NETWAYS Blog

Yes, we all know that providing microservices with Docker is a very wicked thing. Easy to use and of course there is a Docker image available for almost every application you need. The next step to master is how we can expose this service to the public. It seems that this is where most people struggle. Browsing the web (generally GitHub) for HTTP proxies you’ll find an incredible number of images, people build to fit into their environments. Especially when it comes to implement a Let’s Encrypt / SNI encryption service. Because it raises the same questions every time: Is this really the definitely right way to do this? Wrap custom API’s around conventional products like web servers and proxies, inject megabytes of JSON (or YAML or TOML) through environment variables and build scrips to convert this into the product specific configuration language? Always my bad conscience tapped on the door while I did every time.
Some weeks ago, I stumble upon Træfik which is obviously not a new Tool album but a HTTP proxy server which has everything a highly dynamic Docker platform needs to expose its services and includes Let’s Encrypt silently – Such a thing doesn’t exist you say?
A brief summary:

Træfik is a single binary daemon, written in Go, lightweight and can be used in virtually any modern environment. Configuration is done by choosing a backend you have. This could be an orchestrator like Swarm or Kubernetes but you can also use a more “open” approach, like etcd, REST API’s or file backend (backends can be mixed of course). For example, if you are using plain Docker, or Docker Compose, Træfik uses Docker object labels to configures services. A simple configuration looks like this:

[docker]
endpoint = "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
# endpoint = "tcp://127.0.0.1:2375"
domain = "docker.localhost"
watch = true

Træfik constantly watch for changes in your running Docker container and automatically adds backends to its configuration. Docker container itself only needs labels like this (configured as Docker Compose in this example):

whoami:
image: emilevauge/whoami # A container that exposes an API to show its IP address
labels:
- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:whoami.docker.localhost"

The clue is, that you can configure everything you’ll need that is often pretty complex in conventional products. This is for Example multiple domains, headers for API’s, redirects, permissions, container which exposes multiple ports and interfaces and so on.
How you succeed with the configuration can be validated in a frontend which is included in Træfik.

However, the best thing everybody was waiting is the seamless Let’s Encrypt integration which can be achieved with this snippet:

[acme]
email = "test@traefik.io"
storage = "acme.json"
entryPoint = "https"
[acme.httpChallenge]
entryPoint = "http"
# [[acme.domains]]
# main = "local1.com"
# sans = ["test1.local1.com", "test2.local1.com"]
# [[acme.domains]]
# main = "local2.com"
# [[acme.domains]]
# main = "*.local3.com"
# sans = ["local3.com", "test1.test1.local3.com"]

Træfik will create the certificates automatically. Of course, you have a lot of conveniences here too, like wildcard certificates with DNS verification though different DNS API providers and stuff like that.
To conclude that above statements, it exists a thing which can meet the demands for a simple, apified reverse proxy we need in a dockerized world. Just give it a try and see how easy microservices – especially TLS-encrypted – can be.

Marius Hein

Head of ITSM

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Marius Hein ist schon seit 2003 bei NETWAYS. Er hat hier seine Ausbildung zum Fachinformatiker absolviert und viele Jahre in der Softwareentwicklung gearbeitet. Mittlerweile ist er Herr über die interne IT und als Leiter von ITSM zuständig für die technische Schnittmenge der Abteilungen der NETWAYS Gruppe. Wenn er nicht gerade IPv6 IPSec Tunnel bohrt, sitzt er daheim am Schlagzeug und treibt seine Nachbarn in den Wahnsinn.

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