HTTP2

You may have services in your Kubernetes cluster that use HTTP/2 for communication. Typically these are gRPC services, but it could apply to any service that uses HTTP/2 in its transport layer. To enable HTTP/2 communication, the useHttp2 value for the Upstream must be set to true. This signals to the Envoy proxy that HTTP/2 should be used for communication.

In this guide, we will show you two ways to enable HTTP/2 communication by configuring your Kubernetes service properly. We will walk through the following steps:

1. Deploy a Kubernetes example service
2. Update annotations on the service and verify HTTP/2
3. Update port naming on the service and verify HTTP/2

Let’s get started!

Prerequisites

To follow along with this guide, you will need to have a Kubernetes cluster deployed with Gloo Gateway installed and service discovery enabled.

Deploy a Kubernetes example service

To demonstrate the configuration for the HTTP/2, we will deploy the Pet Store application to the default namespace of our cluster using the following command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo/v1.14.x/example/petstore/petstore.yaml

deployment.apps/petstore created
service/petstore created

Let’s take a look at the configuration of the service for the Pet Store application and the Upstream Gloo Gateway has created for it.

kubectl get service petstore -oyaml

Some output has been truncated for brevity, but you should see something like this.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  annotations:
    kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration: |
            {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Service","metadata":{"annotations":{},"labels":{"service":"petstore"},"name":"petstore","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"ports":[{"port":8080,"protocol":"TCP"}],"selector":{"app":"petstore"}}}
  creationTimestamp: "2020-11-18T14:31:32Z"
  labels:
    service: petstore
  name: petstore
  namespace: default
spec:
  clusterIP: 10.111.4.63
  ports:
  - port: 8080
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 8080
  selector:
    app: petstore
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: ClusterIP
status:
  loadBalancer: {}

The Upstream can be retrieved with the following:

kubectl get us -n gloo-system default-petstore-8080 -oyaml

Some output has been truncated for brevity, but you should see something like this.

apiVersion: gloo.solo.io/v1
kind: Upstream
metadata:
  annotations:
    kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration: |
            {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Service","metadata":{"annotations":{},"labels":{"service":"petstore"},"name":"petstore","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"ports":[{"port":8080,"protocol":"TCP"}],"selector":{"app":"petstore"}}}
  creationTimestamp: "2020-11-18T14:31:32Z"
  generation: 2
  labels:
    discovered_by: kubernetesplugin
  name: default-petstore-8080
  namespace: gloo-system
spec:
  discoveryMetadata:
    labels:
      service: petstore
  kube:
    selector:
      app: petstore
    serviceName: petstore
    serviceNamespace: default
    servicePort: 8080
status:
  reportedBy: gloo
  state: 1

You’ll note that the setting spec.useHttp2 is not present.

Enable HTTP/2 through annotation

One of the ways to enable HTTP/2, is to set an annotation value on the Kubernetes service. The field for the annotation is gloo.solo.io/h2_service and it can be set to true or false. Gloo Gateway will update the Upstream automatically if the field is present, based on the value set for the field.

Let’s update our Pet Store service with the annotation and check the Upstream.

kubectl annotate service petstore gloo.solo.io/h2_service=true

Now let’s take a look at our Upstream settings again using the same command as before. We’ve included just the spec portion of the output.

spec:
  discoveryMetadata:
    labels:
      service: petstore
  kube:
    selector:
      app: petstore
    serviceName: petstore
    serviceNamespace: default
    servicePort: 8080
  useHttp2: true

The setting spec.useHttp2 has now been set to true. If we update the annotation to the value false, the setting should also update to false. Let’s test that now.

kubectl annotate service petstore gloo.solo.io/h2_service=false --overwrite

spec:
  discoveryMetadata:
    labels:
      service: petstore
  kube:
    selector:
      app: petstore
    serviceName: petstore
    serviceNamespace: default
    servicePort: 8080
  useHttp2: false

As expected the spec.useHttp2 setting now has a value of false. Removing the annotation will not impact the existing value, but let’s remove it for to explore the port naming option.

kubectl annotate service petstore gloo.solo.io/h2_service- 

Enable HTTP/2 with port names

The other way to enable HTTP/2 is by setting a specific port name for the service. The name of the port must be one of the following: grpc, http2, or h2. Currently, our Pet Store service does not have a name value for the exposed port 8080. Let’s update the port with the name http2.

kubectl patch service petstore -p '{"spec": { "ports": [ { "name": "http2", "port": 8080, "protocol": "TCP", "targetPort": 8080 } ] } }'

Now let’s check the Upstream to see if it updated.

kubectl get us -n gloo-system default-petstore-8080 -oyaml

Only the spec at the end of the output has been included.

spec:
  discoveryMetadata:
    labels:
      service: petstore
  kube:
    selector:
      app: petstore
    serviceName: petstore
    serviceNamespace: default
    servicePort: 8080
  useHttp2: true

You can see that the spec.Http2 setting has been set back to true. As mentioned in the previous section, we recommend using only one of the two methods to enable HTTP/2. During evaluation, the value set on the annotation will override the port naming.

Summary

In this guide you saw how you can use either an annotation or port name to enable HTTP/2 for a Kubernetes service and the accompanying Upstream. The most common application for HTTP/2 is gRPC, so we recommend checking out our guides for working with gRPC Upstreams.