About

Connection pools are typically set up for apps that must be accessed frequently, such as a web service. Without connection pools, every request to the web service requires a new connection to be opened. This setup might work if the web service is accessed occasionally. However, as clients scale and more requests are sent to the web service, opening a connection for each requests can get very expensive and easily overload the web service.

To prevent the upstream web service from being overloaded, you can use connection pool settings to determine the maximum number of connections that can be opened to your app and the maximum number of requests that can be sent per connection.

For more information, see the Gloo connection policy API docs.

Before you begin

  1. Set up Gloo Mesh Gateway in a single cluster.
  2. Install Bookinfo and other sample apps.

  3. Configure an HTTP listener on your gateway and set up basic routing for the sample apps.

Configure connection policies for HTTP destinations

You can apply a connection policy at the destination level. For more information, see Applying policies.

The following example applies HTTP connection pool settings to the Kubernetes service of the Bookinfo ratings app.

  apiVersion: resilience.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: ConnectionPolicy
metadata:
  annotations:
    cluster.solo.io/cluster: ""
  name: http-connect
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToDestinations:
  - selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    http:
      idleTimeout: 2s
      maxRequestsPerConnection: 1
      maxRetries: 1

Review the following table to understand this configuration. For more information, see the API docs.

SettingDescription
applyToDestinationsUse labels to apply the policy to destinations. Destinations might be a Kubernetes service, VirtualDestination, or ExternalService (if supported by the policy). If you do not specify any destinations or routes, the policy applies to all destinations in the workspace by default. If you do not specify any destinations but you do specify a route, the policy applies to the route but to no destinations.
configConfigure the connection settings to apply to the selected destinations. To set connection pool settings for HTTP destinations, use http as the protocol. For TCP connection pool settings, use tcp. The connection policy in this guide shows how to configure connection pool settings for an HTTP destination. To find an example for a TCP connection policy, see Connection pool settings for TCP.
http.idleTimeoutThe time a connection can stay open without receiving any requests. By default, this value is set to 1 hour. If the idle time is reached, the connection is closed.
http.maxRequestsPerConnectionThe maximum number of requests that can be sent to a destination per connection. If you set this value to 1, you disable keep alive. By default, this value is set to 0, which equals unlimited, and allows a maximum of 2^29 requests per connection.
http.maxRetriesThe maximum number of retries that can be outstanding to all hosts in a cluster at a given time. Defaults to 2^32-1.

Verify connection policies

  1. Apply the example connection policy for the ratings app.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: resilience.policy.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: ConnectionPolicy
metadata:
  annotations:
    cluster.solo.io/cluster: ""
  name: http-connect
  namespace: bookinfo
spec:
  applyToDestinations:
  - selector:
      labels:
        app: ratings
  config:
    http:
      idleTimeout: 2s
      maxRequestsPerConnection: 1
      maxRetries: 1
EOF

  2. Verify that an Istio destination rule is created for the destination.

      kubectl get destinationrule --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1 -n bookinfo

    Example output:

      NAME                                                              HOST             AGE
ratings-global-virtual-destinat-2ab46384c8b40be3cfab9740ac8fb2c   ratings.global   11s

  3. Describe the Istio destination rule.

      kubectl describe --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1 -n bookinfo destinationrule <destination-rule>

    In the output, verify that the Connection Pool settings include the http settings that your policy configures.

      ...
Traffic Policy:
 Port Level Settings:
   Connection Pool:
     Http:
       Idle Timeout:                 2s
       Max Requests Per Connection:  1
       Max Retries:                  1

Cleanup

You can optionally remove the resources that you set up as part of this guide.
  kubectl -n bookinfo delete ConnectionPolicy http-connect