Kubernetes Gateway API implementation using Varnish.

Container Images

Pre-built images are available on GitHub Container Registry:

ghcr.io/varnish/gateway-operator
ghcr.io/varnish/gateway-chaperone

Images are public and require no authentication to pull. Currently amd64 only.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                        Kubernetes Cluster                       │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                 │
│   ┌─────────────┐         watches          ┌──────────────────┐ │
│   │  Operator   │ ◄────────────────────────│  Gateway API     │ │
│   │             │                          │  Resources       │ │
│   └──────┬──────┘                          │  - Gateway       │ │
│          │                                 │  - HTTPRoute     │ │
│          │ creates/updates                 │  - GatewayClass  │ │
│          ▼                                 └──────────────────┘ │
│   ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│   │                    Varnish Pod                          │   │
│   │  ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐  │   │
│   │  │  Varnish    │    │  Chaperone  │    │  ConfigMaps │  │   │
│   │  │  + ghost    │◄───│             │◄───│  - main.vcl │  │   │
│   │  │             │    │             │    │             │  │   │
│   │  └──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘    └─────────────┘  │   │
│   │         ▼                  │                            │   │
│   │     varnishlog-json        │ watches                    │   │
│   │                            ▼                            │   │
│   │                     EndpointSlices                      │   │
│   └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
│                                                                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Components

Operator - Cluster-wide deployment. Watches Gateway API resources and:

• Creates Varnish pods with ghost VMOD + chaperone
• Generates VCL preamble + user VCL (concatenated)
• Writes routing rules to routing.json (via ConfigMap)

Chaperone - Runs alongside each Varnish instance:

• Watches EndpointSlices, writes backend IPs to ghost.json
• Triggers ghost reload via HTTP (/.varnish-ghost/reload)
• Hot-reloads VCL via varnishadm when main.vcl changes

Ghost VMOD - Rust-based routing inside Varnish:

• Reads ghost.json at init and on reload
• Matches requests by hostname (exact + wildcard)
• Weighted backend selection
• Async HTTP client with connection pooling

Config reload

All changes in HTTPRoutes will be

Two separate reload paths:

• VCL changes (user VCL updates): varnishadm hot-reload
• Backend/routing changes: ghost HTTP reload

Real-Time Dashboard

Chaperone includes a real-time web dashboard that shows live gateway state via Server-Sent Events (SSE). It is always enabled on port 9000 inside the chaperone pod. Access it via port-forward:

kubectl port-forward -n namespace deploy/demo-gateway 9000:9000

Then open http://localhost:9000. The dashboard shows:

• Gateway status (ready/starting/draining) with a live heartbeat trace
• Virtual hosts and their routes
• Services with individual backend endpoints
• Live event stream (ghost reloads, VCL reloads, endpoint changes, TLS updates)

The dashboard updates every second and highlights changes as they happen. It is not exposed outside the cluster unless you explicitly create a Service for it.

Configuration Files

routing.json (operator → ConfigMap):

{
  "version": 2,
  "vhosts": {
    "api.example.com": {
      "routes": [
        {
          "path_match": {"type": "PathPrefix", "value": "/v2"},
          "service": "api-v2",
          "namespace": "default",
          "port": 8080,
          "weight": 100,
          "priority": 10300,
          "rule_index": 0
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

ghost.json (chaperone → ghost VMOD):

{
  "version": 2,
  "vhosts": {
    "api.example.com": {
      "routes": [
        {
          "path_match": {"type": "PathPrefix", "value": "/v2"},
          "backends": [
            {"address": "10.0.0.1", "port": 8080, "weight": 100},
            {"address": "10.0.0.2", "port": 8080, "weight": 100}
          ],
          "priority": 10300,
          "rule_index": 0
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Installation

Helm (Recommended):

helm install varnish-gateway \
  oci://ghcr.io/varnish/charts/varnish-gateway \
  --namespace varnish-gateway-system \
  --create-namespace

kubectl (Alternative):

# Install Gateway API CRDs
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/releases/download/v1.2.0/standard-install.yaml

# Deploy the operator
kubectl apply -f deploy/

See INSTALL.md for detailed installation instructions and configuration options.

Loading Custom VMODs

To load custom Varnish VMODs (or any other files) into the gateway pods, use extraVolumes, extraVolumeMounts, and extraInitContainers in GatewayClassParameters. This follows the standard Kubernetes pattern of using an init container to populate a shared volume before the main container starts.

apiVersion: gateway.varnish-software.com/v1alpha1
kind: GatewayClassParameters
metadata:
  name: varnish-params
spec:
  varnishdExtraArgs:
    - "-p"
    - "vmod_path=/usr/lib/varnish/vmods:/extra-vmods"
  extraVolumes:
    - name: extra-vmods
      emptyDir: {}
  extraVolumeMounts:
    - name: extra-vmods
      mountPath: /extra-vmods
  extraInitContainers:
    - name: install-vmods
      image: my-registry/my-vmods:latest
      command: ["cp", "/vmods/libvmod_custom.so", "/dst/"]
      volumeMounts:
        - name: extra-vmods
          mountPath: /dst

The init container copies the .so files into a shared emptyDir volume, the main container mounts that volume, and varnishdExtraArgs extends the VMOD search path so Varnish finds them. The same mechanism works for any file you need inside the pod (config files, TLS certs from external sources, etc.).

See CLAUDE.md for development setup and detailed documentation.