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Ingress
Kubernetes v1.19 [stable]
An API object that manages external access to the services in a cluster, typically HTTP.
Ingress may provide load balancing, SSL termination and name-based virtual hosting.
Terminology
For clarity, this guide defines the following terms:
- Node: A worker machine in Kubernetes, part of a cluster.
- Cluster: A set of Nodes that run containerized applications managed by Kubernetes. For this example, and in most common Kubernetes deployments, nodes in the cluster are not part of the public internet.
- Edge router: A router that enforces the firewall policy for your cluster. This could be a gateway managed by a cloud provider or a physical piece of hardware.
- Cluster network: A set of links, logical or physical, that facilitate communication within a cluster according to the Kubernetes networking model.
- Service: A Kubernetes Service that identifies a set of Pods using label selectors. Unless mentioned otherwise, Services are assumed to have virtual IPs only routable within the cluster network.
What is Ingress?
Ingress exposes HTTP and HTTPS routes from outside the cluster to services within the cluster. Traffic routing is controlled by rules defined on the Ingress resource.
Here is a simple example where an Ingress sends all its traffic to one Service:
An Ingress may be configured to give Services externally-reachable URLs, load balance traffic, terminate SSL / TLS, and offer name-based virtual hosting. An Ingress controller is responsible for fulfilling the Ingress, usually with a load balancer, though it may also configure your edge router or additional frontends to help handle the traffic.
An Ingress does not expose arbitrary ports or protocols. Exposing services other than HTTP and HTTPS to the internet typically uses a service of type Service.Type=NodePort or Service.Type=LoadBalancer.
Prerequisites
You must have an Ingress controller to satisfy an Ingress. Only creating an Ingress resource has no effect.
You may need to deploy an Ingress controller such as ingress-nginx. You can choose from a number of Ingress controllers.
Ideally, all Ingress controllers should fit the reference specification. In reality, the various Ingress controllers operate slightly differently.
The Ingress resource
A minimal Ingress resource example:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: minimal-ingress
annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
spec:
ingressClassName: nginx-example
rules:
- http:
paths:
- path: /testpath
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: test
port:
number: 80
An Ingress needs apiVersion
, kind
, metadata
and spec
fields.
The name of an Ingress object must be a valid
DNS subdomain name.
For general information about working with config files, see deploying applications, configuring containers, managing resources.
Ingress frequently uses annotations to configure some options depending on the Ingress controller, an example of which
is the rewrite-target annotation.
Different Ingress controllers support different annotations. Review the documentation for
your choice of Ingress controller to learn which annotations are supported.
The Ingress spec has all the information needed to configure a load balancer or proxy server. Most importantly, it contains a list of rules matched against all incoming requests. Ingress resource only supports rules for directing HTTP(S) traffic.
If the ingressClassName
is omitted, a default Ingress class
should be defined.
There are some ingress controllers, that work without the definition of a
default IngressClass
. For example, the Ingress-NGINX controller can be
configured with a flag
--watch-ingress-without-class
. It is recommended though, to specify the
default IngressClass
as shown below.
Ingress rules
Each HTTP rule contains the following information:
- An optional host. In this example, no host is specified, so the rule applies to all inbound HTTP traffic through the IP address specified. If a host is provided (for example, foo.bar.com), the rules apply to that host.
- A list of paths (for example,
/testpath
), each of which has an associated backend defined with aservice.name
and aservice.port.name
orservice.port.number
. Both the host and path must match the content of an incoming request before the load balancer directs traffic to the referenced Service. - A backend is a combination of Service and port names as described in the Service doc or a custom resource backend by way of a CRD. HTTP (and HTTPS) requests to the Ingress that match the host and path of the rule are sent to the listed backend.
A defaultBackend
is often configured in an Ingress controller to service any requests that do not
match a path in the spec.
DefaultBackend
An Ingress with no rules sends all traffic to a single default backend and .spec.defaultBackend
is the backend that should handle requests in that case.
The defaultBackend
is conventionally a configuration option of the
Ingress controller and
is not specified in your Ingress resources.
If no .spec.rules
are specified, .spec.defaultBackend
must be specified.
If defaultBackend
is not set, the handling of requests that do not match any of the rules will be up to the
ingress controller (consult the documentation for your ingress controller to find out how it handles this case).
If none of the hosts or paths match the HTTP request in the Ingress objects, the traffic is routed to your default backend.
Resource backends
A Resource
backend is an ObjectRef to another Kubernetes resource within the
same namespace as the Ingress object. A Resource
is a mutually exclusive
setting with Service, and will fail validation if both are specified. A common
usage for a Resource
backend is to ingress data to an object storage backend
with static assets.
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: ingress-resource-backend
spec:
defaultBackend:
resource:
apiGroup: k8s.example.com
kind: StorageBucket
name: static-assets
rules:
- http:
paths:
- path: /icons
pathType: ImplementationSpecific
backend:
resource:
apiGroup: k8s.example.com
kind: StorageBucket
name: icon-assets
After creating the Ingress above, you can view it with the following command:
kubectl describe ingress ingress-resource-backend
Name: ingress-resource-backend
Namespace: default
Address:
Default backend: APIGroup: k8s.example.com, Kind: StorageBucket, Name: static-assets
Rules:
Host Path Backends
---- ---- --------
*
/icons APIGroup: k8s.example.com, Kind: StorageBucket, Name: icon-assets
Annotations: <none>
Events: <none>
Path types
Each path in an Ingress is required to have a corresponding path type. Paths
that do not include an explicit pathType
will fail validation. There are three
supported path types:
ImplementationSpecific
: With this path type, matching is up to the IngressClass. Implementations can treat this as a separatepathType
or treat it identically toPrefix
orExact
path types.Exact
: Matches the URL path exactly and with case sensitivity.Prefix
: Matches based on a URL path prefix split by/
. Matching is case sensitive and done on a path element by element basis. A path element refers to the list of labels in the path split by the/
separator. A request is a match for path p if every p is an element-wise prefix of p of the request path.Note: If the last element of the path is a substring of the last element in request path, it is not a match (for example:/foo/bar
matches/foo/bar/baz
, but does not match/foo/barbaz
).
Examples
Kind | Path(s) | Request path(s) | Matches? |
---|---|---|---|
Prefix | / | (all paths) | Yes |
Exact | /foo | /foo | Yes |
Exact | /foo | /bar | No |
Exact | /foo | /foo/ | No |
Exact | /foo/ | /foo | No |
Prefix | /foo | /foo , /foo/ | Yes |
Prefix | /foo/ | /foo , /foo/ | Yes |
Prefix | /aaa/bb | /aaa/bbb | No |
Prefix | /aaa/bbb | /aaa/bbb | Yes |
Prefix | /aaa/bbb/ | /aaa/bbb | Yes, ignores trailing slash |
Prefix | /aaa/bbb | /aaa/bbb/ | Yes, matches trailing slash |
Prefix | /aaa/bbb | /aaa/bbb/ccc | Yes, matches subpath |
Prefix | /aaa/bbb | /aaa/bbbxyz | No, does not match string prefix |
Prefix | / , /aaa | /aaa/ccc | Yes, matches /aaa prefix |
Prefix | / , /aaa , /aaa/bbb | /aaa/bbb | Yes, matches /aaa/bbb prefix |
Prefix | / , /aaa , /aaa/bbb | /ccc | Yes, matches / prefix |
Prefix | /aaa | /ccc | No, uses default backend |
Mixed | /foo (Prefix), /foo (Exact) | /foo | Yes, prefers Exact |
Multiple matches
In some cases, multiple paths within an Ingress will match a request. In those cases precedence will be given first to the longest matching path. If two paths are still equally matched, precedence will be given to paths with an exact path type over prefix path type.
Hostname wildcards
Hosts can be precise matches (for example “foo.bar.com
”) or a wildcard (for
example “*.foo.com
”). Precise matches require that the HTTP host
header
matches the host
field. Wildcard matches require the HTTP host
header is
equal to the suffix of the wildcard rule.
Host | Host header | Match? |
---|---|---|
*.foo.com | bar.foo.com | Matches based on shared suffix |
*.foo.com | baz.bar.foo.com | No match, wildcard only covers a single DNS label |
*.foo.com | foo.com | No match, wildcard only covers a single DNS label |
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: ingress-wildcard-host
spec:
rules:
- host: "foo.bar.com"
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/bar"
backend:
service:
name: service1
port:
number: 80
- host: "*.foo.com"
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/foo"
backend:
service:
name: service2
port:
number: 80
Ingress class
Ingresses can be implemented by different controllers, often with different configuration. Each Ingress should specify a class, a reference to an IngressClass resource that contains additional configuration including the name of the controller that should implement the class.
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: IngressClass
metadata:
name: external-lb
spec:
controller: example.com/ingress-controller
parameters:
apiGroup: k8s.example.com
kind: IngressParameters
name: external-lb
The .spec.parameters
field of an IngressClass lets you reference another
resource that provides configuration related to that IngressClass.
The specific type of parameters to use depends on the ingress controller
that you specify in the .spec.controller
field of the IngressClass.
IngressClass scope
Depending on your ingress controller, you may be able to use parameters that you set cluster-wide, or just for one namespace.
The default scope for IngressClass parameters is cluster-wide.
If you set the .spec.parameters
field and don't set
.spec.parameters.scope
, or if you set .spec.parameters.scope
to
Cluster
, then the IngressClass refers to a cluster-scoped resource.
The kind
(in combination the apiGroup
) of the parameters
refers to a cluster-scoped API (possibly a custom resource), and
the name
of the parameters identifies a specific cluster scoped
resource for that API.
For example:
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: IngressClass
metadata:
name: external-lb-1
spec:
controller: example.com/ingress-controller
parameters:
# The parameters for this IngressClass are specified in a
# ClusterIngressParameter (API group k8s.example.net) named
# "external-config-1". This definition tells Kubernetes to
# look for a cluster-scoped parameter resource.
scope: Cluster
apiGroup: k8s.example.net
kind: ClusterIngressParameter
name: external-config-1
Kubernetes v1.23 [stable]
If you set the .spec.parameters
field and set
.spec.parameters.scope
to Namespace
, then the IngressClass refers
to a namespaced-scoped resource. You must also set the namespace
field within .spec.parameters
to the namespace that contains
the parameters you want to use.
The kind
(in combination the apiGroup
) of the parameters
refers to a namespaced API (for example: ConfigMap), and
the name
of the parameters identifies a specific resource
in the namespace you specified in namespace
.
Namespace-scoped parameters help the cluster operator delegate control over the configuration (for example: load balancer settings, API gateway definition) that is used for a workload. If you used a cluster-scoped parameter then either:
- the cluster operator team needs to approve a different team's changes every time there's a new configuration change being applied.
- the cluster operator must define specific access controls, such as RBAC roles and bindings, that let the application team make changes to the cluster-scoped parameters resource.
The IngressClass API itself is always cluster-scoped.
Here is an example of an IngressClass that refers to parameters that are namespaced:
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: IngressClass
metadata:
name: external-lb-2
spec:
controller: example.com/ingress-controller
parameters:
# The parameters for this IngressClass are specified in an
# IngressParameter (API group k8s.example.com) named "external-config",
# that's in the "external-configuration" namespace.
scope: Namespace
apiGroup: k8s.example.com
kind: IngressParameter
namespace: external-configuration
name: external-config
Deprecated annotation
Before the IngressClass resource and ingressClassName
field were added in
Kubernetes 1.18, Ingress classes were specified with a
kubernetes.io/ingress.class
annotation on the Ingress. This annotation was
never formally defined, but was widely supported by Ingress controllers.
The newer ingressClassName
field on Ingresses is a replacement for that
annotation, but is not a direct equivalent. While the annotation was generally
used to reference the name of the Ingress controller that should implement the
Ingress, the field is a reference to an IngressClass resource that contains
additional Ingress configuration, including the name of the Ingress controller.
Default IngressClass
You can mark a particular IngressClass as default for your cluster. Setting the
ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class
annotation to true
on an
IngressClass resource will ensure that new Ingresses without an
ingressClassName
field specified will be assigned this default IngressClass.
ingressClassName
specified. You can resolve this by ensuring that at most 1
IngressClass is marked as default in your cluster.There are some ingress controllers, that work without the definition of a
default IngressClass
. For example, the Ingress-NGINX controller can be
configured with a flag
--watch-ingress-without-class
. It is recommended though, to specify the
default IngressClass
:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: IngressClass
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/component: controller
name: nginx-example
annotations:
ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class: "true"
spec:
controller: k8s.io/ingress-nginx
Types of Ingress
Ingress backed by a single Service
There are existing Kubernetes concepts that allow you to expose a single Service (see alternatives). You can also do this with an Ingress by specifying a default backend with no rules.
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: test-ingress
spec:
defaultBackend:
service:
name: test
port:
number: 80
If you create it using kubectl apply -f
you should be able to view the state
of the Ingress you added:
kubectl get ingress test-ingress
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
test-ingress external-lb * 203.0.113.123 80 59s
Where 203.0.113.123
is the IP allocated by the Ingress controller to satisfy
this Ingress.
<pending>
.Simple fanout
A fanout configuration routes traffic from a single IP address to more than one Service, based on the HTTP URI being requested. An Ingress allows you to keep the number of load balancers down to a minimum. For example, a setup like:
would require an Ingress such as:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: simple-fanout-example
spec:
rules:
- host: foo.bar.com
http:
paths:
- path: /foo
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: service1
port:
number: 4200
- path: /bar
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: service2
port:
number: 8080
When you create the Ingress with kubectl apply -f
:
kubectl describe ingress simple-fanout-example
Name: simple-fanout-example
Namespace: default
Address: 178.91.123.132
Default backend: default-http-backend:80 (10.8.2.3:8080)
Rules:
Host Path Backends
---- ---- --------
foo.bar.com
/foo service1:4200 (10.8.0.90:4200)
/bar service2:8080 (10.8.0.91:8080)
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal ADD 22s loadbalancer-controller default/test
The Ingress controller provisions an implementation-specific load balancer
that satisfies the Ingress, as long as the Services (service1
, service2
) exist.
When it has done so, you can see the address of the load balancer at the
Address field.
Name based virtual hosting
Name-based virtual hosts support routing HTTP traffic to multiple host names at the same IP address.
The following Ingress tells the backing load balancer to route requests based on the Host header.
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: name-virtual-host-ingress
spec:
rules:
- host: foo.bar.com
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/"
backend:
service:
name: service1
port:
number: 80
- host: bar.foo.com
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/"
backend:
service:
name: service2
port:
number: 80
If you create an Ingress resource without any hosts defined in the rules, then any web traffic to the IP address of your Ingress controller can be matched without a name based virtual host being required.
For example, the following Ingress routes traffic
requested for first.bar.com
to service1
, second.bar.com
to service2
, and any traffic whose request host header doesn't match first.bar.com
and second.bar.com
to service3
.
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: name-virtual-host-ingress-no-third-host
spec:
rules:
- host: first.bar.com
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/"
backend:
service:
name: service1
port:
number: 80
- host: second.bar.com
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/"
backend:
service:
name: service2
port:
number: 80
- http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/"
backend:
service:
name: service3
port:
number: 80
TLS
You can secure an Ingress by specifying a Secret
that contains a TLS private key and certificate. The Ingress resource only
supports a single TLS port, 443, and assumes TLS termination at the ingress point
(traffic to the Service and its Pods is in plaintext).
If the TLS configuration section in an Ingress specifies different hosts, they are
multiplexed on the same port according to the hostname specified through the
SNI TLS extension (provided the Ingress controller supports SNI). The TLS secret
must contain keys named tls.crt
and tls.key
that contain the certificate
and private key to use for TLS. For example:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: testsecret-tls
namespace: default
data:
tls.crt: base64 encoded cert
tls.key: base64 encoded key
type: kubernetes.io/tls
Referencing this secret in an Ingress tells the Ingress controller to
secure the channel from the client to the load balancer using TLS. You need to make
sure the TLS secret you created came from a certificate that contains a Common
Name (CN), also known as a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for https-example.foo.com
.
hosts
in the tls
section need to explicitly match the host
in the rules
section.apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: tls-example-ingress
spec:
tls:
- hosts:
- https-example.foo.com
secretName: testsecret-tls
rules:
- host: https-example.foo.com
http:
paths:
- path: /
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: service1
port:
number: 80
Load balancing
An Ingress controller is bootstrapped with some load balancing policy settings that it applies to all Ingress, such as the load balancing algorithm, backend weight scheme, and others. More advanced load balancing concepts (e.g. persistent sessions, dynamic weights) are not yet exposed through the Ingress. You can instead get these features through the load balancer used for a Service.
It's also worth noting that even though health checks are not exposed directly through the Ingress, there exist parallel concepts in Kubernetes such as readiness probes that allow you to achieve the same end result. Please review the controller specific documentation to see how they handle health checks (for example: nginx, or GCE).
Updating an Ingress
To update an existing Ingress to add a new Host, you can update it by editing the resource:
kubectl describe ingress test
Name: test
Namespace: default
Address: 178.91.123.132
Default backend: default-http-backend:80 (10.8.2.3:8080)
Rules:
Host Path Backends
---- ---- --------
foo.bar.com
/foo service1:80 (10.8.0.90:80)
Annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal ADD 35s loadbalancer-controller default/test
kubectl edit ingress test
This pops up an editor with the existing configuration in YAML format. Modify it to include the new Host:
spec:
rules:
- host: foo.bar.com
http:
paths:
- backend:
service:
name: service1
port:
number: 80
path: /foo
pathType: Prefix
- host: bar.baz.com
http:
paths:
- backend:
service:
name: service2
port:
number: 80
path: /foo
pathType: Prefix
..
After you save your changes, kubectl updates the resource in the API server, which tells the Ingress controller to reconfigure the load balancer.
Verify this:
kubectl describe ingress test
Name: test
Namespace: default
Address: 178.91.123.132
Default backend: default-http-backend:80 (10.8.2.3:8080)
Rules:
Host Path Backends
---- ---- --------
foo.bar.com
/foo service1:80 (10.8.0.90:80)
bar.baz.com
/foo service2:80 (10.8.0.91:80)
Annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal ADD 45s loadbalancer-controller default/test
You can achieve the same outcome by invoking kubectl replace -f
on a modified Ingress YAML file.
Failing across availability zones
Techniques for spreading traffic across failure domains differ between cloud providers. Please check the documentation of the relevant Ingress controller for details.
Alternatives
You can expose a Service in multiple ways that don't directly involve the Ingress resource:
What's next
- Learn about the Ingress API
- Learn about Ingress controllers
- Set up Ingress on Minikube with the NGINX Controller