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So I admittedly don't know much about this stuff, but what would be the difference between using Kong and the Nginx ingress controller? What advantages/improvem

So I admittedly don't know much about this stuff, but what would be the difference between using Kong and the Nginx ingress controller? What advantages/improvements would I see/be able to use?

mikejulietbravo 8y ago
Kong's K8s Ingress Controller lets you configure and run plugins (custom code) on your proxy traffic. This gives you a lot of power on how you’d like to route, authenticate, shape your traffic. Nginx gives you the ability to tweak functionality, but it's not as dynamic or as easy out of the box.
- merlincorey 8y ago
  > Nginx gives you the ability to tweak functionality, but it's not as dynamic or as easy out of the box. NginX supports Lua and Javascript embedded and out of the box on many distributions.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    That is through a set of additional plugins. Kong uses that base and ships with mature implementing plugins including a robust RESTful API for managing config.
    - merlincorey 8y ago
      > That is through a set of additional plugins. Which are compiled and enabled in several distribution packages.
kureikain 8y ago
Kong is different from Nginx ingress controller. Without a controller, you have to manually register the endpoint/service. You would want to by pass k8s service and use pod ip directly. That's why they do the kong ingress controller. The main difference is in plugin API. It's very easy to write plugin for Kong. The second is where data is persisted. Kong stores data in db. Therefore they can do something with it. Ingress controller in 0.21 has dynamic backend, they basically hold an in memory objects for api routing rule. Kong shines when you have complex logic routing, want to leverage their API keys authentication. Such as you can easily expose a service, with API key store in db. Where as you have to write a logs of `auth access` rule and store key in configmap/env in Nginx ingress. Nginx ingress config is all about watching configmap/annotations and re-generate config. Such as when new service are added, the config is generated(When new pods are added/remove they use Lua to routing so no more reload in there). In Kong, these are seamless, no reload. All data are stored in either Postgres/Cassandra. That's said, Kong is very nice but it adds more overhead than a simple Nginx ingress.

So I admittedly don't know much about this stuff, but what would be the difference between using Kong and the Nginx ingress controller? What advantages/improvements would I see/be able to use?

mikejulietbravo 8y ago

Kong's K8s Ingress Controller lets you configure and run plugins (custom code) on your proxy traffic. This gives you a lot of power on how you’d like to route, authenticate, shape your traffic. Nginx gives you the ability to tweak functionality, but it's not as dynamic or as easy out of the box.

merlincorey 8y ago
> Nginx gives you the ability to tweak functionality, but it's not as dynamic or as easy out of the box. NginX supports Lua and Javascript embedded and out of the box on many distributions.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  That is through a set of additional plugins. Kong uses that base and ships with mature implementing plugins including a robust RESTful API for managing config.
  - merlincorey 8y ago
    > That is through a set of additional plugins. Which are compiled and enabled in several distribution packages.

kureikain 8y ago

Kong is different from Nginx ingress controller. Without a controller, you have to manually register the endpoint/service. You would want to by pass k8s service and use pod ip directly. That's why they do the kong ingress controller. The main difference is in plugin API. It's very easy to write plugin for Kong. The second is where data is persisted. Kong stores data in db. Therefore they can do something with it. Ingress controller in 0.21 has dynamic backend, they basically hold an in memory objects for api routing rule. Kong shines when you have complex logic routing, want to leverage their API keys authentication. Such as you can easily expose a service, with API key store in db. Where as you have to write a logs of `auth access` rule and store key in configmap/env in Nginx ingress. Nginx ingress config is all about watching configmap/annotations and re-generate config. Such as when new service are added, the config is generated(When new pods are added/remove they use Lua to routing so no more reload in there). In Kong, these are seamless, no reload. All data are stored in either Postgres/Cassandra. That's said, Kong is very nice but it adds more overhead than a simple Nginx ingress.