Loved by developers around the world, Ngrok is a cross-platform application that enables developers to expose a local development server to the Internet.

Last year, the Ngrok team announced the release of an ingress controller, this was exciting as a long-time user of Ngrok, in this tutorial, we will look at how to expose an application using the Ngrok ingress for Kubernetes.

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes some familiarity with Kubernetes, in addition, you would need the following:

Creating a cluster

We’ll begin by creating a Kubernetes cluster.

For simplicity, we will be doing it from the CLI:

civo k3s create --create-firewall --nodes 2 -m --save --switch --wait ngrok-demo -r=Traefik

Using the -r flag, removes the default ingress controller (Traefik), as we will be using the Ngrok ingress to expose applications,

Using the -m flag tells the Civo command line to merge the kubeconfig for the cluster with our existing kube-config

Installing the Ngrok Ingress Controller

To install the Ngrok ingress controller using Helm, run the following commands in your terminal:

Add the helm repo 

helm repo add ngrok <https://ngrok.github.io/kubernetes-ingress-controller>

Export your credentials 

export NGROK_API_KEY=<your API key >
export NGROK_AUTHTOKEN=<your auth token>

Install the Helm Chart 

helm install ngrok-ingress-controller ngrok/kubernetes-ingress-controller \\
   --set credentials.apiKey=$NGROK_API_KEY \\
   --set credentials.authtoken=$NGROK_AUTHTOKEN

Creating a deployment

Begin by creating a file called deployment.yaml this would house the Kubernetes deployment and service for the application:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: whoami
  namespace: default
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: whoami
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: whoami
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: whoami
          image: traefik/whoami
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: whoami
  namespace: default
spec:
  selector:
    app: whoami
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
        port: 80
        targetPort: 80

The code above would deploy the whoami web server with one replica and create a Kubernetes service.

Apply the deployment 

kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

Exposing the Deployment

Create a file named ingress.yaml and follow along with the code below:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
 name: whoami-ingress
spec:
 ingressClassName: ngrok
 rules:
   - host: globally-uniquedomainname.ngrok.app
     http:
       paths:
         - path: /
           pathType: Prefix
           backend:
             service:
               name: whoami
               port:
                 number: 80

Ensure you replace with the domain name Ngrok provides, you can obtain it by visiting this section within the Ngrok dashboard.

Once you update the host section with the appropriate domain name, apply the manifest:

kubectl apply -f ingress.yaml

To view the exposed application, navigate to your browser and paste in the domain name you obtained from the Ngrok dashboard. You should see something like this:

Getting Started With Ngrok Ingress for Kubernetes

Out of the box, Ngrok handles TLS termination, eliminating the need to manage certificates ourselves.

Summary

The Ngrok Ingress is a welcome addition to the ingress controller family as it provides a viable alternative to some of the more popular ingress controllers while still providing a robust feature set.

If you’re looking to explore ingress controllers further, here are some ideas: