How to enable SSL passthrough on the nginx-ingress controller in RKE and RKE2 clusters

• A standalone or Rancher-provisioned RKE or RKE2 cluster, deployed within the bundled ingress-nginx controller

This article details how to enable SSL passthrough on the bundled nginx-ingress controller in an RKE or RKE2 cluster

Standalone RKE clusters:

1. Edit the cluster configuration YAML file to include the enable-ssl-passthrough: true option for the ingress, as follows:

   ingress:
     provider: nginx
     extra_args:
       enable-ssl-passthrough: true

2. Apply the changes to the cluster, by invoking rke up:

   rke up --config <cluster configuration yaml file>

Standalone RKE2 clusters:

1. Create the file /var/lib/rancher/rke2/server/manifest/rke2-ingress-nginx-config.yaml with the desired HelmChartConfig on server nodes within the cluster:

   apiVersion: helm.cattle.io/v1
   kind: HelmChartConfig
   metadata:
     name: rke2-ingress-nginx
     namespace: kube-system
   spec: 
     valuesContent:  |-
       controller:
         extraArgs:
           enable-ssl-passthrough: true

2. Restart the rke2-server process to trigger a helm installation Job for the rke2-ingress-nginx chart, applying the new configuration:

   systemctl restart rke2-server

Rancher-provisioned RKE clusters:

1. Navigate to Cluster Management in the Rancher UI
2. Click Edit Config for the relevant RKE cluster
3. Click Edit as YAML
4. Include the enable-ssl-passthrough: true option for the ingress, as follows:

   ingress:
     provider: nginx
     extra_args:
       enable-ssl-passthrough: true

5. Click Save

Rancher-provisioned RKE2 clusters:

1. Navigate to Cluster Management in the Rancher UI
2. Click Edit Config for the relevant RKE cluster
3. Click Additional Manifests and add the desired HemChartConfig manifest:
   

   apiVersion: helm.cattle.io/v1
   kind: HelmChartConfig
   metadata:
     name: rke2-ingress-nginx
     namespace: kube-system
   spec:
     valuesContent: |-
        extraArgs:
          enable-ssl-passthrough: true

4. Click Save