Restricting Access by Geographical Location using NGINX with Helm
This article explains how you can restrict content distribution to a particular country from services in your Kubernetes cluster, using the GeoIP2 dynamic module.
Prerequisites
- Install NGINX Ingress Controller in your Kubernetes cluster using Helm.
Getting the GeoLite2 databases from MaxMind
The MaxMind company provides the GeoLite2 free IP geolocation databases. You need to create an account on the MaxMind website and generate a license key.
Configuring the NGINX Ingress Controller
Override the NGINX Helm chart with the following values:
controller:
# Maxmind license key to download GeoLite2 Databases
maxmindLicenseKey: ""
extraArgs:
# GeoLite2 Databases to download (default "GeoLite2-City,GeoLite2-ASN")
maxmind-edition-ids: GeoLite2-Country
service:
# Preserve source IP...
externalTrafficPolicy: Local
# ...Which is only supported if we enable the v2 proxy protocol for the OVH load balancer (specific to OVH Cloud provider)
annotations:
service.beta.kubernetes.io/ovh-loadbalancer-proxy-protocol: "v2"
config:
use-proxy-protocol: "true"
# Enable Ingress to parse and add -snippet annotations/directives
allow-snippet-annotations: "true"
# Enable geoip2 module
use-geoip: "false"
use-geoip2: "true"
# Configure access by geographical location.
# Here, we map ISO 3166 country codes to the custom variable allowed_country.
# Map directives are only allowed at Ingress Controller level.
http-snippet: |
map $geoip2_country_code $allowed_country {
default no;
FR yes;
US yes;
}
Example Ingress
A minimal Ingress resource example:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: minimal-ingress
annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
# Restrict access by geographical location
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/server-snippet: |
if ($allowed_country = no) {
return 451;
}
spec:
ingressClassName: nginx-example
rules:
- http:
paths:
- path: /testpath
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: test
port:
number: 80
Note: The HTTP status code 451 was chosen as a reference to the novel “Fahrenheit 451”.