Controlling Ingress with Contour
Contour is an open source Kubernetes ingress controller that furnishes the control plane for the Envoy edge and service proxy. Contour supports dynamic configuration updates and multi-team ingress delegation while maintaining a lightweight profile.
Contour is built for Kubernetes to empower you to quickly deploy cloud native applications by using the flexible and innovative IngressRoute API. Contour works by deploying the Envoy proxy as a reverse proxy and load balancer.
OK, That Sounds Cool. But What's Ingress?
In the Kubernetes vernacular, Ingress is a set of configurations that define how external traffic can be routed to an application inside a Kubernetes cluster. A controller, such as Contour, watches for changes to objects in the cluster and then wires together the configurations to create a data path for the request to be resolved. An ingress controller processes the requests for resources, provides TLS termination, and performs other functions.
Ingress is an important component of a cloud native system because cleanly separates an application from how the application is accessed. A cluster administrator can handle providing access to the controller, and the application developer can focus on deploying the application. Ingress is the glue that ties the two together.
What Is Envoy?
Envoy is a Layer 7 bus for proxy and communication in modern service-oriented architectures, such as those of Kubernetes clusters. Envoy strives to make the network transparent to applications while easing troubleshooting.
What Problems Does Contour Solve?
One of the most critical needs in running workloads at scale with Kubernetes is efficient and smooth traffic ingress management at the Layer 7 level. Getting an application up and running is not always the entire story; the app might still need a way for users to access it. Filling that operational gap is what Contour was designed to do by providing a way to allow users to access applications in a Kubernetes cluster.
Find out more about how Contour provides ingress in this video:
Contour also helps you set up a blue-green deployment to solve a common application deployment problem. Find out more in the following video:
Benefits of Using Contour
Here are some of the benefits of using Contour:
Quickly deploy and integrate Envoy with a simple installation mechanism
Safely support ingress in multi-team Kubernetes clusters
Cleanly integrate with the Kubernetes object model
Dynamically update the ingress configuration without dropped connections
Find Out More About Contour
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