Understanding Kubernetes: Part 17 -Ingress

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Last updated 4 months ago

Understanding Kubernetes: Part 17 -Ingress

If you’ve been following our Kubernetes series 2025, welcome back! For new readers, check out Part 16:

What is Ingress in Kubernetes?

An Ingress in Kubernetes is an API object that manages external access to services within a cluster, typically HTTP and HTTPS traffic. Unlike a LoadBalancer service, which exposes an application using an external IP, Ingress provides routing rules to direct traffic to different services based on paths or hostnames. It acts as a Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) load balancer and can provide features such as SSL termination, name-based virtual hosting, and more.

Example Use Case:

Suppose you have multiple microservices (e.g., web, api, admin) running in your cluster, and you want to expose them under a single domain name (example.com). An Ingress can route requests like:

example.com/web → Routes to the web service
example.com/api → Routes to the api service
example.com/admin → Routes to the admin service

Capabilities:

Path-Based and Host-Based Routing:

Direct traffic to specific services based on URL paths or domain names

2. SSL/TLS Termination:

Secure your application by handling HTTPS traffic via TLS certificates.

3. Load Balancing:

Distributes incoming traffic across backend Pods efficiently.

4. Authentication and Authorization:

Supports additional security features using annotations (e.g., OAuth, JWT).

5. Rewrite and Redirect Rules:

Modify request URLs to simplify or change the routing logic.

6. Integration with Ingress Controllers:

Requires an Ingress Controller such as Nginx, Traefik, or AWS ALB Ingress.

YAML Example:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: my-ingress
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
spec:
  rules:
  - host: example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /web
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: web-service
            port:
              number: 80
      - path: /api
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: api-service
            port:
              number: 80

Explanation:

The Ingress routes traffic for example.com/web to web-service and example.com/api to api-service.
The rewrite-target annotation modifies incoming requests to remove the prefix.
Requires an Ingress Controller like Nginx to be deployed in the cluster.

In My Previous Role:

As a Senior DevOps Engineer, I effectively utilized Kubernetes Ingress to optimize application exposure in production environments. I implemented Nginx Ingress to manage HTTP and HTTPS traffic across multiple microservices, enabling:

Seamless routing and load balancing for customer-facing services.
Secure HTTPS traffic using TLS certificates managed via Let’s Encrypt.
Improved deployment flexibility by consolidating multiple services under a single domain.
Automated Ingress rule updates via CI/CD pipelines to ensure zero-downtime deployments.

This approach helped reduce operational complexity and improved application availability by providing a unified access point with enhanced security features.

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