Route TCP and UDP traffic with Network Load Balancers

Note

New: Amazon EKS Auto Mode automates routine tasks for load balancing. For more information, see:

• Deploy a Sample Load Balancer Workload to EKS Auto Mode

• Use Service Annotations to configure Network Load Balancers

Network traffic is load balanced at L4 of the OSI model. To load balance application traffic at L7, you deploy a Kubernetes ingress, which provisions an AWS Application Load Balancer. For more information, see Route application and HTTP traffic with Application Load Balancers. To learn more about the differences between the two types of load balancing, see Elastic Load Balancing features on the AWS website.

When you create a Kubernetes Service of type LoadBalancer, the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller creates AWS Classic Load Balancers by default, but can also create AWS Network Load Balancers. This controller is only receiving critical bug fixes in the future. For more information about using the AWS cloud provider load balancer , see AWS cloud provider load balancer controller in the Kubernetes documentation. Its use is not covered in this topic.

We recommend that you use version 2.7.2 or later of the AWS Load Balancer Controller instead of the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller. The AWS Load Balancer Controller creates AWS Network Load Balancers, but doesn’t create AWS Classic Load Balancers. The remainder of this topic is about using the AWS Load Balancer Controller.

An AWS Network Load Balancer can load balance network traffic to Pods deployed to Amazon EC2 IP and instance targets, to AWS Fargate IP targets, or to Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes as IP targets. For more information, see AWS Load Balancer Controller on GitHub.

Prerequisites

Before you can load balance network traffic using the AWS Load Balancer Controller, you must meet the following requirements.

• Have an existing cluster. If you don’t have an existing cluster, see Get started with Amazon EKS. If you need to update the version of an existing cluster, see Update existing cluster to new Kubernetes version.

• Have the AWS Load Balancer Controller deployed on your cluster. For more information, see Route internet traffic with AWS Load Balancer Controller. We recommend version 2.7.2 or later.

• At least one subnet. If multiple tagged subnets are found in an Availability Zone, the controller chooses the first subnet whose subnet ID comes first lexicographically. The subnet must have at least eight available IP addresses.

• If you’re using the AWS Load Balancer Controller version 2.1.1 or earlier, subnets must be tagged as follows. If using version 2.1.2 or later, this tag is optional. You might want to tag a subnet if you have multiple clusters running in the same VPC, or multiple AWS services sharing subnets in a VPC, and want more control over where load balancers are provisioned for each cluster. If you explicitly specify subnet IDs as an annotation on a service object, then Kubernetes and the AWS Load Balancer Controller use those subnets directly to create the load balancer. Subnet tagging isn’t required if you choose to use this method for provisioning load balancers and you can skip the following private and public subnet tagging requirements. Replace my-cluster with your cluster name.

  • Key – kubernetes.io/cluster/<my-cluster>

  • Value – shared or owned

• Your public and private subnets must meet the following requirements, unless you explicitly specify subnet IDs as an annotation on a service or ingress object. If you provision load balancers by explicitly specifying subnet IDs as an annotation on a service or ingress object, then Kubernetes and the AWS Load Balancer Controller use those subnets directly to create the load balancer and the following tags aren’t required.

  • Private subnets – Must be tagged in the following format. This is so that Kubernetes and the AWS Load Balancer Controller know that the subnets can be used for internal load balancers. If you use eksctl or an Amazon EKS AWS AWS CloudFormation template to create your VPC after March 26, 2020, then the subnets are tagged appropriately when they’re created. For more information about the Amazon EKS AWS AWS CloudFormation VPC templates, see Create an Amazon VPC for your Amazon EKS cluster.

    • Key – kubernetes.io/role/internal-elb

    • Value – 1

  • Public subnets – Must be tagged in the following format. This is so that Kubernetes knows to use only those subnets for external load balancers instead of choosing a public subnet in each Availability Zone (based on the lexicographical order of the subnet IDs). If you use eksctl or an Amazon EKS AWS CloudFormation template to create your VPC after March 26, 2020, then the subnets are tagged appropriately when they’re created. For more information about the Amazon EKS AWS CloudFormation VPC templates, see Create an Amazon VPC for your Amazon EKS cluster.

    • Key – kubernetes.io/role/elb

    • Value – 1

  If the subnet role tags aren’t explicitly added, the Kubernetes service controller examines the route table of your cluster VPC subnets to determine if the subnet is private or public. We recommend that you don’t rely on this behavior, and instead explicitly add the private or public role tags. The AWS Load Balancer Controller doesn’t examine route tables, and requires the private and public tags to be present for successful auto discovery.

Considerations

• The configuration of your load balancer is controlled by annotations that are added to the manifest for your service. Service annotations are different when using the AWS Load Balancer Controller than they are when using the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller. Make sure to review the annotations for the AWS Load Balancer Controller before deploying services.

• When using the Amazon VPC CNI plugin for Kubernetes, the AWS Load Balancer Controller can load balance to Amazon EC2 IP or instance targets and Fargate IP targets. When using Alternate compatible CNI plugins, the controller can only load balance to instance targets, unless you are load balancing to Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes. For hybrid nodes, the controller can load balance IP targets. For more information about Network Load Balancer target types, see Target type in the User Guide for Network Load Balancers

• If you want to add tags to the load balancer when or after it’s created, add the following annotation in your service specification. For more information, see AWS Resource Tags in the AWS Load Balancer Controller documentation.

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-additional-resource-tags

• You can assign Elastic IP addresses to the Network Load Balancer by adding the following annotation. Replace the example values with the Allocation IDs of your Elastic IP addresses. The number of Allocation IDs must match the number of subnets that are used for the load balancer. For more information, see the AWS Load Balancer Controller documentation.

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-eip-allocations: eipalloc-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,eipalloc-yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

• Amazon EKS adds one inbound rule to the node’s security group for client traffic and one rule for each load balancer subnet in the VPC for health checks for each Network Load Balancer that you create. Deployment of a service of type LoadBalancer can fail if Amazon EKS attempts to create rules that exceed the quota for the maximum number of rules allowed for a security group. For more information, see Security groups in Amazon VPC quotas in the Amazon VPC User Guide. Consider the following options to minimize the chances of exceeding the maximum number of rules for a security group:

  • Request an increase in your rules per security group quota. For more information, see Requesting a quota increase in the Service Quotas User Guide.

  • Use IP targets, rather than instance targets. With IP targets, you can share rules for the same target ports. You can manually specify load balancer subnets with an annotation. For more information, see Annotations on GitHub.

  • Use an ingress, instead of a service of type LoadBalancer, to send traffic to your service. The AWS Application Load Balancer requires fewer rules than Network Load Balancers. You can share an ALB across multiple ingresses. For more information, see Route application and HTTP traffic with Application Load Balancers. You can’t share a Network Load Balancer across multiple services.

  • Deploy your clusters to multiple accounts.

• If your Pods run on Windows in an Amazon EKS cluster, a single service with a load balancer can support up to 1024 back-end Pods. Each Pod has its own unique IP address.

• We recommend only creating new Network Load Balancers with the AWS Load Balancer Controller. Attempting to replace existing Network Load Balancers created with the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller can result in multiple Network Load Balancers that might cause application downtime.

Create a network load balancer

You can create a network load balancer with IP or instance targets.

Create network load balancer — IP Targets

• You can use IP targets with Pods deployed to Amazon EC2 nodes, Fargate, or Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes. Your Kubernetes service must be created as type LoadBalancer. For more information, see Type LoadBalancer in the Kubernetes documentation.

  To create a load balancer that uses IP targets, add the following annotations to a service manifest and deploy your service. The external value for aws-load-balancer-type is what causes the AWS Load Balancer Controller, rather than the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller, to create the Network Load Balancer. You can view a sample service manifest with the annotations.

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: "external"
  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: "ip"

  Note

  If you’re load balancing to IPv6 Pods, add the following annotation. You can only load balance over IPv6 to IP targets, not instance targets. Without this annotation, load balancing is over IPv4.

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ip-address-type: dualstack

  Network Load Balancers are created with the internal aws-load-balancer-scheme, by default. You can launch Network Load Balancers in any subnet in your cluster’s VPC, including subnets that weren’t specified when you created your cluster.

  Kubernetes examines the route table for your subnets to identify whether they are public or private. Public subnets have a route directly to the internet using an internet gateway, but private subnets do not.

  If you want to create a Network Load Balancer in a public subnet to load balance to Amazon EC2 nodes (Fargate can only be private), specify internet-facing with the following annotation:

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: "internet-facing"

  Note

  The service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: "nlb-ip" annotation is still supported for backwards compatibility. However, we recommend using the previous annotations for new load balancers instead of service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: "nlb-ip".

  Important

  Do not edit the annotations after creating your service. If you need to modify it, delete the service object and create it again with the desired value for this annotation.

Create network load balancer — Instance Targets

• The AWS cloud provider load balancer controller creates Network Load Balancers with instance targets only. Version 2.2.0 and later of the AWS Load Balancer Controller also creates Network Load Balancers with instance targets. We recommend using it, rather than the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller, to create new Network Load Balancers. You can use Network Load Balancer instance targets with Pods deployed to Amazon EC2 nodes, but not to Fargate. To load balance network traffic across Pods deployed to Fargate, you must use IP targets.

  To deploy a Network Load Balancer to a private subnet, your service specification must have the following annotations. You can view a sample service manifest with the annotations. The external value for aws-load-balancer-type is what causes the AWS Load Balancer Controller, rather than the AWS cloud provider load balancer controller, to create the Network Load Balancer.

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: "external"
  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: "instance"

  Network Load Balancers are created with the internal aws-load-balancer-scheme, by default. For internal Network Load Balancers, your Amazon EKS cluster must be configured to use at least one private subnet in your VPC. Kubernetes examines the route table for your subnets to identify whether they are public or private. Public subnets have a route directly to the internet using an internet gateway, but private subnets do not.

  If you want to create an Network Load Balancer in a public subnet to load balance to Amazon EC2 nodes, specify internet-facing with the following annotation:

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: "internet-facing"

  Important

  Do not edit the annotations after creating your service. If you need to modify it, delete the service object and create it again with the desired value for this annotation.

(Optional) Deploy a sample application

• At least one public or private subnet in your cluster VPC.

• Have the AWS Load Balancer Controller deployed on your cluster. For more information, see Route internet traffic with AWS Load Balancer Controller. We recommend version 2.7.2 or later.

  1. If you’re deploying to Fargate, make sure you have an available private subnet in your VPC and create a Fargate profile. If you’re not deploying to Fargate, skip this step. You can create the profile by running the following command or in the AWS Management Console using the same values for name and namespace that are in the command. Replace the example values with your own.

     eksctl create fargateprofile \
         --cluster my-cluster \
         --region region-code \
         --name nlb-sample-app \
         --namespace nlb-sample-app

  2. Deploy a sample application.

     1. Create a namespace for the application.

        kubectl create namespace nlb-sample-app

     2. Save the following contents to a file named sample-deployment.yaml file on your computer.

        apiVersion: apps/v1
        kind: Deployment
        metadata:
          name: nlb-sample-app
          namespace: nlb-sample-app
        spec:
          replicas: 3
          selector:
            matchLabels:
              app: nginx
          template:
            metadata:
              labels:
                app: nginx
            spec:
              containers:
                - name: nginx
                  image: public.ecr.aws/nginx/nginx:1.23
                  ports:
                    - name: tcp
                      containerPort: 80

     3. Apply the manifest to the cluster.

        kubectl apply -f sample-deployment.yaml

  3. Create a service with an internet-facing Network Load Balancer that load balances to IP targets.

     1. Save the following contents to a file named sample-service.yaml file on your computer. If you’re deploying to Fargate nodes, remove the service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: internet-facing line.

        apiVersion: v1
        kind: Service
        metadata:
          name: nlb-sample-service
          namespace: nlb-sample-app
          annotations:
            service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: external
            service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: ip
            service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: internet-facing
        spec:
          ports:
            - port: 80
              targetPort: 80
              protocol: TCP
          type: LoadBalancer
          selector:
            app: nginx

     2. Apply the manifest to the cluster.

        kubectl apply -f sample-service.yaml

  4. Verify that the service was deployed.

     kubectl get svc nlb-sample-service -n nlb-sample-app

     An example output is as follows.

     NAME            TYPE           CLUSTER-IP         EXTERNAL-IP                                                                    PORT(S)        AGE
     sample-service  LoadBalancer   10.100.240.137   k8s-nlbsampl-nlbsampl-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.elb.region-code.amazonaws.com  80:32400/TCP   16h

     Note

     The values for 10.100.240.137 and xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx will be different than the example output (they will be unique to your load balancer) and us-west-2 may be different for you, depending on which AWS Region that your cluster is in.

  5. Open the Amazon EC2 AWS Management Console. Select Target Groups (under Load Balancing) in the left navigation pane. In the Name column, select the target group’s name where the value in the Load balancer column matches a portion of the name in the EXTERNAL-IP column of the output in the previous step. For example, you’d select the target group named k8s-default-samplese-xxxxxxxxxx if your output were the same as the previous output. The Target type is IP because that was specified in the sample service manifest.

  6. Select the Target group and then select the Targets tab. Under Registered targets, you should see three IP addresses of the three replicas deployed in a previous step. Wait until the status of all targets is healthy before continuing. It might take several minutes before all targets are healthy. The targets might be in an unhealthy state before changing to a healthy state.

  7. Send traffic to the service replacing xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and us-west-2 with the values returned in the output for a previous step for EXTERNAL-IP. If you deployed to a private subnet, then you’ll need to view the page from a device within your VPC, such as a bastion host. For more information, see Linux Bastion Hosts on AWS.

     curl k8s-default-samplese-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.elb.region-code.amazonaws.com

     An example output is as follows.

     <!DOCTYPE html>
     <html>
     <head>
     <title>Welcome to nginx!</title>
     [...]

  8. When you’re finished with the sample deployment, service, and namespace, remove them.

     kubectl delete namespace nlb-sample-app