Traffic Mirroring
Traffic mirroring, sometimes also known as traffic cloning, is primarily used to send a copy of network traffic to another service without affecting production traffic. This feature is commonly utilized for fault diagnosis, performance monitoring, data analysis, and security auditing. Traffic mirroring enables real-time data capture and analysis without disrupting existing business processes.
The Kubernetes Gateway API’s HTTPRequestMirrorFilter provides a definition for traffic mirroring capabilities.
Prerequisites
- Kubernetes cluster
- kubectl tool
- FSM Gateway installed via guide doc.
Demonstration
Deploy Example Applications
To verify the traffic mirroring functionality, at least two backend services are needed. In these services, we will print the request headers to standard output to verify the mirroring functionality via log examination.
We use the programmable proxy Pipy to simulate an echo service and print the request headers.
kubectl create namespace server
kubectl apply -n server -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: pipy
spec:
selector:
app: pipy
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 8080
targetPort: 8080
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: pipy
labels:
app: pipy
spec:
containers:
- name: pipy
image: flomesh/pipy:1.0.0-1
command: ["pipy", "-e", "pipy().listen(8080).serveHTTP(msg=>(console.log(msg.head),msg))"]
EOF
Create Gateway and Route
Next, create a gateway and a route for the Service pipy.
kubectl apply -n server -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
name: simple-fsm-gateway
spec:
gatewayClassName: fsm-gateway-cls
listeners:
- protocol: HTTP
port: 8000
name: http
allowedRoutes:
namespaces:
from: Same
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
name: http-route-sample
spec:
parentRefs:
- name: simple-fsm-gateway
port: 8000
rules:
- matches:
- path:
type: PathPrefix
value: /
backendRefs:
- name: pipy
port: 8080
EOF
Attempt accessing the route:
curl http://$GATEWAY_IP:8000/ -d 'Hello world'
Hello world
You can view the logs of the pod pipy. Here, we use the stern tool to view logs from multiple pods simultaneously, and later we will deploy the mirror service.
stern . -c pipy -n server --tail 0
+ pipy › pipy
pipy › pipy 2024-04-28 03:57:03.918 [INF] { protocol: "HTTP/1.1", headers: { "host": "198.19.249.153:8000", "user-agent": "curl/8.4.0", "accept": "*/*", "content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", "x-forwarded-for": "10.42.0.1", "content-length": "11" }, headerNames: { "host": "Host", "user-agent": "User-Agent", "accept": "Accept", "content-type": "Content-Type" }, method: "POST", scheme:
undefined, authority: undefined, path: "/" }
Deploying Mirror Service
Next, let’s deploy a mirror service pipy-mirror, which can similarly print the request headers.
kubectl apply -n server -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: pipy-mirror
spec:
selector:
app: pipy-mirror
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 8080
targetPort: 8080
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: pipy-mirror
labels:
app: pipy-mirror
spec:
containers:
- name: pipy
image: flomesh/pipy:1.0.0-1
command: ["pipy", "-e", "pipy().listen(8080).serveHTTP(msg=>(console.log(msg.head),msg))"]
EOF
Configure Traffic Mirroring Policy
Modify the HTTP route to add a RequestMirror type filter and set the backendRef to the mirror service pipy-mirror created above.
kubectl apply -n server -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
name: http-route-sample
spec:
parentRefs:
- name: simple-fsm-gateway
port: 8000
rules:
- matches:
- path:
type: PathPrefix
value: /
filters:
- type: RequestMirror
requestMirror:
backendRef:
kind: Service
name: pipy-mirror
port: 8080
backendRefs:
- name: pipy
port: 8080
EOF
After applying the policy, send another request and both pods should display the printed request headers.
stern . -c pipy -n server --tail 0
+ pipy › pipy
+ pipy-mirror › pipy
pipy-mirror pipy 2024-04-28 04:11:04.537 [INF] { protocol: "HTTP/1.1", headers: { "host": "198.19.249.153:8000", "user-agent": "curl/8.4.0", "accept": "*/*", "content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", "x-forwarded-for": "10.42.0.1", "content-length": "11" }, headerNames: { "host": "Host", "user-agent": "User-Agent", "accept": "Accept", "content-type": "Content-Type" }, method: "POST", scheme: undefined, authority: undefined, path: "/" }
pipy pipy 2024-04-28 04:11:04.537 [INF] { protocol: "HTTP/1.1", headers: { "host": "198.19.249.153:8000", "user-agent": "curl/8.4.0", "accept": "*/*", "content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", "x-forwarded-for": "10.42.0.1", "content-length": "11" }, headerNames: { "host": "Host", "user-agent": "User-Agent", "accept": "Accept", "content-type": "Content-Type" }, method: "POST", scheme: undefined, authority: undefined, path: "/" }
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