Kong Mesh GUI and ports reference

After Kong Mesh is installed, you can access the control plane via the following methods:

By accessing the control plane using one of these methods, you can see the current Kong Mesh configuration or with some methods, you can edit the configuration.

kubectl port-forward svc/kong-mesh-control-plane -n kong-mesh-system 5681:5681

kubectl get meshes
# NAME          AGE
# default       1m

echo "apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: Mesh
metadata:
  name: default
spec:
  mtls:
    enabledBackend: ca-1
    backends:
    - name: ca-1
      type: builtin" | kubectl apply -f -

kubectl port-forward svc/kong-mesh-control-plane -n kong-mesh-system 5681:5681

kubectl port-forward svc/kong-mesh-control-plane -n kong-mesh-system 5681:5681

kumactl get meshes
# NAME          mTLS      METRICS      LOGGING   TRACING
# default       off       off          off       off

kumactl config control-planes add --name=XYZ --address=http://{address-to-kuma}:5681

kumactl get meshes
# NAME          mTLS      METRICS      LOGGING   TRACING
# default       off       off          off       off

echo "type: Mesh
name: default
mtls:
  enabledBackend: ca-1
  backends:
  - name: ca-1
    type: builtin" | kumactl apply -f -

kumactl config control-planes add --name=XYZ --address=http://{address-to-kuma}:5681

Kong Mesh, being an application that improves the underlying connectivity between your services by making the underlying network more reliable, also comes with some networking requirements itself.

First and foremost, the kuma-cp application is a server that offers a number of services - some meant for internal consumption by kuma-dp data plane proxies and some meant for external consumption by kumactl, the HTTP API, the GUI or other systems.

The number and type of exposed ports depends on the mode in which the control plane is running as:

Global control plane

When Kong Mesh is run as a distributed service mesh, the global control plane exposes the following ports:

• TCP
  • 5443: the port for the admission webhook, only enabled in Kubernetes. The default Kubernetes kong-mesh-control-plane service exposes this port on 443.
  • 5680: the HTTP server that returns the health status of the control plane.
  • 5681: the HTTP API server that is being used by kumactl, and that you can also use to retrieve Kong Mesh’s policies and - when running in universal - that you can use to apply new policies. Manipulating Dataplane resources is not possible. It also exposes the Kong Mesh GUI at /gui
  • 5682: HTTPS version of the services available under 5681
  • 5683: gRPC Intercommunication CP server used internally by Kong Mesh to communicate between CP instances.
  • 5685: the Kong Mesh Discovery Service port, leveraged in multi-zone deployments

Zone control plane

When Kong Mesh is run as a distributed service mesh, the zone control plane exposes the following ports:

• TCP
  • 5443: the port for the admission webhook, only enabled in Kubernetes. The default Kubernetes kong-mesh-control-plane service exposes this port on 443.
  • 5676: the Monitoring Assignment server that responds to discovery requests from monitoring tools, such as Prometheus, that are looking for a list of targets to scrape metrics from.
  • 5678: the server for the control plane to data plane proxy communication (bootstrap configuration, xDS to retrieve data plane proxy configuration, SDS to retrieve mTLS certificates).
  • 5680: the HTTP server that returns the health status and metrics of the control plane.
  • 5681: the HTTP API server that is being used by kumactl. You can also use it to retrieve Kong Mesh’s policies and, when running in universal, you can manage Dataplane resources. When not connected to global, it also exposes the Kong Mesh GUI at /gui
  • 5682: HTTPS version of the services available under 5681
  • 5683: gRPC Intercommunication CP server used internally by Kong Mesh to communicate between CP instances.