Announcing Application Load Balancing for Kubernetes
With more application workloads moving to containers, Kubernetes is becoming de-facto standard. According to SDxCentral,, Kubernetes adoption has seen a sharp increase – 10x increase on Azure and 9x increase on Google Cloud.
Kubernetes does not provide application load balancing. It is your responsibility to build this service. In theory open source application load balancers and traditional application delivery controllers (ADC) will work in Kubernetes. Unfortunately, in practice they fail to handle the dynamic environment of containers.
Requirements for Load Balancing on Kubernetes
Organizations considering applications in Kubernetes with continuous availability need to consider the following:
- Scalable application load balancer that is built for containers and stateless with SSL termination
- Centralized management for application load balancer
- Application security
- Application traffic visibility and analytics
- Automation for monitoring container lifecycle events and keeping the application load balancer configuration in synchronization with the environment
Ingress Controller for Load Balancing In Kubernetes
Lightning ADC from A10 Networks offers enterprise-grade application load balancing for Kubernetes containers. Lightning ADC provides advance load balancing and content-based switching as well as Web Application Firewall and application layer DDoS protection. Configuration of Lightning ADC is managed by the Harmony Controller. It also collects analytics from Lightning ADC providing visibility into application traffic and actionable insights.
A10 has released our Ingress Controller for application load balancing in Kubernetes. An Ingress Controller provides your containers automation for application delivery. Now your IT staff can focus on the application’s business value rather than being occupied with operations of application delivery.
Dynamics of a Kubernetes Cluster
Lightning ADC can be deployed as a Kubernetes DaemonSet. This enables the ADC to scale with the Kubernetes cluster. Adding a node to a Cluster will automatically add an instance of Lightning ADC. The newly added Lightning ADC is pre-configured to connect to Harmony Controller and get the relevant application delivery configuration. Then it is ready for managing the application load. Shutting down Lightning ADC signals the Harmony Controller to not forward traffic to this ADC.
Dynamics of Application Services
A10 Ingress Controller continuously monitors the lifecycle of containers of application services. In the event of a change to the container, the Ingress Controller informs the Harmony Controller which in turn configures the Lightning ADC. This keeps Lightning ADC configuration in sync with the application environment.
Demo of the A10 Ingress Controller
Read More about the A10 Ingress Controller
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