Ingress Controllers

In order for the Ingress resource to work, the cluster must have an ingress controller running.

Unlike other types of controllers which run as part of the kube-controller-manager binary, Ingress controllers are not started automatically with a cluster. Use this page to choose the ingress controller implementation that best fits your cluster.

Kubernetes as a project supports and maintains AWS, GCE, and nginx ingress controllers.

Additional controllers

• AKS Application Gateway Ingress Controller is an ingress controller that configures the Azure Application Gateway.
• Alibaba Cloud MSE Ingress is an ingress controller that configures the Alibaba Cloud Native Gateway, which is also the commercial version of Higress.
• Apache APISIX ingress controller is an Apache APISIX-based ingress controller.
• Avi Kubernetes Operator provides L4-L7 load-balancing using VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer.
• BFE Ingress Controller is a BFE-based ingress controller.
• Cilium Ingress Controller is an ingress controller powered by Cilium.
• The Citrix ingress controller works with Citrix Application Delivery Controller.
• Contour is an Envoy based ingress controller.
• Emissary-Ingress API Gateway is an Envoy-based ingress controller.
• EnRoute is an Envoy based API gateway that can run as an ingress controller.
• Easegress IngressController is an Easegress based API gateway that can run as an ingress controller.
• F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services for Kubernetes lets you use an Ingress to configure F5 BIG-IP virtual servers.
• FortiADC Ingress Controller support the Kubernetes Ingress resources and allows you to manage FortiADC objects from Kubernetes
• Gloo is an open-source ingress controller based on Envoy, which offers API gateway functionality.
• HAProxy Ingress is an ingress controller for HAProxy.
• Higress is an Envoy based API gateway that can run as an ingress controller.
• The HAProxy Ingress Controller for Kubernetes is also an ingress controller for HAProxy.
• Istio Ingress is an Istio based ingress controller.
• The Kong Ingress Controller for Kubernetes is an ingress controller driving Kong Gateway.
• Kusk Gateway is an OpenAPI-driven ingress controller based on Envoy.
• The NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes works with the NGINX webserver (as a proxy).
• The ngrok Kubernetes Ingress Controller is an open source controller for adding secure public access to your K8s services using the ngrok platform.
• The OCI Native Ingress Controller is an Ingress controller for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure which allows you to manage the OCI Load Balancer.
• The Pomerium Ingress Controller is based on Pomerium, which offers context-aware access policy.
• Skipper HTTP router and reverse proxy for service composition, including use cases like Kubernetes Ingress, designed as a library to build your custom proxy.
• The Traefik Kubernetes Ingress provider is an ingress controller for the Traefik proxy.
• Tyk Operator extends Ingress with Custom Resources to bring API Management capabilities to Ingress. Tyk Operator works with the Open Source Tyk Gateway & Tyk Cloud control plane.
• Voyager is an ingress controller for HAProxy.
• Wallarm Ingress Controller is an Ingress Controller that provides WAAP (WAF) and API Security capabilities.

Using multiple Ingress controllers

You may deploy any number of ingress controllers using ingress class within a cluster. Note the .metadata.name of your ingress class resource. When you create an ingress you would need that name to specify the ingressClassName field on your Ingress object (refer to IngressSpec v1 reference). ingressClassName is a replacement of the older annotation method.

If you do not specify an IngressClass for an Ingress, and your cluster has exactly one IngressClass marked as default, then Kubernetes applies the cluster's default IngressClass to the Ingress. You mark an IngressClass as default by setting the ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class annotation on that IngressClass, with the string value "true".

Ideally, all ingress controllers should fulfill this specification, but the various ingress controllers operate slightly differently.

What's next

• Learn more about Ingress.
• Set up Ingress on Minikube with the NGINX Controller.