Expose a Kubernetes cluster workload to your tailnet (cluster ingress)

You can use the Tailscale Kubernetes operator to expose a Kubernetes cluster workload to your tailnet in three ways:

• Create a LoadBalancer type Service with the tailscale loadBalancerClass that fronts your workload.
• Annotate an existing Service that fronts your workload.
• Create an Ingress resource fronting a Service or Services for the workloads you wish to expose.

Prerequisites

• Set up the Kubernetes Operator.

Exposing a cluster workload using a Kubernetes Service

Exposing a cluster workload via a tailscale Load Balancer Service

Create a new Kubernetes Service of type LoadBalancer:

1. Set spec.type to LoadBalancer.
2. Set spec.loadBalancerClass to tailscale.

After provisioning completes, the Service status will show the fully-qualified domain name of the Service in your tailnet. You can view the Service status by running kubectl get service <service name>.

You should also see a new node with that name appear in the Machines page of the admin console.

Exposing a cluster workload by annotating an existing Service

If the Service you want to expose already exists, you can expose it to Tailscale using object annotations.

Edit the Service and under metadata.annotations, add the annotation tailscale.com/expose with the value "true". Note that "true" is quoted because annotation values are strings, and an unquoted true will be incorrectly interpreted as a boolean.

In this mode, Kubernetes doesn't tell you the Tailscale machine name. You can look up the node in the Machines of the admin console to learn its machine name. By default, the machine name of an exposed Service is <k8s-namespace>-<k8s-servicename>, but it can be changed.

Exposing cluster workloads using a Kubernetes Ingress

You can expose cluster workloads either to your tailnet or the public internet over TLS using an Ingress resource. When using an Ingress resource, you also get the ability to identify callers using HTTP headers injected by the Ingress proxy.

Ingress resources only support TLS, and are only exposed over HTTPS using a MagicDNS name and publicly trusted certificates from LetsEncrypt. You must enable HTTPS and MagicDNS on your tailnet.

Edit the Ingress resource you want to expose to use the Ingress class tailscale:

1. Set spec.ingressClassName to tailscale.
2. Set tls.hosts to the desired host name of the Tailscale node. Only the first label is used. See custom machine names for more details.

For example, to expose an Ingress resource nginx to your tailnet:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  defaultBackend:
    service:
      name: nginx
      port:
        number: 80
  ingressClassName: tailscale
  tls:
    - hosts:
        - nginx

The backend is HTTP by default. To use HTTPS on the backend, either set the port name to https or the port number to 443:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  defaultBackend:
    service:
      name: nginx
      port:
        name: https
  ingressClassName: tailscale
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  ports:
    - name: https
      port: 443
      targetPort: 443
  type: ClusterIP

A single Ingress resource can be used to front multiple backend Services:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: ingress
spec:
  ingressClassName: tailscale
  rules:
    - http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: ui-svc
                port:
                  number: 80
          - path: /api
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: api-svc
                port:
                  number: 80

Currently the only supported Ingress path type is Prefix. Requests for paths with other path types will be routed according to Prefix rules.

A Tailscale Ingress can only be accessed on port 443.

Exposing a Service to the public internet using Ingress and Tailscale Funnel

You can also use the Tailscale Kubernetes Operator to expose an Ingress resource in your Kubernetes cluster to the public internet using Tailscale Funnel. To do so:

1. Add a tailscale.com/funnel: "true" annotation:

   apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
   kind: Ingress
   metadata:
     name: funnel
     annotations:
       tailscale.com/funnel: "true"
   spec:
     defaultBackend:
       service:
         name: funnel
         port:
           number: 80
     ingressClassName: tailscale
     tls:
       - hosts:
           - funnel
   

2. Update the access control policies for your tailnet to allow Kubernetes Operator proxy services to use Tailscale Funnel.

Add a node attribute to allow nodes created by the Kubernetes operator to use Funnel:

"nodeAttrs": [
  {
    "target": ["tag:k8s"], // tag that Tailscale Operator uses to tag proxies; defaults to 'tag:k8s'
    "attr":   ["funnel"],
  },
  ...
]

Note that even if your policy has the funnel attribute assigned to autogroup:member (the default), you still need to add it to the tag used by proxies because autogroup:member does not include tagged devices.

Removing a Service

Any of the following actions remove a Kubernetes Service you exposed from your tailnet:

• Delete the Service entirely.
• If you use the tailscale.com/expose annotation, remove the annotation.
• If you use an Ingress resource, delete it or change or unset spec.ingressClassName.

High availability

Tailscale versions 1.84 and later support deploying Tailscale Kubernetes Operator's ingress proxies in high availability (HA) mode, using ProxyGroup and a new Tailscale feature, Tailscale Services.

The HA mode lets you:

• Expose a Kubernetes Service or Ingress resource to your tailnet through multiple active ingress proxies, to prevent downtime during proxy Pod restarts.

• Expose many Service and Ingress resources to your tailnet using a smaller number of proxy Pods.

Prerequisites

• Contact Tailscale Support to enable Tailscale Services for your tailnet.

• Ensure that the OAuth client credentials used by the Tailscale Kubernetes Operator have VIPServices, Devices Core and Auth Keys write scopes.

  If you are updating credentials for an existing installation, you must recreate the Kubernetes Operator's Pod.

• Create a ProxyGroup with spec.type set to ingress:

  apiVersion: tailscale.com/v1alpha1
  kind: ProxyGroup
  metadata:
    name: ingress-proxies
  spec:
    type: ingress
  

Refer to the ProxyGroup API documentation for all available configuration options.

Expose a Tailscale Ingress in HA mode

• Configure permissions

• Create a Tailscale Ingress resource that references the ProxyGroup you created in the previous step. The spec.tls.hosts field can contain (at most) a single entry that determines the first label of the DNS name by which the Ingress will be exposed to the tailnet. If unset, it defaults to <ingress-name>-<namespace>.

  apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
  kind: Ingress
  metadata:
    name: nginx
    annotations:
      tailscale.com/proxy-group: ingress-proxies
  spec:
    defaultBackend:
      service:
        name: nginx
        port:
          number: 80
    ingressClassName: tailscale
    tls:
      - hosts:
          - nginx
  

• Wait for the Ingress resource to become ready.

kubectl wait --timeout=80s  ingress nginx --for=jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ports[0].port}'=443

• Ensure that your Tailscale client accepts routes. Clients other than Linux accept routes by default.

• Access the cluster workload from a Tailscale client:

kubectl get ingress nginx
NAME    CLASS       HOSTS   ADDRESS                  PORTS     AGE
nginx tailscale   *       nginx.tailxyz.ts.net   80, 443   15s

curl https://nginx.tailxyz.ts.net
...

Expose a Tailscale Service in HA mode

• Configure permissions

• Create a Tailscale LoadBalancer Service that references the ProxyGroup you created in the previous step. You can use the tailscale.com/hostname annotation to set the first label of the DNS name by which the Service will be exposed to the tailnet. If unset, it defaults to <service-name>-<namespace>.

  apiVersion: v1
  kind: Service
  metadata:
    name: nginx
    tailscale.com/hostname: nginx
    annotations:
      tailscale.com/proxy-group: ingress-proxies
  spec:
    ports:
      - name: http
        port: 80
        targetPort: 80
    type: LoadBalancer
    loadBalancerClass: tailscale
  

• Wait for the resources to be configured.

kubectl wait svc nginx --for condition=TailscaleIngressSvcConfigured

• Access the cluster workload from the tailnet.

kubectl get svc nginx
NAME    TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP     PORT(S)        AGE
nginx LoadBalancer   10.96.194.223   100.91.19.147   80:31967/TCP   5m16s

curl http://nginx.tailxyz.ts.net
...

Configure permissions

By default, the ProxyGroup proxies are tagged with the tag tag:k8s. You can configure tags using the .tags field in the ProxyGroup spec. You must ensure that the tag by which you tagged the operator's OAuth client credentials is a tagOwner of the ProxyGroup device tags.

For each HA Service or Ingress exposed on a ProxyGroup, the Kubernetes Operator creates a Tailscale Service. Each ProxyGroup proxy advertises the Tailscale Service, by configuring itself as a backend for the tailnet traffic for the Tailscale Service. The Tailscale IP address and DNS name given to the Ingress or Service are the IP addresses and DNS name of the Tailscale Service.

You can tag Tailscale Service and use the tag to configure which tailnet devices can advertise the Service and which tailnet identities can access it. By default, the Kubernetes Operator tags all Tailscale Services with a tag tag:k8s. You can configure Tailscale Service tags using tailscale.com/tags annotation on the Service or Ingress resource.

Ensure that ProxyGroup devices can advertise the Tailscale Service

To permit ProxyGroup devices to advertise a Tailscale Service, use the autoApprovers section of the tailnet policy file.

For example, to let ProxyGroup devices with the tag tag:eu-cluster to advertise Tailscale Services with tag tag:monitoring, add the following to your tailnet policy file:

"autoApprovers": {
    "services": {
      "tag:monitoring":    ["tag:eu-cluster"],
    },
}

Configure access

You can use Tailscale Service tags to control access to it.

For example, to let the user group group:eng to access Tailscale Services with the tag tag:monitoring exposed on a ProxyGroup with the tag tag:eu-cluster, add the following to your tailnet policy file:

"grants": [
    {
      "src":    ["group:eng"],
      "dst":    ["tag:monitoring"],
      "ip": ["*"],
    },
    {
      "src":    ["group:eng"],
      "ip":  ["icmp:*"],
      "dst":    ["tag:eu-cluster:*"],
    },

IPv6 support

Ingress

To proxy traffic to IPv6 backends, you might need to disable IPv4 tailnet addresses for the proxy tailnet nodes.

You need to disable IPv4 tailnet addresses for:

• Proxies used to expose cluster workloads using Tailscale ingress Services if they are running in a cluster that allocates IPv6 addresses to Services.

• Proxies used to expose cloud services using Tailscale ExternalName Services if the cloud services have IPv6 addresses.

You can disable tailnet IPv4 addresses for a specific tag using a disable-ipv4 node attribute.

The following node attributes configuration example disables IPv4 addresses for all nodes tagged with tag:k8s:

"nodeAttrs": [
		{
			"target": ["tag:k8s"],
			"attr": [
				"disable-ipv4",
			],
		},
]

Customization

Learn how to customize the operator and resources it manages.

Troubleshooting

Learn how to troubleshoot the operator and resources it manages.

Limitations

• Tags are only considered during initial provisioning. That is, editing tailscale.com/tags on an already exposed Service doesn't update the tags until you clean up and re-expose the Service.
• The requested machine name is only considered during initial provisioning. That is, editing tailscale.com/hostname on an already exposed Service doesn't update the machine name until you clean up and re-expose the Service.
• Cluster-ingress using Kubernetes Ingress resource requires TLS certificates. Currently, the certificates are provisioned on the first connect. This means that the first connection might be slow or even time out.