Kubernetes From Zero to Hero – Part 7: Ingress – Managing External Access the Smart Way

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Recap: Where We Left Off

In our previous blog, we learned:

• What Services are and how they expose Pods

• The difference between ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer

• How to connect to applications running in Kubernetes using these service types

But there’s a limitation:

What if you want to expose multiple services over the same IP and port, like:

• example.com/api → backend service

• example.com/web → frontend service

This isn’t possible with just Services.

That’s where Ingress comes in.

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What is Ingress in Kubernetes?

Ingress is an API object that:

• Manages external access to services in a cluster

• Provides HTTP/HTTPS routing to different services

• Works like a reverse proxy (like NGINX or Traefik)

It routes external traffic based on:

• Hostnames (e.g., app.example.com)

• Paths (e.g., /api, /login)

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Ingress Architecture

Ingress needs two things:

Ingress Controller listens to the API and routes traffic accordingly.

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Installing an Ingress Controller (NGINX)

For Minikube:

minikube addons enable ingress

For other clusters:

Use Helm or YAML to install:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.9.0/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

Verify:

kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx
kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx

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Sample Setup: Web and API Apps

Let’s say you have:

• A frontend app on port 80 (service: frontend-service)

• A backend API on port 5000 (service: backend-service)

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Example Ingress Resource

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: my-ingress
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
spec:
  rules:
    - host: myapp.local
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /web
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: frontend-service
                port:
                  number: 80
          - path: /api
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: backend-service
                port:
                  number: 5000

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(Optional) Enable TLS (HTTPS)

You can use cert-manager to automatically provision TLS certificates with Let’s Encrypt.

For now, here’s a sample block to add under .spec:

tls:
  - hosts:
      - myapp.local
    secretName: tls-secret

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Test Your Ingress

If using Minikube:

minikube tunnel

Then, add this to /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 myapp.local

Now access:

• http://myapp.local/web

• http://myapp.local/api

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Ingress vs LoadBalancer vs NodePort

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Real-World Use Cases

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Clean Up

kubectl delete ingress my-ingress
kubectl delete service frontend-service backend-service
kubectl delete deployment frontend backend

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Summary

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What’s Next?

In the next blog, we’ll:

• Explore ConfigMaps and Secrets

• Understand how to manage environment configs, API tokens, and sensitive values

• Use them to configure your pods without hardcoding values