3 Types of Kubernetes Ingress — NodePorts, Load Balancers, and Ingress Controllers

Learn the three types of Kubernetes ingress and understand the difference between ingress resources and ingress controllers

In today’s Getting Edgy video we will dive deeper into the topic of Kubernetes ingress.

What is Ingress?

Ingress traffic is network traffic that originates from outside of the network’s routers and proceeds toward a destination inside of the network.

Kubernetes ingress is a collection of routing rules that govern how external users access services running in a Kubernetes cluster.

3 Types of Kubernetes Ingress

• NodePort opens a port on host machines. Clients can access applications via {{Node_IP}}:{{NodePort}}.
• With a Load Balancer, a cloud provider creates a load balancer in front of the nodes. Clients can access applications via the IP of the load balancer.
• An Ingress Controller is a proxy running in the cluster that is exposed via a NodePort or Loadbalancer. The ingress controller provides a single, easily configurable entrypoint for all services in the cluster.

Ingress Controller vs. Ingress Resource

An ingress controller is a configurable proxy running in the cluster that is typically composed of a control plane and a data plane. Configuration objects will vary depending on the ingress controller you are using.

An ingress resource is a standard configuration object for an ingress controller.

Learn More

• Kubernetes Ingress 101: NodePort, Load Balancers, and Ingress Controller
• Kubernetes Ingress Controllers

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