Traefik & Kubernetes¶

The Traefik Kubernetes Ingress provider is a Kubernetes Ingress controller; i.e, it manages access to cluster services by supporting the Ingress specification.

Configuration Example¶

You can enable the kubernetesIngress provider as detailed below:

File (YAML)

providers:
  kubernetesIngress: {}

File (TOML)

[providers.kubernetesIngress]

CLI

--providers.kubernetesingress=true

Helm Chart Values

## Values file
providers:
  kubernetesIngress:
    enabled: true

The provider then watches for incoming ingresses events, such as the example below, and derives the corresponding dynamic configuration from it, which in turn creates the resulting routers, services, handlers, etc.

Configuration Options¶

Field	Description	Default	Required
`providers.providersThrottleDuration`	Minimum amount of time to wait for, after a configuration reload, before taking into account any new configuration refresh event. If multiple events occur within this time, only the most recent one is taken into account, and all others are discarded. This option cannot be set per provider, but the throttling algorithm applies to each of them independently.	2s	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.endpoint`	Server endpoint URL. More information here.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.token`	Bearer token used for the Kubernetes client configuration.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.certAuthFilePath`	Path to the certificate authority file. Used for the Kubernetes client configuration.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesCRD.namespaces`	Array of namespaces to watch. If left empty, watch all namespaces.		No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.labelselector`	Allow filtering on Ingress objects using label selectors. No effect on Kubernetes `Secrets`, `EndpointSlices` and `Services`. See label-selectors for details.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.ingressClass`	The `IngressClass` resource name or the `kubernetes.io/ingress.class` annotation value that identifies resource objects to be processed. If empty, resources missing the annotation, having an empty value, or the value `traefik` are processed.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.disableIngressClassLookup`	Prevent to discover IngressClasses in the cluster. It alleviates the requirement of giving Traefik the rights to look IngressClasses up. Ignore Ingresses with IngressClass. Annotations are not affected by this option.	false	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.` `ingressEndpoint.hostname`	Hostname used for Kubernetes Ingress endpoints.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.` `ingressEndpoint.ip`	This IP will get copied to the Ingress `status.loadbalancer.ip`, and currently only supports one IP value (IPv4 or IPv6).	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.` `ingressEndpoint.publishedService`	The Kubernetes service to copy status from. When using third parties tools like External-DNS, this option can be used to copy the service `loadbalancer.status` (containing the service's endpoints IPs) to the ingresses.	""	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.throttleDuration`	Minimum amount of time to wait between two Kubernetes events before producing a new configuration. This prevents a Kubernetes cluster that updates many times per second from continuously changing your Traefik configuration. If empty, every event is caught.	0s	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.allowEmptyServices`	Allows creating a route to reach a service that has no endpoint available. It allows Traefik to handle the requests and responses targeting this service (applying middleware or observability operations) before returning a `503` HTTP Status.	false	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.allowCrossNamespace`	Allows the `Ingress` to reference resources in namespaces other than theirs.	false	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.allowExternalNameServices`	Allows the `Ingress` to reference ExternalName services.	false	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.nativeLBByDefault`	Allow using the Kubernetes Service load balancing between the pods instead of the one provided by Traefik for every `Ingress` by default. It can br overridden in the `ServerTransport`.	false	No
`providers.kubernetesIngress.disableClusterScopeResources`	Prevent from discovering cluster scope resources (`IngressClass` and `Nodes`). By doing so, it alleviates the requirement of giving Traefik the rights to look up for cluster resources. Furthermore, Traefik will not handle Ingresses with IngressClass references, therefore such Ingresses will be ignored (please note that annotations are not affected by this option). This will also prevent from using the `NodePortLB` options on services.	false	No

`endpoint`¶

The Kubernetes server endpoint URL.

When deployed into Kubernetes, Traefik reads the environment variables KUBERNETES_SERVICE_HOST and KUBERNETES_SERVICE_PORT or KUBECONFIG to construct the endpoint.

The access token is looked up in /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token and the SSL CA certificate in /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt. Both are mounted automatically when deployed inside Kubernetes.

The endpoint may be specified to override the environment variable values inside a cluster.

When the environment variables are not found, Traefik tries to connect to the Kubernetes API server with an external-cluster client.

In this case, the endpoint is required. Specifically, it may be set to the URL used by kubectl proxy to connect to a Kubernetes cluster using the granted authentication and authorization of the associated kubeconfig.

File (YAML)

providers:
  kubernetesIngress:
    endpoint: "http://localhost:8080"
    # ...

File (TOML)

[providers.kubernetesIngress]
  endpoint = "http://localhost:8080"
  # ...

CLI

--providers.kubernetesingress.endpoint=http://localhost:8080

Routing Configuration¶

See the dedicated section in routing.

Further¶

To learn more about the various aspects of the Ingress specification that Traefik supports, many examples of Ingresses definitions are located in the test examples of the Traefik repository.

Using Traefik OSS in Production?

If you are using Traefik at work, consider adding enterprise-grade API gateway capabilities or commercial support for Traefik OSS.

Adding API Gateway capabilities to Traefik OSS is fast and seamless. There's no rip and replace and all configurations remain intact. See it in action via this short video.