How to Set Up kubernetes services to use an external nginx proxy

Set up a separate nginx server
Set up a proxy from the nginx instance exposing a port and proxying traffic from the destination service
From kubernetes, set up a service and an endpoint for that service that tunnels traffic to the proxy instance

Creating a proxy service

From the proxy instance, create a proxy

after installing nginx, create a config file

Save this as /etc/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conf

server {
    listen 5080;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://192.168.100.81:8310;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

        proxy_connect_timeout 60s;
        proxy_send_timeout 60s;
        proxy_read_timeout 60s;
        send_timeout 60s;
    }
}

Reload nginx once saved

Kubernetes instance

Kubernetes service and endpoint

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: external-service
  namespace: prod
spec:
  ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 5080
      targetPort: 5080

Endpoint

apiVersion: v1
kind: Endpoints
metadata:
  name: external-service
  namespace: prod
subsets:
  - addresses:
      - ip: 192.169.100.20 # remote proxy ip
    ports:
      - port: 5080 # remote proxy port

You can then use the <service-name>.<namespace> annotation to access the proxy.

curl http://external-service.prod.svc.cluster.local:5080/