k8s-ares

ARES: Automatic REcord System.

A Kubernetes-native system to automatically create and manage DNS records meant to run in parallel with External DNS.

Configuration is managed through the ares-secret Secret, typically in the default namespace. This may change in the future to default to the namespace that ARES is deployed in.

Configuration

A configuration file should look like this:

- selector:
  - syntixi.io
  provider: cloudflare
  providerOptions:
    apiToken: ***

The corresponding Secret can look like:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: ares-secret
stringData:
- selector:
  - syntixi.io
  provider: cloudflare
  providerOptions:
    apiToken: ***

If you want to control multiple domain zones across multiple different providers, you can add another element into the default array and configure another provider there. You can configure multiple domain zones through a single provider.

Custom Resource Definitions

ARES watches over the syntixi.io/v1alpha1/Record CustomResourceDefinition to know which domain names to add, remove, or modify. An example resource is below.

apiVersion: syntixi.io/v1alpha1
kind: Record
metadata:
  name: example
spec:
  fqdn: example.syntixi.io
  ttl: 100
  type: CNAME
  value:
  - syntixi.io

For addresses that can change, such as Nodes that Pods may be running on, it is recommended to instead use a valueFrom selector, such as the PodSelector. The example below includes a Pod and a Record that points to the Node the Pod is running on, with a Selector similar to that in the Kubernetes documentation.

This should not be used for inbound traffic (for that, you should use a LoadBalancer Service or an Ingress record, with external-dns). This is, however, useful for making SPF records point to an outbound mail record, where the mail can be sent from one of many Nodes.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx-hello-world
  app: nginx
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginxdemos/hello
---
apiVersion: syntixi.io/v1alpha1
kind: Record
metadata:
  name: example-selector
spec:
  fqdn: selector.syntixi.io
  ttl: 1
  valueFrom:
    podSelector:
      matchLabels:
        app: nginx

When a syntixi.io/v1alpha1/Record resource is created, an additional record is made for ARES to track ownership over the DNS record. So long as that tracking record exists, when the Kubernetes resource is deleted, the corresponding record and tracking record will be deleted.

License: MIT