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This guide shows you how to add public ingress to an app running on a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rafay. You’ll install the ngrok Kubernetes Operator, optionally packaged as a Rafay blueprint, then use it to route public traffic to a demo app through a secure tunnel. Rafay is a SaaS-based cloud controller that helps platform and DevOps teams manage their Kubernetes clusters and cloud environments. Packaging the ngrok Kubernetes Operator as a blueprint lets you apply the same ingress setup to any number of Rafay-managed clusters.

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What you’ll need

  • A Rafay account.
  • An account with the privileges to create a cluster on one of the following managed Kubernetes services: Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, Google GKE, or a data center/edge or private cloud where you can deploy an upstream Kubernetes cluster.
  • An ngrok account.
  • kubectl and Helm 3.0.0+ installed on your local workstation.
  • A reserved domain from the ngrok dashboard or API; this guide refers to it as NGROK_DOMAIN.

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Create a new cluster with Rafay

This guide assumes a cluster provisioned and managed by Rafay. If you don’t have one, follow the getting started guide for your Kubernetes service in Rafay’s documentation, completing the Provision steps for your provider.

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Install the ngrok Kubernetes Operator

First, gather the ngrok credentials the Operator needs:
  • Log in to the ngrok dashboard to get your authtoken and create an API key.
  • Create a file named ngrok-values.yaml with the values below, replacing the placeholders with your authtoken and API key:
The Operator installs from the official Helm chart in the https://charts.ngrok.com repository. For the standalone Helm install with your ngrok credentials, see the Kubernetes ingress quickstart; for chart configuration options, see the Helm configuration reference. To install it through Rafay instead, add https://charts.ngrok.com as a repository, create a Helm 3 add-on for the ngrok-operator chart with your ngrok-values.yaml values file, then add that add-on to a blueprint and apply the blueprint to your cluster. See Rafay’s documentation for creating repositories, add-ons, and blueprints. Rafay deploys the ngrok Kubernetes Operator when it applies the blueprint.

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Deploy an app with Rafay

You’ll deploy the AKS Store demo app and an ngrok ingress as a Rafay workload.
  • Download the AKS Store manifest to your local workstation:
  • Add the following ingress configuration to the bottom of your aks-store-workload.yaml file, replacing NGROK_DOMAIN with the domain you reserved. This tells the ngrok Kubernetes Operator to route traffic arriving on NGROK_DOMAIN to the store-front service on port 80.
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  • Create a Rafay workload from the aks-store-workload.yaml file using the default namespace, then place it on your cluster and publish it. See Rafay’s documentation for creating and publishing workloads. Give Rafay a few minutes to provision the AKS Store resources.
  • Navigate to your ngrok domain (for example, https://NGROK_DOMAIN) in your browser to see the app deployed and publicly networked via Rafay, Kubernetes, and ngrok. ngrok routes requests through the ngrok Kubernetes Operator to the store-front service.

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What’s next?

You’ve used the open source ngrok Kubernetes Operator to add public ingress to a demo app on a Rafay-managed cluster. Because ngrok handles ingress and middleware execution, you can follow the same process for your other apps, and packaging the Operator as a Rafay blueprint lets you repeat it across clusters. Learn more about the ngrok Kubernetes Operator in the Kubernetes docs, or contribute to its development on GitHub.