Heptio Contour is an open source Kubernetes ingress controller that uses Envoy, Lyft’s open source edge and service proxy, to provide a modern way to direct internet traffic into a cluster. Last Friday, we released Contour version 0.7, which includes some helpful new features that you should know about if you’re evaluating options for incoming load balancing in Kubernetes.
Contour 0.7 enables:
Better traffic control within a cluster: With support for the ‘ingress.class’ annotation, you’ll now be able to specify where incoming traffic should go within a cluster. One key use case here is to be able to separate production traffic from staging and development; for example, if the ‘contour.heptio.com/ingress.class: production’ annotation is on an IngressRoute object, it will only be processed by Contour containers running with the flag ‘— ingress-class-name=production’.
Rewriting a request prefix: Need to route a legacy or enterprise application to a different path from your specified ingress route? You can now use Contour to rewrite a path prefix and ensure that incoming traffic goes to the right place without issue. (See Github for more detail on this.)
Cost savings through GZIP compression: Contour 0.7 features GZIP compression by default, so that you can see cost savings through reduced bandwidth, while speeding up load times for your customers.
Envoy health checking and 1.7 compatibility: Envoy’s now-exposed /healthz endpoint can be used with Kubernetes readiness probes, and Contour is also now compatible with Envoy 1.7, making it easier for you to get Prometheus metrics for HTTP/HTTPS traffic.