Kubernetes Ingress: External Access to Your Services

Ingress provides HTTP/HTTPS routing to services based on hostname or path. It’s more powerful than NodePort or LoadBalancer for web applications.

Ingress vs Service Types

Prerequisites

You need an Ingress Controller (e.g., NGINX, Traefik):

# Install NGINX Ingress Controller
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/main/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

Basic Ingress

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: my-ingress
spec:
  rules:
  - host: myapp.example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: my-service
            port:
              number: 80

Path-Based Routing

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: path-ingress
spec:
  rules:
  - host: api.example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /users
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: users-service
            port:
              number: 8080
      - path: /products
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: products-service
            port:
              number: 8080

Host-Based Routing

spec:
  rules:
  - host: app1.example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: app1
            port:
              number: 80
  - host: app2.example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: app2
            port:
              number: 80

TLS Configuration

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: tls-ingress
spec:
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - secure.example.com
    secretName: tls-secret
  rules:
  - host: secure.example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: secure-app
            port:
              number: 443

Create TLS Secret

kubectl create secret tls tls-secret --cert=tls.crt --key=tls.key

Debugging Ingress

kubectl get ingress
kubectl describe ingress my-ingress
kubectl logs -n ingress-nginx deployment/ingress-nginx-controller

Practice Ingress

Ingress configuration appears in CKA and CKAD exams. Practice at Sailor.sh.

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