Gloo Mesh Gateway is a feature-rich, Kubernetes-native ingress controller and next-generation API gateway. With Gloo Mesh Gateway, you have access to its exceptional function-level routing, discovery capabilities, numerous features, tight integration with leading open-source projects, and support for legacy apps, microservices, and serverless. Gloo Mesh Gateway is uniquely designed to support hybrid applications in which multiple technologies, architectures, protocols, and clouds can coexist. To learn more about the benefits and architecture, see About.

Overview

In this guide, you customize Helm settings for an advanced Gloo Mesh Gateway installation in a single-cluster environment. To use a dedicated cluster for your Gloo management plane, and install gateway proxies in one or more workload clusters instead, see the multicluster setup guide.

Before you begin

  1. Install the following command-line (CLI) tools.

    • kubectl, the Kubernetes command line tool. Download the kubectl version that is within one minor version of the Kubernetes clusters you plan to use.
    • meshctl, the Solo command line tool.
        curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | GLOO_MESH_VERSION=v2.8.0-rc1 sh -
export PATH=$HOME/.gloo-mesh/bin:$PATH
    • helm, the Kubernetes package manager.

  2. Set your Gloo Mesh Gateway license key as an environment variable. If you do not have one, contact an account representative. If you prefer to specify license keys in a secret instead, see Licensing. To check your license’s validity, you can run meshctl license check --key $(echo ${GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY} | base64 -w0).

      export GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY=<license_key>

  3. Set the Gloo Mesh Gateway version. This example uses the latest version. You can find other versions in the Changelog documentation. Append -fips for a FIPS-compliant image, such as 2.8.0-rc1-fips. Do not include v before the version number.

      export GLOO_VERSION=2.8.0-rc1

  4. Create or use an existing Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster, and save the cluster name in an environment variable. Note: The cluster name must be alphanumeric with no special characters except a hyphen (-), lowercase, and begin with a letter (not a number).

      export CLUSTER_NAME=<cluster_name>
  5. Production installations: Review Best practices for production to prepare your optional security measures. For example, before you begin your Gloo installation, you can provide your own certificates to secure the management server and agent connection, and set up secure access to the Gloo UI.

Install Gloo Mesh Gateway

  1. Add and update the Helm repository for Gloo.

      helm repo add gloo-platform https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-charts
helm repo update

  2. Install the Gloo CRDs.

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform-crds gloo-platform/gloo-platform-crds \
   --namespace=gloo-mesh \
   --create-namespace \
   --version=${GLOO_VERSION}

  3. Prepare a Helm values file to provide your customizations. To get started, you can use the minimum settings in the following profile as a basis. These settings enable all components that are required for a single-cluster Gloo Mesh Gateway installation.

      curl https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-profiles/${GLOO_VERSION}/gloo-mesh-gateway-single.yaml > gloo-single.yaml
open gloo-single.yaml
  
      curl https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-profiles/${GLOO_VERSION}/gloo-mesh-gateway-single-openshift.yaml > gloo-single.yaml
open gloo-single.yaml

  4. Edit the file to provide your own details for settings that are recommended for production deployments, such as the following settings.

    FieldDescription
    glooUi.authSet up OIDC authorization for the Gloo UI. For more information, see UI authentication.
    prometheus.enabledDisable the default Prometheus instance as needed to provide your own. Otherwise, you can keep the default Prometheus server enabled, and deploy a production-level server to scrape metrics from the server. For more information on each option, see Best practices for collecting metrics in production.

  5. Use the customizations in your Helm values file to install the Gloo Mesh Gateway components in your cluster.

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
    -n gloo-mesh \
    --version ${GLOO_VERSION} \
    --values gloo-single.yaml \
    --set common.cluster=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --set licensing.glooGatewayLicenseKey=$GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY
  
      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
    -n gloo-mesh \
    --version ${GLOO_VERSION} \
    --values gloo-single.yaml \
    --set common.cluster=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --set licensing.glooGatewayLicenseKey=$GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY

  6. Verify that your Gloo Mesh Gateway setup is correctly installed. If not, try debugging the relay connection. Note that this check might take a few seconds to verify that:

    • Your Gloo product license is valid and current.
    • The Gloo CRDs are installed at the correct version.
    • The management plane pods are running and healthy.
      meshctl check

    Example output:

      🟢 License status

INFO  gloo-gateway enterprise license expiration is 25 Aug 26 10:38 CDT

🟢 CRD version check 

🟢 Gloo deployment status

Namespace | Name                           | Ready | Status
gloo-mesh | ext-auth-service               | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-agent                | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-mgmt-server          | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-redis                | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-ui                   | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | 3/3   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | prometheus-server              | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | rate-limiter                   | 1/1   | Healthy
  
🟢 Mgmt server connectivity to workload agents

Cluster | Registered | Connected Pod                                   
test    | true       | gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-558cddbbd7-rf2hv

Connected Pod                                    | Clusters
gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-558cddbbd7-rf2hv | 1

Deploy an ingress gateway proxy

To install an Istio ingress gateway, follow the steps in Deploy gateways.

Next steps

Now that you have Gloo Mesh Gateway up and running, check out some of the following resources to learn more about your API Gateway and expand your routing and network capabilities.

Traffic management:

Gloo Mesh Gateway:

  • Monitor and observe your environment with Gloo Mesh Gateway’s built-in telemetry tools.
    • Enable insights to review and improve your setup’s health and security posture.

    Help and support: