Kong for Kubernetes, often referred to as the Kong Ingress Controller (KIC), is an open-source ingress controller that leverages the power of the Kong API gateway to manage and control external access to services within Kubernetes clusters. By combining the flexibility of Kong with the native Kubernetes ecosystem, KIC offers a robust solution for routing, securing, and managing API traffic in your Kubernetes deployments.

• **Kong Gateway Integration:** KIC seamlessly integrates with Kong Gateway, a powerful and extensible API gateway. This integration allows you to leverage Kong's rich feature set, including plugins, load balancing, authentication, rate limiting, and more, directly within your Kubernetes environment.
• **Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs):** KIC utilizes Kubernetes CRDs to define ingress rules, API configurations, and plugin settings, providing a declarative and Kubernetes-native way to manage Kong Gateway.
• **High Availability and Scalability:** KIC can be deployed in a highly available configuration, ensuring uninterrupted traffic routing and management even in the face of failures. It also scales horizontally to handle increasing traffic volumes.
• **Dynamic Configuration:** KIC's dynamic configuration capabilities allow you to update ingress rules, API configurations, and plugin settings on the fly without requiring restarts or downtime.
• **Seamless Kubernetes Integration:** KIC deeply integrates with Kubernetes, leveraging its native APIs and resources for configuration and management.

• **Robust API Management:** KIC empowers you to manage and control API traffic with Kong Gateway's comprehensive features, including routing, security, authentication, rate limiting, and transformations.
• **Flexibility and Extensibility:** Kong's plugin ecosystem provides a wide range of plugins to extend functionality, allowing you to tailor KIC to your specific requirements.
• **Simplified Configuration:** KIC's declarative configuration using Kubernetes CRDs streamlines the management of ingress rules and API configurations.
• **High Availability and Scalability:** KIC's ability to deploy in a highly available configuration and scale horizontally ensures reliability and performance even under heavy traffic loads.
• **Kubernetes-Native Experience:** KIC's deep integration with Kubernetes simplifies deployment and management, allowing you to leverage familiar Kubernetes tools and workflows.

While KIC's configuration primarily involves Kubernetes manifests and custom resources, here's a simplified example of an Ingress definition using KIC:

```yaml apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1 kind: Ingress metadata:

 name: my-ingress
 annotations:
   kubernetes.io/ingress.class: kong

 rules:
 - http:
     paths:
     - path: /api
       pathType: Prefix
       backend:
         service:
           name: my-service
           port:
             number: 80

This configuration defines an Ingress resource that uses the `kong` ingress class to route traffic to the `/api` path to the `my-service` service on port 80.

• **Kong for Kubernetes Documentation:** s://docs.konghq.com/kubernetes-ingress-controller/latest/(https://docs.konghq.com/kubernetes-ingress-controller/latest/)
• **Kong Ingress Controller GitHub Repository:** s://github.com/Kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller(https://github.com/Kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller)