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Gloo Edge

Gloo Edge is a powerful, cloud-native API gateway and ingress controller for Kubernetes, supporting advanced routing, transformation, and security features. It is widely used in AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid environments for managing north-south traffic and integrating legacy and modern workloads.

Installation (Helm)

  1. Add the Helm repository for Gloo Edge:

    helm repo add gloo https://storage.googleapis.com/solo-public-helm
helm repo update

  2. Install the Helm chart: This command creates the gloo-system namespace and installs the Gloo Edge components into it.

    helm install gloo gloo/gloo --namespace gloo-system --create-namespace

Real-Life Example: Exposing a Microservice with Gloo Edge

1. Deploy Example Application (Pet Store)

Deploy the Pet Store application and expose its API via a Kubernetes service:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo/v1.13.x/example/petstore/petstore.yaml

Expected output:

deployment.extensions/petstore created
service/petstore created

2. Verify Application and Service

Check that the pod is running:

kubectl -n default get pods

Check the service:

kubectl -n default get svc petstore

Output:

NAME      TYPE       CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP  PORT(S)   AGE
petstore  ClusterIP  10.XX.XX.XX  <none>       8080/TCP  1m

3. Discover Upstreams with glooctl

List all upstreams Gloo Edge has discovered:

glooctl get upstreams

Look for default-petstore-8080 in the output. To inspect the upstream:

glooctl get upstream default-petstore-8080 --output kube-yaml

If you want Gloo Edge to auto-discover REST endpoints (using OpenAPI/Swagger), enable function discovery:

kubectl label namespace default discovery.solo.io/function_discovery=enabled

Check discovered functions:

glooctl get upstream default-petstore-8080

4. Add a Routing Rule (Virtual Service)

Create a route to expose the Pet Store API externally:

glooctl add route \
  --path-exact /all-pets \
  --dest-name default-petstore-8080 \
  --prefix-rewrite /api/pets

Check the virtual service:

glooctl get virtualservice default

Inspect the virtual service YAML:

glooctl get virtualservice default --output kube-yaml

5. Test the Route

Get the Gloo Edge proxy URL and test the route:

curl $(glooctl proxy url)/all-pets

Expected output:

[{"id":1,"name":"Dog","status":"available"},{"id":2,"name":"Cat","status":"pending"}]

Best Practices

  • Use Helm for repeatable, versioned Gloo Edge deployments

  • Enable function discovery only for namespaces that need it (for performance)

  • Use Virtual Services and routing rules to control external access

  • Monitor upstream and virtual service status with glooctl

  • Store all configuration (Helm values, CRDs) in Git for GitOps workflows

References

Tip: Integrate Gloo Edge with CI/CD (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Flux) for automated API gateway and ingress management in multi-cloud environments.

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