Kubernetes ingress to applications and clusters managed by Rancher

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What you’ll need

• One or more Linux hosts that meet Rancher’s requirements for operating as Kubernetes nodes. These can be on-prem or cloud virtual machines or bare-metal servers.
• An ngrok account.
• kubectl and Helm 3.0.0+ installed on your local workstation.
• The ngrok Kubernetes Operator installed on your cluster. You can install it through Rancher, but this guide recommends the official Helm chart.
• A reserved domain from the ngrok dashboard or API; this guide refers to it as NGROK_DOMAIN.

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Set up your Rancher cluster

• Install the Rancher management server. Rancher’s single-node Docker install is a quick option for test and demonstration environments.
• Create an RKE2 cluster and register your Linux nodes, following Rancher’s guide for launching Kubernetes on existing nodes.
• Set up kubectl with the cluster’s kubeconfig, which you can copy from the Rancher dashboard.

kubectl get namespaces

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Install a sample application

• Create a new Kubernetes manifest (tinyllama.yaml) with the contents below, replacing NGROK_DOMAIN with the domain you reserved. This manifest defines the tinyllama demo LLM application service and deployment, then adds an Ingress that tells the ngrok Kubernetes Operator to route traffic arriving on NGROK_DOMAIN to the tinyllama service.
  showLineNumbers

  apiVersion: v1
  kind: Service
  metadata:
    name: tinyllama
  spec:
    ports:
      - name: http
        port: 80
        targetPort: 8080
    selector:
      app: tinyllama
  ---
  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  metadata:
    name: tinyllama
  spec:
    replicas: 1
    selector:
      matchLabels:
        app: tinyllama
    template:
      metadata:
        labels:
          app: tinyllama
      spec:
        containers:
          - name: tinyllama
            image: ghcr.io/ngrok-samples/tinyllama:main
            ports:
              - name: http
                containerPort: 8080
  ---
  # ngrok Kubernetes Operator configuration
  apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
  kind: Ingress
  metadata:
    name: tinyllama-ingress
  spec:
    ingressClassName: ngrok
    rules:
      - host: NGROK_DOMAIN
        http:
          paths:
            - path: /
              pathType: Prefix
              backend:
                service:
                  name: tinyllama
                  port:
                    number: 80
  
• Apply the tinyllama.yaml manifest to your RKE2 cluster.
  kubectl apply -f tinyllama.yaml
  
• Access your tinyllama demo app by navigating to your ngrok domain (for example, https://NGROK_DOMAIN). ngrok’s network and the Operator route traffic to your app from any device or external network.

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What’s next?