Ambassador is an open source Kubernetes-native API Gateway built on the Envoy proxy. We talked about why and how we built Ambassador during the Envoy salon at KubeCon.

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Ambassador and Envoy
Flynn
flynn@datawire.io

2. 2
Ambassador
Kubernetes API gateway

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Ambassador
annotation
annotation
annotation
annotation

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Ambassador
annotation
annotation
annotation
annotation

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Ambassador

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Why?
Envoy for generalists
Native Kubernetes feel
Easy to get started
Still possible to grow

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How?
Configuration engine
Diagnostic service
External authentication mechanism
Kubernetes synchronization

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How?
Configuration engine
Read K8s annotations and secrets, create
Envoy config
Update config as annotations change
Diagnostic service
Show user what we read, and the resulting
Envoy config

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How?
---
apiVersion: ambassador/v0
kind: Mapping
name: canary_50_mapping
prefix: /demo/
headers:
x-demo-mode: canary
service: https://demo2
weight: 50

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How?
External Auth service
Ask an external service whether it’s OK for a
request to proceed
Envoy filter, so custom Envoy build for now

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How?
Kubernetes synchronization using hot restart
Less cool than xDS…
…but simpler to deploy and operate
Avoids instability due toV1 xDS polling latency
(keeping a careful eye onV2 though!)

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Challenges
Configuration design
Sacrificing flexibility for simplicity means a
lot of non-simple decisions
Feedback is the way to tackle this one
Careful thought helps too

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Challenges
Documentation
Reference documentation is (kind of) easy
Task-based documentation is necessary, but
not so easy
Feedback - especially about what tasks real
users face! - is, again, the way to go

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Challenges
Layers upon layers in debugging
You just got a 404 — quick, where do you
look?What caused it? How do you fix it
Might be Ambassador, Envoy, Kubernetes,
maybe Istio
Diagnostic service is a huge help here, but
we need more focus and visibility

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Challenges
Kubernetes development process
Reaching into the cluster to iterate and
debug adds a lot of complexity
In general, hunt for any tricks you can find to
streamline the dev cycle
Shameless plug: Datawire has tools to help
here

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Questions?
www.getambassador.io
www.datawire.io
Thanks!!