A peek into Kubernetes Ingress

If you are a beginner and looking to set your foundation right concerning Kubernetes Ingress, then here's all that you need to know to hold on firm conceptual base.
Most of us might know what Kubernetes is but quite sure of what Kubernetes Ingress is and its use. So let's get an introductory handshake with the topic.

Introducing Kubernetes Ingress

In simple words, we can imagine Ingress to be an obedient access object that checks Kubernetes services from outside the Kubernetes Cluster. The set of rules determines a regulated flow of inbound connections leading to services.

We can consolidate Kubernetes to do a few frequent activities like Directing traffic, virtual hosting based on the name, lets you use reachable URLs, applies the brake on SSL and TLS.

Load balancers offer a helping hand to ingress in handling the inbound traffic and keep the firewall policy alive throughout the operation. Edge router can serve as a good alternative too. The service on the node are secured enough and does not expose the services.

Why K8s Ingress?

The environment requires the help of Ingress to configure and manage the needs of content-based routing, authentication and support inside the K8s cluster.

Ingress Controller

The Ingress Controller in the Kubernetes Ingress API is the load balancer for the external traffic, dealing with L4-L7 Network Services. It reads the resources information of Ingress and processes the data as required besides configuring the HTTP/HTTPS load balancer minding the ingress resources.

Spotting the differences

• NodePort

If you want the exposure of a service on a static port number in a non-productive environment, then NodePort will be a good option. It appears as a configuration setting during the declaration of the YAML service.

• Load Balancer

An external load balancer takes precedence and brings out services to the internet. Since the Ingress controller, by itself has load balancing application policies the latter is preferred over the Load balancer.

• ClusterIP

The most preferred option for internal service access - ClusterIP. As the functionality goes, it uses an internal IP address for the service access. ClusterIP can usually be used as debugging during development, testing, internal traffic, etc.

For the implementation of Ingress, all you need to do is, configure your Ingress Controller with your cluster. This configuration takes care of resource information processing and regulating the traffic based on the protocols. Choose the right configuration to expose your application on the internet, then you are all set!