Dual ingress architecture design pattern for Kubernetes applications

Abstract

Purpose: The article focuses on the analysis of the mechanism for exposing Services running on a Kubernetes cluster using an Ingress type definition. It discusses the basics of this mechanism, pointing out its fundamental limitation of being able to use only single technology simultaneously in handling traffic to a web application. The paper presents an architectural pattern that enables the simultaneous integration of two Ingress definitions, combining the advantages of both systems used. Design/methodology/approach: Available solutions for exposing applications served in the Kubernetes cluster were analyzed. As a result of the research, an enhancement was proposed to allow the use of two services simultaneously, providing broader system functionality. Findings: An approach was proposed to use two Ingress controllers simultaneously in the form of an external cloud service and an internal Nginx service running on a Kubernetes cluster. Originality/value: A design pattern is presented along with an example implementation of dual Ingress on an AKS cluster in Azure. Keywords: Kubernetes, Ingress, architectural pattern, limitations, Azure, Application Gateway, Nginx. Category of the paper: Research paper, Technical paper.