128 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
128 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
---
|
|
layout: docs
|
|
page_title: Internal <> External Services - Terminating Gateways
|
|
sidebar_title: Internal <> External Services - Terminating Gateways
|
|
description: >-
|
|
A terminating gateway enables traffic from services in the Consul
|
|
service mesh to services outside the mesh. This section details
|
|
how to configure and run a terminating gateway.
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# Terminating Gateways
|
|
|
|
-> **1.8.0+:** This feature is available in Consul versions 1.8.0 and newer.
|
|
|
|
Terminating gateways enable connectivity from services in the Consul service mesh to
|
|
services outside the mesh. These gateways effectively act as Connect proxies that can
|
|
represent more than one service. They terminate Connect mTLS connections, enforce intentions,
|
|
and forward requests to the appropriate destination.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
For additional use cases and usage patterns, review the tutorial for
|
|
[understanding terminating gateways](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/service-mesh-terminating-gateways).
|
|
|
|
~> **Known limitations:** Terminating gateways currently do not support targeting service subsets with
|
|
[L7 configuration](/docs/connect/l7-traffic-management). They route to all instances of a service with no capabilities
|
|
for filtering by instance.
|
|
|
|
## Security Considerations
|
|
|
|
~> We recommend that terminating gateways are not exposed to the WAN or open internet. This is because terminating gateways
|
|
hold certificates to decrypt Consul Connect traffic directed at them and may be configured with credentials to connect
|
|
to linked services. Connections over the WAN or open internet should flow through [mesh gateways](/docs/connect/mesh-gateway)
|
|
whenever possible since they are not capable of decrypting traffic or connecting directly to services.
|
|
|
|
By specifying a path to a [CA file](/docs/connect/config-entries/terminating-gateway#cafile) connections
|
|
from the terminating gateway will be encrypted using one-way TLS authentication. If a path to a
|
|
[client certificate](/docs/connect/config-entries/terminating-gateway#certfile)
|
|
and [private key](/docs/connect/config-entries/terminating-gateway#keyfile) are also specified connections
|
|
from the terminating gateway will be encrypted using mutual TLS authentication.
|
|
|
|
If none of these are provided, Consul will **only** encrypt connections to the gateway and not
|
|
from the gateway to the destination service.
|
|
|
|
When certificates for linked services are rotated, the gateway must be restarted to pick up the new certificates from disk.
|
|
To avoid downtime, perform a rolling restart to reload the certificates. Registering multiple terminating gateway instances
|
|
with the same [name](/commands/connect/envoy#service) provides additional fault tolerance
|
|
as well as the ability to perform rolling restarts.
|
|
|
|
-> **Note:** If certificates and keys are configured the terminating gateway will upgrade HTTP connections to TLS.
|
|
Client applications can issue plain HTTP requests even when connecting to servers that require HTTPS.
|
|
|
|
## Prerequisites
|
|
|
|
Each terminating gateway needs:
|
|
|
|
1. A local Consul client agent to manage its configuration.
|
|
2. General network connectivity to services within its local Consul datacenter.
|
|
|
|
Terminating gateways also require that your Consul datacenters are configured correctly:
|
|
|
|
- You'll need to use Consul version 1.8.0 or newer.
|
|
- Consul [Connect](/docs/agent/options#connect) must be enabled on the datacenter's Consul servers.
|
|
- [gRPC](/docs/agent/options#grpc_port) must be enabled on all client agents.
|
|
|
|
Currently, [Envoy](https://www.envoyproxy.io/) is the only proxy with terminating gateway capabilities in Consul.
|
|
|
|
- Terminating gateway proxies receive their configuration through Consul, which
|
|
automatically generates it based on the gateway's registration. Currently Consul
|
|
can only translate terminating gateway registration information into Envoy
|
|
configuration, therefore the proxies acting as terminating gateways must be Envoy.
|
|
|
|
Connect proxies that send upstream traffic through a gateway aren't
|
|
affected when you deploy terminating gateways. If you are using non-Envoy proxies as
|
|
Connect proxies they will continue to work for traffic directed at services linked to
|
|
a terminating gateway as long as they discover upstreams with the
|
|
[/health/connect](/api/health#list-nodes-for-connect-capable-service) endpoint.
|
|
|
|
## Running and Using a Terminating Gateway
|
|
|
|
For a complete example of how to enable connections from services in the Consul service mesh to
|
|
services outside the mesh, review the [terminating gateway tutorial](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/teminating-gateways-connect-external-services).
|
|
|
|
## Terminating Gateway Configuration
|
|
|
|
Terminating gateways are configured in service definitions and registered with Consul like other services, with two exceptions.
|
|
The first is that the [kind](/api/agent/service#kind) must be "terminating-gateway". Second,
|
|
the terminating gateway service definition may contain a `Proxy.Config` entry just like a
|
|
Connect proxy service, to define opaque configuration parameters useful for the actual proxy software.
|
|
For Envoy there are some supported [gateway options](/docs/connect/proxies/envoy#gateway-options) as well as
|
|
[escape-hatch overrides](/docs/connect/proxies/envoy#escape-hatch-overrides).
|
|
|
|
-> **Note:** If ACLs are enabled, terminating gateways must be registered with a token granting `node:read` on the nodes
|
|
of all services in its configuration entry. The token must also grant `service:write` for the terminating gateway's service name **and**
|
|
the names of all services in the terminating gateway's configuration entry. These privileges will authorize the gateway
|
|
to terminate mTLS connections on behalf of the linked services and then route the traffic to its final destination.
|
|
If the Consul client agent on the gateway's node is not configured to use the default gRPC port, 8502, then the gateway's token
|
|
must also provide `agent:read` for its node's name in order to discover the agent's gRPC port. gRPC is used to expose Envoy's xDS API to Envoy proxies.
|
|
|
|
Linking services to a terminating gateway is done with a `terminating-gateway`
|
|
[configuration entry](/docs/connect/config-entries/terminating-gateway). This config entry can be applied via the
|
|
[CLI](/commands/config/write) or [API](/api/config#apply-configuration).
|
|
|
|
Gateways with the same name in Consul's service catalog are configured with a single configuration entry.
|
|
This means that additional gateway instances registered with the same name will determine their routing based on the existing configuration entry.
|
|
Adding replicas of a gateway that routes to a particular set of services requires running the
|
|
[envoy subcommand](/commands/connect/envoy#terminating-gateways) on additional hosts and specifying
|
|
the same gateway name with the `service` flag.
|
|
|
|
~> [Configuration entries](/docs/agent/config-entries) are global in scope. A configuration entry for a gateway name applies
|
|
across all federated Consul datacenters. If terminating gateways in different Consul datacenters need to route to different
|
|
sets of services within their datacenter then the terminating gateways **must** be registered with different names.
|
|
|
|
The services that the terminating gateway will proxy for must be registered with Consul, even the services outside the mesh. They must also be registered
|
|
in the same Consul datacenter as the terminating gateway. Otherwise the terminating gateway will not be able to
|
|
discover the services' addresses. These services can be registered with a local Consul agent.
|
|
If there is no agent present, the services can be registered [directly in the catalog](/api/catalog#register-entity)
|
|
by sending the registration request to a client or server agent on a different host.
|
|
|
|
All services registered in the Consul catalog must be associated with a node, even when their node is
|
|
not managed by a Consul client agent. All agent-less services with the same address can be registered under the same node name and address.
|
|
However, ensure that the [node name](/api/catalog#node) for external services registered directly in the catalog
|
|
does not match the node name of any Consul client agent node. If the node name overlaps with the node name of a Consul client agent,
|
|
Consul's [anti-entropy sync](/docs/internals/anti-entropy) will delete the services registered via the `/catalog/register` HTTP API endpoint.
|
|
|
|
For a complete example of how to register external services review the
|
|
[external services tutorial](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/service-registration-external-services).
|