n my-namespace

Next Steps

After you’ve installed Gloo Edge, please check out our User Guides.