Ingress NGINX Controller to retire: What you need to know

🚀 Start 2026 by shipping, not just planning. Deployed a containerized web server on GCP using Docker + NGINX to host a simple “Happy New Year 2026” site. High-level execution (clean & production-oriented): ✅ Provisioned a Compute Engine VM ✅ Installed & hardened Docker runtime ✅ Pulled website source from GitHub ✅ Ran NGINX container with mounted web content ✅ Exposed service via GCP firewall (port 80) ✅ Verified via public IP Nothing fancy on the UI — but the foundation is solid: Container-first approach No dependency on host config Ready for CI/CD, HTTPS, or scaling Real DevOps is about repeatable deployments, not just “getting it to work.” 🎉 Happy New Year 2026 — building reliable systems, one deployment at a time. #DevOps #GCP #Docker #NGINX #CloudEngineering #Infrastructure #HappyNewYear2026 #BuildInPublic 🔥 Next iteration: CI/CD + HTTPS + load balancing. Keeping it simple, scalable, and production-ready.

Most teams still use Ingress for Kubernetes traffic routing, but the limitations pile up fast, with cryptic annotations that break unexpectedly, tightly coupled configs, and no clear separation between platform and app team responsibilities. Gateway API is replacing it, but the official docs are overwhelming for getting started. GatewayClass defines the controller (like choosing NGINX vs Envoy), Gateway provisions the actual load balancer infrastructure, and HTTPRoute handles the routing rules. The key difference from Ingress is the separation between controller and Gateway resource. The article from Pranay Gurung provides details including Envoy Gateway and MetalLB on a local cluster, from IP pool configuration to routing traffic to a sample nginx service. https://lnkd.in/e6Npcw84

🚀 Day 16 of #100DaysOfDevOps with #KodeKloud 🚀 Today's challenge was all about configuring Nginx as a Load Balancer🔄⚖️ Here's how I did it: 🔹 Installed Nginx on the LBR (Load Balancer) server 🔹 Set up proxy configuration in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf to forward traffic to backend servers on port 5003 🔹 Verified Apache/httpd was running on all app servers using systemctl status httpd and ss -tlnp | grep httpd 🔹 Tested the load balancer configuration and successfully accessed the application 💡 Key Takeaways: ✅ Load balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers, preventing any single server from becoming a bottleneck ✅ High availability isn't just about redundancy—it's about ensuring consistent performance under increasing load ✅ Always verify backend services are running before testing the load balancer! 🔐 Pro Tip: Checking service status with systemctl and port binding with ss or netstat should be your first debugging steps when troubleshooting connectivity issues. Another day, another DevOps skill unlocked! 🚀

Attention Kubernetes Professionals 🚀 A major shift is coming: The Kubernetes community has announced the deprecation of the NGINX Ingress Controller. It will continue to receive limited maintenance until March 2026, after which updates and security fixes will stop entirely. Why the move? Despite its widespread adoption, ongoing security challenges have made it clear that the future lies with the Gateway API — a more secure, scalable, and feature-rich approach to traffic management (with native JWT support being one of many advantages). ⏳ If your clusters still rely on NGINX Ingress, now is the time to start planning your migration. Existing workloads won’t break overnight, but delaying the transition can increase security and operational risks. This is a positive evolution — and I’ll soon be sharing a best practice series to help teams successfully migrate and get the most out of the Gateway API. Stay tuned for more. 👀

A meaningful shift in the container ecosystem. More than 1,000 hardened container images are now free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license, lowering the barrier to starting with secure, production-ready foundations from day one. These images are built on well-known bases like Debian and Alpine, with a focus on minimizing attack surface, reducing CVEs early, and providing full transparency through SBOMs and public vulnerability data. This is exactly where supply chain security needs to start, at the base image, not bolted on later. At CosmosGrid, we spend a lot of time helping teams shift security left in real-world platforms, and changes like this make it easier to raise the baseline across startups and large enterprises alike. Do you see hardened base images becoming your default going forward, or do you still prefer rolling and maintaining your own base images for critical workloads? #CosmosGrid #Docker #Containers #DevSecOps #CloudNative #SoftwareSecurity https://lnkd.in/eFpJwq7g

🕵️♂️ “It must be DNS.” Famous last words in Kubernetes troubleshooting. In this new blog post, Liam Mackie walks through a real-world incident where all signs pointed to DNS… until they didn’t. 🐙 Follow the story of two troubleshooters (and one very grumpy GraphQL gateway) as they uncover the real culprit behind DNS-looking failures — and what they learned along the way. Read the blog post ➜ https://lnkd.in/gUU6DJvk

NGINX Ingress Controller Is Being Retired — Why It’s Time to Migrate to Traefik For years, the NGINX Ingress Controller was the default choice for Kubernetes ingress. But with the community version now entering retirement / maintenance mode, teams must start planning the next step. ❗ Why NGINX Is No Longer the Future • Development has slowed significantly • Limited progress on Gateway API • More complex setup for TLS, mTLS, certificates • Uncertain long-term roadmap for the open-source version This creates real risks for platform stability and security. ⸻ ⭐ Why Traefik Is the Best Successor Traefik has emerged as one of the most modern, cloud-native ingress controllers available today. Key advantages: • Full support for Gateway API and advanced CRDs • Zero-downtime config reloads • Built-in HTTPS, Let’s Encrypt, mTLS • Strong observability (Prometheus / OTEL) • Lightweight, fast, GitOps-friendly • Easily scalable for multi-cluster environments Traefik handles dynamic routing far better than NGINX and requires much less manual configuration. ⸻ 🔄 Migration Approach (High-Level) 1. Audit existing NGINX ingress rules 2. Map rules to Traefik CRDs (IngressRoute, Middleware, TLS settings) 3. Deploy Traefik alongside NGINX 4. Move low-risk workloads first 5. Cut over production services and retire NGINX ⸻ 🏁 The Bottom Line The end of community NGINX Ingress Controller is a perfect time to modernize your ingress layer. Migrating to Traefik brings: ✔ better performance ✔ simpler operations ✔ stronger security ✔ future-proof Gateway API support If you’re building modern Kubernetes platforms, Traefik is simply the logical next step.

The End of NGINX as We Know It — And What Smart Teams Should Do Next When a foundational tool retires, most teams panic. But when NGINX announced its retirement, the real story wasn’t the end of a web server — it was the beginning of a more modern, scalable traffic layer for cloud-native platforms. NGINX will still run, yes. You can keep the binaries. You can even keep the controller, but without long-term innovation, security updates, or a future roadmap, it quietly shifts from “trusted edge” to technical debt waiting to surface. The industry isn’t moving away from NGINX because it failed. It’s moving forward because gateway-based architectures — built around Envoy, Gateway API, and modern ingress controllers — align far better with Kubernetes, multi-cluster routing, and distributed systems. I’ve seen this inside multiple organizations: When traffic patterns become dynamic and security-driven, NGINX starts feeling static in a world that demands elasticity, policy, and deep observability. Gateways solve that gap. Now, if your company has a hard requirement for NGINX — compliance, legacy, or business constraints — there is an option: ➡️ NGINX Plus (F5’s commercial controller) is still maintained and supported. For some teams, that’s a valid bridge strategy while planning a long-term migration. But the momentum of the ecosystem is clear: the future is gateway-driven. Takeaway: Don’t wait for unsupported infrastructure to become a liability. If NGINX sits at the center of your routing layer, now is the right moment to evaluate a gateway transition plan — even if you temporarily stay on NGINX Plus. If you want guidance selecting the right gateway for your architecture, happy to share what’s working well across different teams. #DevOps #CloudComputing #AWS #Kubernetes #PlatformEngineering #Infrastructure #CICD #SRE #CloudArchitecture

Modern Kubernetes Ingress is changing. And the Gateway API is no longer “future”, it’s production-ready. In this architecture, I’m showing how modern traffic management on GKE actually works using: • Gateway API (vendor-neutral, clean design) • NGINX Gateway Fabric as the controller • cert-manager + Let’s Encrypt for automated TLS • Path-based routing for frontend & API services • Real GCP External Load Balancer, not a local lab Traffic flow, simplified: Client → GCP External Load Balancer → NGINX Gateway Fabric (Gateway + HTTPRoute) → Frontend / API services For HTTPS: cert-manager handles the HTTP-01 challenge via Gateway API, Let’s Encrypt issues the certificate, and NGINX Gateway Fabric starts serving HTTPS automatically. No manual certs. No Ingress annotations. No vendor lock-in. 📌 I’m releasing a complete end-to-end video very soon where I build this from scratch and explain every piece step-by-step. Stay tuned 👀 This one ties everything together. #kubernetes #gatewayapi #gcp #gke #certmanager #https

🔒 Docker just democratized container security! Docker's Hardened Images are now free and open source under Apache 2.0. No more choosing between security and budget. What you get: ✅ Minimal images with near-zero CVEs ✅ Verifiable SBOMs & SLSA Build Level 3 provenance ✅ Hardened Helm Charts (yes, a Bitnami alternative!) ✅ MCP servers for secure AI integrations To undestand what is DHI and what is now DHI Enterprise, read the following 👉 https://lnkd.in/ghWPcgmB #Docker #DevSecOps #ContainerSecurity #OpenSource #CloudNative #SupplyChainSecurity