Virtual services - AWS App Mesh

Virtual services

A virtual service is an abstraction of a real service that is provided by a virtual node directly or indirectly by means of a virtual router. Dependent services call your virtual service by its virtualServiceName, and those requests are routed to the virtual node or virtual router that is specified as the provider for the virtual service.

Creating a virtual service

AWS Management Console
To create a virtual service using the AWS Management Console
  1. Open the App Mesh console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/appmesh/.

  2. Choose the mesh in which you want to create the virtual service. All of the meshes that you own and that have been shared with you are listed.

  3. Choose Virtual services in the left navigation.

  4. Choose Create virtual service.

  5. For Virtual service name, choose a name for your virtual service. You can choose any name, but the service discovery name of the real service that you're targeting, such as my-service.default.svc.cluster.local, is recommended to make it easier to correlate your virtual services to real services. This way you don't need to change your code to reference a different name than your code currently references. The name that you specify must resolve to a non-loopback IP address because the app container must be able to successfully resolve the name before the request is sent to the Envoy proxy. You can use any non-loopback IP address because neither the app or proxy containers communicate with this IP address. The proxy communicates with other virtual services through the names you’ve configured for them in App Mesh, not through IP addresses to which the names resolve.

  6. For Provider, choose the provider type for your virtual service:

    • If you want the virtual service to spread traffic across multiple virtual nodes, select Virtual router and then choose the virtual router to use from the drop-down menu.

    • If you want the virtual service to reach a virtual node directly without a virtual router, select Virtual node and then choose the virtual node to use from the drop-down menu.

      Note

      App Mesh may automatically create a default Envoy route retry policy for each virtual node provider that you define on or after July 29, 2020, even though you can't define such a policy through the App Mesh API. For more information, see Default route retry policy.

    • If you don't want the virtual service to route traffic at this time (for example, if your virtual nodes or virtual router doesn't exist yet), choose None. You can update the provider for this virtual service later.

  7. Choose Create virtual service to finish.

AWS CLI

To create a virtual service using the AWS CLI.

Create a virtual service with a virtual node provider using the following command and an input JSON file (replace the red values with your own):

  1. aws appmesh create-virtual-service \ --cli-input-json file://create-virtual-service-virtual-node.json
  2. Contents of example create-virtual-service-virtual-node.json:

    { "meshName": "meshName", "spec": { "provider": { "virtualNode": { "virtualNodeName": "nodeName" } } }, "virtualServiceName": "serviceA.svc.cluster.local" }
  3. Example output:

    { "virtualService": { "meshName": "meshName", "metadata": { "arn": "arn:aws:appmesh:us-west-2:210987654321:mesh/meshName/virtualService/serviceA.svc.cluster.local", "createdAt": "2022-04-06T09:45:35.890000-05:00", "lastUpdatedAt": "2022-04-06T09:45:35.890000-05:00", "meshOwner": "123456789012", "resourceOwner": "210987654321", "uid": "a1b2c3d4-5678-90ab-cdef-11111EXAMPLE", "version": 1 }, "spec": { "provider": { "virtualNode": { "virtualNodeName": "nodeName" } } }, "status": { "status": "ACTIVE" }, "virtualServiceName": "serviceA.svc.cluster.local" } }

For more information on creating a virtual service with the AWS CLI for App Mesh, see the create-virtual-service command in the AWS CLI reference.

Deleting a virtual service

Note

You can't delete a virtual service that is referenced by a gateway route. You need to delete the gateway route first.

AWS Management Console
To delete a virtual service using the AWS Management Console
  1. Open the App Mesh console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/appmesh/.

  2. Choose the mesh from which you want to delete a virtual service. All of the meshes that you own and that have been shared with you are listed.

  3. Choose Virtual services in the left navigation.

  4. Choose the virtual service that you want to delete and click on Delete in the top right corner. You can only delete a virtual gateway where your account is listed as Resource owner.

  5. In the confirmation box, type delete and then click on Delete.

AWS CLI
To delete a virtual service using the AWS CLI
  1. Use the following command to delete your virtual service (replace the red values with your own):

    aws appmesh delete-virtual-service \ --mesh-name meshName \ --virtual-service-name serviceA.svc.cluster.local
  2. Example output:

    { "virtualService": { "meshName": "meshName", "metadata": { "arn": "arn:aws:appmesh:us-west-2:210987654321:mesh/meshName/virtualService/serviceA.svc.cluster.local", "createdAt": "2022-04-06T09:45:35.890000-05:00", "lastUpdatedAt": "2022-04-07T10:39:42.772000-05:00", "meshOwner": "123456789012", "resourceOwner": "210987654321", "uid": "a1b2c3d4-5678-90ab-cdef-11111EXAMPLE", "version": 2 }, "spec": { "provider": { "virtualNode": { "virtualNodeName": "nodeName" } } }, "status": { "status": "DELETED" }, "virtualServiceName": "serviceA.svc.cluster.local" } }

For more information on deleting a virtual service with the AWS CLI for App Mesh, see the delete-virtual-service command in the AWS CLI reference.