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Apply policy to Kubernetes node ports

Big picture

Restrict access to node ports to specific external clients.

Value

Exposing services to external clients using node ports is a standard Kubernetes feature. However, if you want to restrict access to node ports to specific external clients, you need to use Calico global network policy.

Features

This how-to guide uses the following Calico features:

  • GlobalNetworkPolicy with a preDNAT field
  • HostEndpoint

Concepts

Network policy with preDNAT field

In a Kubernetes cluster, kube-proxy will DNAT a request to the node’s port and IP address to one of the pods that backs the service. For Calico global network policy to both allow normal ingress cluster traffic and deny other general ingress traffic, it must take effect before DNAT. To do this, you simply add a preDNAT field to a Calico global network policy. The preDNAT field:

  • Applies before DNAT
  • Applies only to ingress rules
  • Enforces all ingress traffic through a host endpoint, regardless of destination
    The destination can be a locally hosted pod, a pod on another node, or a process running on the host.

Before you begin…

For services that you want to expose to external clients, configure Kubernetes services with type NodePort.

How to

To securely expose a Kubernetes service to external clients, you must implement all of the following steps.

Allow cluster ingress traffic but deny general ingress traffic

In the following example, we create a global network policy to allow cluster ingress traffic (allow-cluster-internal-ingress): for the nodes’ IP addresses (1.2.3.4/16), and for pod IP addresses assigned by Kubernetes (100.100.100.0/16). By adding a preDNAT field, Calico global network policy is applied before regular DNAT on the Kubernetes cluster.

In this example, we use the selector: has(kubernetes-host) – so the policy is applicable to any endpoint with a kubernetes-host label (but you can easily specify particular nodes).

Finally, when you specify a preDNAT field, you must also add the applyOnForward: true field.

apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: GlobalNetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-cluster-internal-ingress-only
spec:
  order: 20
  preDNAT: true
  applyOnForward: true
  ingress:
    - action: Allow
      source:
        nets: [1.2.3.4/16, 100.100.100.0/16]
    - action: Deny
  selector: has(kubernetes-host)

Allow local host egress traffic

We also need a global network policy to allow egress traffic through each node’s external interface. Otherwise, when we define host endpoints for those interfaces, no egress traffic will be allowed from local processes (except for traffic that is allowed by the Failsafe rules.

apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: GlobalNetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-outbound-external
spec:
  order: 10
  egress:
    - action: Allow
  selector: has(kubernetes-host)

Create host endpoints with appropriate network policy

In this example, we assume that you have already defined Calico host endpoints with network policy that is appropriate for the cluster. (For example, you wouldn’t want a host endpoint with a “default deny all traffic to/from this host” network policy because that is counter to the goal of allowing/denying specific traffic.) For help, see host endpoints.

All of our previously-defined global network policies have a selector that makes them applicable to any endpoint with a kubernetes-host label; so we will include that label in our definitions. For example, for eth0 on node1.

apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: HostEndpoint
metadata:
  name: node1-eth0
  labels:
    kubernetes-host: ingress
spec:
  interfaceName: eth0
  node: node1

Allow ingress traffic to specific node ports

Now we can allow external access to the node ports by creating a global network policy with the preDNAT field. In this example, ingress traffic is allowed for any host endpoint with port: 31852.

apiVersion: projectcalico.org/v3
kind: GlobalNetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-nodeport
spec:
  preDNAT: true
  applyOnForward: true
  order: 10
  ingress:
    - action: Allow
      protocol: TCP
      destination:
        selector: has(kubernetes-host)
        ports: [31852]
  selector: has(kubernetes-host)

To make the NodePort accessible only through particular nodes, give the nodes a particular label. For example:

nodeport-external-ingress: true

Then, use nodeport-external-ingress: true as the selector of the allow-nodeport policy, instead of has(kubernetes-host).

Above and beyond