Apache APISIX

Get started

Apache APISIX provides rich traffic management features like load balancing, dynamic upstream, canary release, circuit breaking, authentication, observability, etc.

Before exploring the chart’s possibilities, let’s start by deploying the default configuration:

helm install <release-name> oci://dp.apps.rancher.io/charts/apache-apisix \
    --namespace apisix \
    --create-namespace \
    --set global.imagePullSecrets={application-collection}

Check our authentication guide if you need to configure Application Collection OCI credentials in your Kubernetes cluster.

Chart overview

Our Apache APISIX chart is based on the official apache-apisix chart and adapted to include our best practices. As such, any chart-related documentation provided by upstream will work out of the box with our chart. You can check the official documentation here.

By default, the chart will install the optional etcd component.

Chart configuration

To view the supported configuration options and documentation, run:

helm show values oci://dp.apps.rancher.io/charts/apache-apisix

Access the dashboard

The Apache APISIX Helm chart offers a dashboard UI, enabled by default, that allows you to easily manage its configurations. In order to access the Apache APISIX dashboard UI, credentials need to be provided:

apisix:
  admin:
    # -- Enable Admin API
    enabled: true
    # -- Enable Embedded Admin UI
    enable_admin_ui: true
    credentials:
      # -- Apache APISIX admin API admin role credentials
      admin: <the_admin_key>
      # -- Apache APISIX admin API viewer role credentials
      viewer: <the_viewer_key>

In order to handle these credentials in a more secure way, a Kubernetes secret can be created to store the admin and viewer keys:

kubectl create namespace apisix
kubectl --namespace apisix create secret generic apisix-admin-credentials \
    --from-literal admin=myadminkey --from-literal viewer=myviewerkey
helm install <release-name> oci://dp.apps.rancher.io/charts/apache-apisix \
    --namespace apisix
    --set global.imagePullSecrets={application-collection} \
    --set apisix.admin.credentials.secretName=apisix-admin-credentials
kubectl --namespace apisix port-forward svc/<release-name>-apisix-admin 9180

Then, open http://localhost:9180/ui in your preferred web browser.

Deploy the ingress controller

To deploy Apache APISIX with the ingress controller, run the following command:

helm install <release-name> oci://dp.apps.rancher.io/charts/apache-apisix \
    --namespace apisix \
    --create-namespace \
    --set global.imagePullSecrets={application-collection} \
    --set ingress-controller.enabled=true \
    --set ingress-controller.config.apisix.serviceNamespace=apisix

It is necessary to reference the namespace where the chart is being installed in the ingress-controller.config.apisix.serviceNamespace property, so the controllers spun up by the installation know how to reach the Gateway and the Admin API of Apache APISIX.

External etcd

By default, the Apache APISIX Helm chart is installed with etcd. However, there are scenarios where you may want to configure Apache APISIX to use an external etcd cluster. This can be modified by installing the Helm chart with the following command:

helm install <release-name> oci://dp.apps.rancher.io/charts/apache-apisix \
    --namespace apisix \
    --create-namespace \
    --set global.imagePullSecrets={application-collection} \
    --set etcd.enabled=false \
    --set 'externalEtcd.host[0]=<your-etcd-address>:<your-etcd-port>' \
    --set 'externalEtcd.password=<your-etcd-password>'

Operations

Uninstall the chart

Removing an installed Apache APISIX instance is simple:

helm uninstall <release-name> \
    --namespace apisix

The apisix namespace is not removed by default. If no longer needed, use the following command to delete it:

kubectl delete namespace apisix

Due to Helm’s design, CustomResourceDefinitions (CRDs) are not removed when uninstalling the related chart. To do so, you will need to explicitly remove them:

kubectl delete $(kubectl get CustomResourceDefinition -l='apisix.apache.org/app=ingress-apisix' -o name -A)