Envoy proxy for GRPC service mesh

Question

I am trying to do a very basic setup of Envoy for load balancing and discovery features of my GRPC services. Say for a very basic setup i have two GRPC services running in Docker containers. According to Envoy docs i should use "envoy.tcp_proxy" filter type. Here i make a very simple yml configuration that fails to run:

admin:
  access_log_path: /tmp/admin_access.log
  address:
    socket_address: { address: 0.0.0.0, port_value: 9901 }

static_resources:
  listeners:
  - name: listener_0
    address:
      socket_address: { address: 0.0.0.0, port_value: 10000, protocol: TCP }
    filter_chains:
    - filters:
        - name: envoy.tcp_proxy
          config:
              stat_prefix: myservice
              cluster: mycluster
  clusters:
  - name: mycluster
    connect_timeout: 0.25s
    type: LOGICAL_DNS
    # Comment out the following line to test on v6 networks
    dns_lookup_family: V4_ONLY
    lb_policy: ROUND_ROBIN
    hosts: [{ socket_address: { address: localhost, port_value: 30270 }}]
    tls_context: { sni: localhost }

Apparently i am doing something wrong, but cant find a complete GRPC to GRPC service mesh Envoy configuration example anywhere on the site. Port 30270 is the one i expose and listen on server side.

Given above configuration says:

error initializing configuration '/etc/envoy.yaml': envoy.tcp_proxy factory returned nullptr instead of empty config message

Do i still have to use HTTP manager to route? Could anybody share an example?

Answer 1

You want to use the envoy.http_connection_manager filter type. This is a simple gRPC configuration example.

Answer 2

This is a sample envoy.yaml configuration.

static_resources:

  listeners:
    - name: listener_0
      address:
        socket_address:
          address: X.X.X.X
          port_value: 443
          ipv4Compat: true
      filter_chains:
        - filter_chain_match: {}
          transport_socket:
            name: envoy.transport_sockets.tls
            typed_config:
              "@type": type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.transport_sockets.tls.v3.DownstreamTlsContext
              common_tls_context:
                tls_params:
                  cipher_suites:
                    - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
                    - ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
                    - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA
                    - ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA
                    - AES128-GCM-SHA256
                    - AES128-SHA
                    - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
                    - ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
                    - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA
                    - ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA
                    - AES256-GCM-SHA384
                    - AES256-SHA
                  ecdh_curves:
                    - P-256
                tls_certificates:
                  - certificate_chain:
                      filename: "/home/.tomcat_cert.pem"
                    private_key:
                      filename: "/home/.tomcat_key.pem"
                validation_context:
                  trust_chain_verification: ACCEPT_UNTRUSTED
                alpn_protocols:
                  - h2
              require_client_certificate: false
          filters:
            - name: envoy.filters.network.http_connection_manager
              typed_config:
                "@type": type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.filters.network.http_connection_manager.v3.HttpConnectionManager
                stat_prefix: ingress_http
                http_filters:
                  - name: envoy.filters.http.router
                route_config:
                  name: local_route
                  virtual_hosts:
                    - name: local_service
                      domains: ["*"]
                      routes:
                        - match:
                            prefix: "/api.ApiService"
                          route:
                            cluster: grpc-server
                            idle_timeout: 0s
                            max_stream_duration:
                              grpc_timeout_header_max: 35s
                        - match:
                            prefix: "/site"
                          route:
                            cluster: site_router
  clusters:
    - name: site_router
      type: static
      # Comment out the following line to test on v6 networks
      lb_policy: round_robin
      connect_timeout: 25s
      http2_protocol_options: {}
      load_assignment:
        cluster_name: site_router
        endpoints:
          - lb_endpoints:
              - endpoint:
                  address:
                    socket_address:
                      address: 127.0.0.1
                      port_value: 7880
    - name: grpc-server
      type: static
      # Comment out the following line to test on v6 networks
      lb_policy: round_robin
      connect_timeout: 25s
      http2_protocol_options: {}
      load_assignment:
        cluster_name: grpc-server
        endpoints:
          - lb_endpoints:
              - endpoint:
                  address:
                    socket_address:
                      address: 127.0.0.1
                      port_value: 7879