Use an OCI load balancer

If you are running your Kubernetes cluster on Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (commonly known as OKE), then you can have Oracle Cloud Infrastructure automatically provision load balancers for you by creating a Service of type LoadBalancer instead of (or in addition to) installing an ingress controller like Traefik.

OKE Kubernetes worker nodes typically do not have public IP addresses. This means that the NodePort services created by the operator are not usable, because they would expose ports on the worker node’s private IP addresses only, which are not reachable from outside the cluster.
Instead, you can use an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure load balancer to provide access to services running in OKE.

It is also possible, if desirable, to have an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure load balancer route traffic to an ingress controller running inside the Kubernetes cluster and have that ingress controller in turn route traffic to services in the cluster.

Requesting an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure load balancer

When your domain is created by the operator, a number of Kubernetes services are created by the operator, including one for the WebLogic Server Administration Server and one for each Managed Server and cluster.

In the following example, there is a domain called bobs-bookstore in the bob namespace. This domain has a cluster called cluster-1 which exposes traffic on port 31111.

The following Kubernetes YAML file defines a new Service in the same namespace. The selector targets all of the pods in this namespace which are part of the cluster cluster-1, using the annotations that are placed on those pods by the operator. It also defines the port and protocol.

You can include the optional oci-load-balancer-shape annotation (as shown) if you want to specify the shape of the load balancer. Otherwise the default shape (100Mbps) will be used.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: bobs-bookstore-oci-lb-service
  namespace: bob
  annotations:
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/oci-load-balancer-shape: 400Mbps
spec:
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 31111
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 31111
  selector:
    weblogic.clusterName: cluster-1
    weblogic.domainUID: bobs-bookstore
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: LoadBalancer

When you apply this YAML file to your cluster, you will see the new service is created but initially the external IP is shown as <pending>.

$ kubectl -n bob get svc

NAME                                   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                       AGE
bobs-bookstore-admin-server            ClusterIP      None            <none>        8888/TCP,7001/TCP,30101/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-admin-server-ext        NodePort       10.96.224.13    <none>        7001:32401/TCP                9d
bobs-bookstore-cluster-cluster-1       ClusterIP      10.96.86.113    <none>        8888/TCP,8001/TCP,31111/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-managed-server1         ClusterIP      None            <none>        8888/TCP,8001/TCP,31111/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-managed-server2         ClusterIP      None            <none>        8888/TCP,8001/TCP,31111/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-oci-lb-service          LoadBalancer   10.96.121.216   <pending>     31111:31671/TCP               9s

After a short time (typically less than a minute), the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure load balancer will be provisioned and the external IP address will be displayed:

$ kubectl -n bob get svc

NAME                                   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP       PORT(S)                       AGE
bobs-bookstore-admin-server            ClusterIP      None            <none>            8888/TCP,7001/TCP,30101/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-admin-server-ext        NodePort       10.96.224.13    <none>            7001:32401/TCP                9d
bobs-bookstore-cluster-cluster-1       ClusterIP      10.96.86.113    <none>            8888/TCP,8001/TCP,31111/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-managed-server1         ClusterIP      None            <none>            8888/TCP,8001/TCP,31111/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-managed-server2         ClusterIP      None            <none>            8888/TCP,8001/TCP,31111/TCP   9d
bobs-bookstore-oci-lb-service          LoadBalancer   10.96.121.216   132.145.235.215   31111:31671/TCP               55s

You can now use the external IP address and port to access your pods. There are several options that can be used to configure more advanced load balancing behavior. For more information, including how to configure SSL support, supporting internal and external subnets, and so one, refer to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation.