Envoy Proxy is a high-performance proxy server with a small memory footprint enabling it to run on embedded devices such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers. Originally developed for the Citrix NetScaler application delivery controller, Envoy Proxy is now used by a number of major web properties and applications.
Do you want to learn how to install the envoy proxy on Ubuntu? Envoy is a great proxy for improving the performance of your website. It can help reduce latency and improve caching. Plus, it’s really easy to set up!
Prerequisites
In order to install Envoy Proxy, you will need to have:
- A server running Ubuntu 20.04. This installation process should work on any recent Ubuntu version, however, if using anything other than Ubuntu 20.04, you may need to make some small changes.
- Root access or sudo privileges. You can learn how to set up sudo users here.
- It is recommended that you have at least 2GB of RAM available, however, memory requirements may vary depending on the number and type of sites you want to proxy.
Updating Your Server
Once you have a server setup and a sudo user account, the first thing you need to do is update your system.
To check which packages are out of date on your system, you can use the following command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
You will see a list of packages that will be updated. Enter your sudo password when prompted. Leave this terminal open as we will be using it frequently during this installation.
Once the update is complete, use the following command to install the required dependencies.
You will install the following dependencies:
- software-properties-common: This will allow you to add the official Envoy repository.
- curl: curl is used to download the official Envoy Proxy.
- ca-certificates: This is needed to ensure that your system is secure during the download process.
- apt-transport-https: This allows you to download components via the HTTPS protocol, which is more secure than HTTP.
- gnupg2: gnupg2 is needed to ensure that your system can properly verify the Envoy Proxy GPG key. This provides you with a way to ensure that the key you are using is legitimate.
Run this command:
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common curl ca-certificates apt-transport-https gnupg2
When you have finished updating and installing the dependencies, reboot your server with the following command to ensure all new changes take effect.
sudo reboot
Installing Envoy Proxy
Now that your system is up to date and you have all of your dependencies installed, you can install Envoy Proxy.
Run the following command to add the GPG key to your APT keychain. This will allow you to verify the legitimacy of third-party repositories.
curl -sL 'https://deb.dl.getenvoy.io/public/gpg.8115BA8E629CC074.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/getenvoy-keyring.gpg
A GPG key is a public key that is used to verify the legitimacy of a software repository. It is important to ensure that you are using a legitimate GPG key, as illegitimate keys could potentially introduce malware into your system. The Envoy Proxy GPG key can be verified by using the following command.
echo a077cb587a1b622e03aa4bf2f3689de14658a9497a9af2c427bba5f4cc3c4723 /usr/share/keyrings/getenvoy-keyring.gpg | sha256sum --check
You will get an OK response if the GPG key is valid.
Once you have verified the key, add the repository Envoy Proxy to your system by running the following command.
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/getenvoy-keyring.gpg] https://deb.dl.getenvoy.io/public/deb/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getenvoy.list
Once you have added the GPG key and authorized the Envoy Proxy repository, run an update for your package manager by using the following command. You’ve just installed a new piece of software on your Ubuntu system, but when you try to run it, you get an error message telling you that the software is not compatible with your version of Ubuntu. The problem is that the software was designed to work with a newer version of Ubuntu than the one you are using. The solution is to update your APT package manager so that it can install software from newer versions of Ubuntu.
sudo apt update -y
Run the apt-cache policy command to list the current Apt package manager policy.
apt-cache policy
You will see the getenvoy.io list entry in the output. This indicates that Envoy Proxy is available to install.
Finally, install Envoy Proxy with the following command:
sudo apt install getenvoy-envoy -y
Once the installation has completed, run sudo reboot to ensure that the proxy server has been started and is running properly.
sudo reboot
Testing the installation
Now that you have set up your Envoy Proxy server, let’s check to see whether it is running properly.
To check the version of Envoy Proxy that you are running, run the following command.
envoy --version
Envoy should return information about the latest version of Envoy Proxy. In this demo, the latest version is 1.18.2. Your version number may differ slightly.
Run the command to see a list of the available options.
envoy --help
The Envoy proxy server has many features that you can use. You can learn more about all the Envoy proxy available options on its official page. For example:
- –enable-core-dump: This is used to enable core dumps for debugging proxy crashes
- –log-format-escaped: This is used to format the proxy logs as escaped C-style JSON.
Run the following command to download the demo configuration file.
wget https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/_downloads/92dcb9714fb6bc288d042029b34c0de4/envoy-demo.yaml
Run the envoy -c envoy-demo.yaml command to run the Envoy proxy server with the configuration file.
envoy -c envoy-demo.yaml
Envoy is now listening and proxying on http://localhost:10000/. Open another terminal window and run the curl http://localhost:10000/healthz command to see if Envoy. is up and running.
curl -v localhost:10000
You will get the default welcome page from Envoy. So the Envoy Proxy server is up and running as intended.
Conclusion
In this guide, you’ve learned how to install Envoy Proxy on your Ubuntu 20.04 server. You can now use it to proxy requests from your HTTP server.
For more information about Envoy Proxy, you can check out its official documentation.
