new article that demonstrates deploying gRPC applications on ROSA

[kmcolli]

Adds comprehensive guide for deploying gRPC applications on ROSA with AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection using Red Hat
OpenShift Service Mesh.

What's New

• New Guide: /content/rosa/alb-sm/index.md
• Topic: Deploy gRPC Applications with AWS ALB and WAF on ROSA using Service Mesh
• Authors: Kevin Collins, Diana Sari
• Tags: ROSA, ROSA HCP, GovCloud
• Validated Version: 4.21

Why This Matters

Organizations deploying gRPC applications on ROSA often face a critical challenge: they need AWS WAF protection (which requires ALB), but configuring ALB to properly
support gRPC has been unclear. This guide solves that problem by documenting the proven architecture that enables:

• Native gRPC protocol support through ALB
• AWS WAF integration for Layer 7 security
• Healthy target status (no workarounds with unhealthy targets)
• Full compatibility with both AWS GovCloud and Commercial Cloud regions

Key Technical Insights

The guide reveals that AWS ALB's native gRPC support (available since 2020) requires:

1. IP-based target groups (not NLB-to-NLB architecture) with ProtocolVersion: GRPC
2. Istio Service Mesh Envoy ingress for proper HTTP/2 and gRPC handling (HAProxy edge-termination routes don't work)

What's Covered

• Complete Service Mesh installation for ROSA HCP and Classic
• Sample gRPC application deployment
• Istio Gateway and VirtualService configuration
• AWS ALB and target group setup with correct gRPC protocol configuration
• DNS configuration
• WAF integration (optional)
• Comprehensive troubleshooting guide
• Full cleanup instructions

Validation

• Tested on ROSA HCP cluster (4.21)
• Verified gRPC health checks return healthy targets
• Confirmed end-to-end gRPC communication through ALB
• Validated architecture in AWS Commercial Cloud (us-east-1)
• Documentation includes GovCloud-specific notes

Target Audience

• ROSA customers requiring WAF protection for gRPC applications
• Organizations operating in AWS GovCloud regions
• Teams deploying microservices with gRPC on managed OpenShift

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