Ingress TLS Termination in Kubernetes

Ingress TLS termination in Kubernetes allows secure communication between clients and services by terminating TLS at the Ingress level. This means that Ingress controllers handle the SSL/TLS certificates, enabling encrypted traffic to reach your services.

• **Ingress**: A Kubernetes resource that manages external access to services within a cluster, typically HTTP.
• **TLS (Transport Layer Security)**: A protocol that ensures privacy between communicating applications and users on the internet.
• **TLS Termination**: The process of decrypting SSL/TLS traffic at a specified point, in this case, at the Ingress controller.
• **Ingress Controller**: A component that listens for Ingress resources and manages the routing of traffic based on defined rules.

3.1 Create a TLS Secret

First, create a Kubernetes secret to store your TLS certificate and private key.

kubectl create secret tls my-tls-secret --cert=path/to/tls.crt --key=path/to/tls.key
                

3.2 Define an Ingress Resource

Next, define an Ingress resource that references the TLS secret.

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: my-ingress
spec:
  tls:
  - hosts:
    - mydomain.com
    secretName: my-tls-secret
  rules:
  - host: mydomain.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: my-service
            port:
              number: 80
                

• Always use a strong and valid TLS certificate.
• Regularly rotate your TLS certificates to minimize risk.
• Consider using automated tools like Cert-Manager to manage certificates.
• Enable HTTP to HTTPS redirection for better security.