--- layout: docs page_title: Single Consul Datacenter in Multiple Kubernetes Clusters - Kubernetes description: Single Consul Datacenter deployed in multiple Kubernetes clusters --- # Single Consul Datacenter in Multiple Kubernetes Clusters -> Requires consul-helm v0.32.1 or higher. This page describes how to deploy a single Consul datacenter in multiple Kubernetes clusters, with both servers and clients running in one cluster, and only clients running in the rest of the clusters. In this example, we will use two Kubernetes clusters, but this approach could be extended to using more than two. ~> **Note:** This deployment topology requires that your Kubernetes clusters have a flat network for both pods and nodes, so that pods or nodes from one cluster can connect to pods or nodes in another. If a flat network is not available across all Kubernetes clusters, follow the instructions for using [Admin Partitions](/docs/enterprise/admin-partitions), which is a Consul Enterprise feature. ## Prepare Helm release name ahead of installs The Helm release name must be unique for each Kubernetes cluster. The Helm chart uses the Helm release name as a prefix for the ACL resources that it creates, such as tokens and auth methods. If the names of the Helm releases are identical, subsequent Consul on Kubernetes clusters overwrite existing ACL resources and cause the clusters to fail. Before you proceed with installation, prepare the Helm release names as environment variables for both the server and client installs to use. ```shell-session $ export HELM_RELEASE_SERVER=server $ export HELM_RELEASE_CLIENT=client ... $ export HELM_RELEASE_CLIENT2=client2 ``` ## Deploying Consul servers and clients in the first cluster First, we will deploy the Consul servers with Consul clients in the first cluster. For that, we will use the following Helm configuration: ```yaml global: datacenter: dc1 tls: enabled: true enableAutoEncrypt: true acls: manageSystemACLs: true gossipEncryption: secretName: consul-gossip-encryption-key secretKey: key connectInject: enabled: true controller: enabled: true ui: service: type: NodePort ``` Note that we are deploying in a secure configuration, with gossip encryption, TLS for all components, and ACLs. We are enabling the Consul Service Mesh and the controller for CRDs so that we can use them to later verify that our services can connect with each other across clusters. We're also setting UI's service type to be `NodePort`. This is needed so that we can connect to servers from another cluster without using the pod IPs of the servers, which are likely going to change. To deploy, first we need to generate the Gossip encryption key and save it as a Kubernetes secret. ```shell $ kubectl create secret generic consul-gossip-encryption-key --from-literal=key=$(consul keygen) ``` Now we can install our Consul cluster with Helm: ```shell-session $ helm install ${HELM_RELEASE_SERVER} --values cluster1-config.yaml hashicorp/consul ``` Once the installation finishes and all components are running and ready, we need to extract the gossip encryption key we've created, the CA certificate and the ACL bootstrap token generated during installation, so that we can apply them to our second Kubernetes cluster. ```shell-session $ kubectl get secret consul-gossip-encryption-key ${HELM_RELEASE_SERVER}-consul-ca-cert ${HELM_RELEASE_SERVER}-consul-bootstrap-acl-token --output yaml > cluster1-credentials.yaml ``` ## Deploying Consul clients in the second cluster ~> **Note:** If multiple Kubernetes clusters will be joined to the Consul Datacenter, then the following instructions will need to be repeated for each additional Kubernetes cluster. Now we can switch to the second Kubernetes cluster where we will deploy only the Consul clients that will join the first Consul cluster. First, we need to apply credentials we've extracted from the first cluster to the second cluster: ```shell-session $ kubectl apply --filename cluster1-credentials.yaml ``` To deploy in the second cluster, we will use the following Helm configuration: ```yaml global: enabled: false datacenter: dc1 acls: manageSystemACLs: true bootstrapToken: secretName: cluster1-consul-bootstrap-acl-token secretKey: token gossipEncryption: secretName: consul-gossip-encryption-key secretKey: key tls: enabled: true enableAutoEncrypt: true caCert: secretName: cluster1-consul-ca-cert secretKey: tls.crt externalServers: enabled: true # This should be any node IP of the first k8s cluster hosts: ["10.0.0.4"] # The node port of the UI's NodePort service httpsPort: 31557 tlsServerName: server.dc1.consul # The address of the kube API server of this Kubernetes cluster k8sAuthMethodHost: https://kubernetes.example.com:443 client: enabled: true join: ["provider=k8s kubeconfig=/consul/userconfig/cluster1-kubeconfig/kubeconfig label_selector=\"app=consul,component=server\""] extraVolumes: - type: secret name: cluster1-kubeconfig load: false connectInject: enabled: true ``` Note that we're referencing secrets from the first cluster in ACL, gossip, and TLS configuration. Next, we need to set up the `externalServers` configuration. The `externalServers.hosts` and `externalServers.httpsPort` refer to the IP and port of the UI's NodePort service deployed in the first cluster. Set the `externalServers.hosts` to any Node IP of the first cluster, which you can see by running `kubectl get nodes --output wide`. Set `externalServers.httpsPort` to the `nodePort` of the `cluster1-consul-ui` service. In our example, the port is `31557`. ```shell $ kubectl get service cluster1-consul-ui --context cluster1 NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE cluster1-consul-ui NodePort 10.0.240.80 443:31557/TCP 40h ``` We set the `externalServer.tlsServerName` to `server.dc1.consul`. This the DNS SAN (Subject Alternative Name) that is present in the Consul server's certificate. We need to set it because we're connecting to the Consul servers over the node IP, but that IP isn't present in the server's certificate. To make sure that the hostname verification succeeds during the TLS handshake, we need to set the TLS server name to a DNS name that *is* present in the certificate. Next, we need to set `externalServers.k8sAuthMethodHost` to the address of the second Kubernetes API server. This should be the address that is reachable from the first cluster, and so it cannot be the internal DNS available in each Kubernetes cluster. Consul needs it so that `consul login` with the Kubernetes auth method will work from the second cluster. More specifically, the Consul server will need to perform the verification of the Kubernetes service account whenever `consul login` is called, and to verify service accounts from the second cluster it needs to reach the Kubernetes API in that cluster. The easiest way to get it is to set it from your `kubeconfig` by running `kubectl config view` and grabbing the value of `cluster.server` for the second cluster. Lastly, we need to set up the clients so that they can discover the servers in the first cluster. For this, we will use Consul's cloud auto-join feature for the [Kubernetes provider](/docs/install/cloud-auto-join#kubernetes-k8s). To use it we need to provide a way for the Consul clients to reach the first Kubernetes cluster. To do that, we need to save the `kubeconfig` for the first cluster as a Kubernetes secret in the second cluster and reference it in the `clients.join` value. Note that we're making that secret available to the client pods by setting it in `client.extraVolumes`. ~> **Note:** The kubeconfig you're providing to the client should have minimal permissions. The cloud auto-join provider will only need permission to read pods. Please see [Kubernetes Cloud auto-join](/docs/install/cloud-auto-join#kubernetes-k8s) for more details. Now we're ready to install! ```shell-session $ helm install ${HELM_RELEASE_CLIENT} --values cluster2-config.yaml hashicorp/consul ``` ## Verifying the Consul Service Mesh works ~> When Transparent proxy is enabled, services in one Kubernetes cluster that need to communicate with a service in another Kubernetes cluster must have a explicit upstream configured through the ["consul.hashicorp.com/connect-service-upstreams"](/docs/k8s/annotations-and-labels#consul-hashicorp-com-connect-service-upstreams) annotation. Now that we have our Consul cluster in multiple k8s clusters up and running, we will deploy two services and verify that they can connect to each other. First, we'll deploy `static-server` service in the first cluster: ```yaml --- apiVersion: consul.hashicorp.com/v1alpha1 kind: ServiceIntentions metadata: name: static-server spec: destination: name: static-server sources: - name: static-client action: allow --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: static-server spec: type: ClusterIP selector: app: static-server ports: - protocol: TCP port: 80 targetPort: 8080 --- apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: name: static-server --- apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: static-server spec: replicas: 1 selector: matchLabels: app: static-server template: metadata: name: static-server labels: app: static-server annotations: "consul.hashicorp.com/connect-inject": "true" spec: containers: - name: static-server image: hashicorp/http-echo:latest args: - -text="hello world" - -listen=:8080 ports: - containerPort: 8080 name: http serviceAccountName: static-server ``` Note that we're defining a Service intention so that our services are allowed to talk to each other. Then we'll deploy `static-client` in the second cluster with the following configuration: ```yaml apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: static-client spec: selector: app: static-client ports: - port: 80 --- apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: name: static-client --- apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: static-client spec: replicas: 1 selector: matchLabels: app: static-client template: metadata: name: static-client labels: app: static-client annotations: "consul.hashicorp.com/connect-inject": "true" "consul.hashicorp.com/connect-service-upstreams": "static-server:1234" spec: containers: - name: static-client image: curlimages/curl:latest command: [ "/bin/sh", "-c", "--" ] args: [ "while true; do sleep 30; done;" ] serviceAccountName: static-client ``` Once both services are up and running, we can connect to the `static-server` from `static-client`: ```shell-session $ kubectl exec deploy/static-client -- curl --silent localhost:1234 "hello world" ```