Kubernetes Ingress and Traefik Ingress controller are considered essential components of any Kubernetes cluster for managing and routing external traffic to your Kubernetes services. In this article, we’ll explore the basics of Kubernetes Ingress, and the process of installing Traefik Ingress controller on a Kubernetes cluster, and how you can utilize it to manage traffic in a Kubernetes cluster.

A Kubernetes Ingress is a resource that defines rules for managing external traffic to Kubernetes services. This resource has rules that define how traffic is routed to different Kubernetes services based on criteria such as hostnames, paths, and protocols. An Ingress Controller is a component within Kubernetes that manages incoming traffic to Kubernetes internal services. An Ingress controller is used to manage traffic at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and also for terminating SSL/TLS and provide load balancing capabilities.

Main functions of an Ingress Controller:

  • Receive incoming external traffic and forwards it to the appropriate Kubernetes backend service.
  • Implements routing rules specified in an Ingress resource.
  • Handles SSL/TLS encryption and decryption – SSL termination.
  • Provides load balancing capabilities to distribute traffic across multiple pods and nodes in a Kubernetes cluster.

There are several Ingress Controllers available for use in Kubernetes environment, and each has its own set of features and capabilities. The one that we’ll use in this article is Traefik Ingress Controller.

Traefik Ingress Controller is a modern, cloud-native, and dynamic Ingress Controller with support for several backends and can be used to manage traffic across multiple Kubernetes clusters. Traefik provides advanced routing capabilities and load balancing features.

Step 1 – Deploy Kubernetes Cluster

A functional kubernetes cluster is required to follow our guide along. Refer to the articles available on the website on how you can deploy a kubernetes cluster;

If the setup is working and kubectl is configured, we can test it by listing available nodes in our Kubernetes cluster.

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME       STATUS   ROLES           AGE   VERSION
master01   Ready    control-plane   85d   v1.24.6
master02   Ready    control-plane   85d   v1.24.6
master03   Ready    control-plane   78d   v1.24.6
node01     Ready    <none>          85d   v1.24.6
node02     Ready    <none>          85d   v1.24.6
node03     Ready    <none>          85d   v1.24.6
node04     Ready    <none>          78d   v1.24.6
node05     Ready    <none>          78d   v1.24.6

Step 2 – Install and Configure MetalLB

MetalLB is an open-source load balancer solution for Kubernetes. It enables you to use a range of external load balancers to expose your Kubernetes services. It is an ideal solution for Kubernetes clusters running on dedicated hardware, and not in a cloud environment. MetalLB provides Layer 2 load balancing solution for any network infrastructure, and it integrates with Kubernetes to automatically assign IP addresses to services based on their requirements.

We have a guide dedicated to setting up of MetalLB on Kubernetes.

Once the Load Balancer is installed and configured, you can proceed to setup Traefik Ingress Controller on Kubernetes cluster.

Step 3 – Install Traefik Ingress Controller

In this guide, we will install the Traefik Ingress Controller using Helm. Begin by installing Helm as below

curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
sudo ./get_helm.sh

Check your version of helm to confirm it was successfully installed.

$ helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.10.2", GitCommit:"50f003e5ee8704ec937a756c646870227d7c8b58", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.18.8"}

Add the Traefik Ingress helm repository in your workstation by running the commands below.

helm repo add traefik https://helm.traefik.io/traefik

Update helm charts with the commands given below.

$ helm repo update
Hang tight while we grab the latest from your chart repositories...
...Successfully got an update from the "traefik" chart repository
...Successfully got an update from the "metrics-server" chart repository
...Successfully got an update from the "nfs-subdir-external-provisioner" chart repository
...Successfully got an update from the "kubevious" chart repository
...Successfully got an update from the "stable" chart repository
Update Complete. ⎈Happy Helming!⎈

Create a namespace called traefik

kubectl create ns traefik

Install the Traefik Ingress Controller using the helm chart on traefik namespace.

helm install traefik traefik/traefik --namespace traefik

Sample output of successful command execution:

NAME: traefik
LAST DEPLOYED: Wed Mar  8 17:33:01 2023
NAMESPACE: traefik
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
Traefik Proxy v2.9.8 has been deployed successfully
on traefik namespace !

You can customize the install with a values file. There are some EXAMPLES provided. Complete documentation on all available parameters is in the default file.

Example:

helm upgrade --install traefik \
    --namespace traefik \
    --set dashboard.enabled=true \
    --set rbac.enabled=true \
    --set nodeSelector.node-type=master \
    --set="additionalArguments={--api.dashboard=true,--log.level=INFO,--providers.kubernetesingress.ingressclass=traefik-internal,--serversTransport.insecureSkipVerify=true}" \
    traefik/traefik \
    --version