What does Ingress do in Kubernetes?

Ingress in Kubernetes is an object that manages external access to services within a cluster, usually via HTTP/HTTPS.

Ingress allows:

• Defining routing rules for requests based on URL or host to different services.
• Configuring SSL termination (TLS).
• Providing load balancing.

To operate Ingress, an Ingress Controller is required — a component that implements these rules and handles incoming traffic.

Example of a simple Ingress:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: example-ingress
spec:
  rules:
  - host: example.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /app1
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: app1-service
            port:
              number: 80
      - path: /app2
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: app2-service
            port:
              number: 80

Thus, Ingress simplifies access management and routing in Kubernetes.