Exposing Appian Outside Kubernetes

This page describes how to expose Appian sites outside of Kubernetes. Exposing the webapp or Apache Web Server (httpd) component allows Appian to send and receive web traffic.

Any exposure should be used with appropriate security measures. Your organization is responsible for handling ingress securely.

How ingress works

In Kubernetes, an Ingress resource defines rules for routing external HTTP/https traffic into services inside a cluster.

An Ingress controller is responsible for fulfilling the ingress. Appian sites in Kubernetes should work with a variety of Ingress controllers provided both the Ingress resource and controller are properly configured.

Configure an Ingress resource

To enable and configure an Ingress resource for your environment, make the following changes to the Appian custom resource (CR) configuration file:

1. Set the .spec.ingress.enabled field to true.

2. Set the .spec.ingress.annotations field as appropriate:

   • The specific annotation you need depends on your ingress controller.
   • If your ingress controller uses load balancers that run outside the cluster, configure an annotation that allows proper handling of non-2xx responses, such as HTTP 404. This configuration prevents health probes from incorrectly marking the httpd backend as unhealthy.

   Caution:  If you do not configure this type of annotation, the external load balancer may mark the Appian httpd backend as unhealthy and block access to the site, even if Appian is running correctly.

Example

The following configuration uses an AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) annotation:

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spec:
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    annotations:
      # AWS ALB: accept 200 and 404 as healthy responses
      alb.ingress.kubernetes.io/success-codes: "200,404"

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