Latchu@DevOps

Posted on Oct 3

Part-108: 🚀Kubernetes Ingress – Context Path Based Routing in Google Kubernetes Engine

#kubernetes #googlecloud #devops #cloud

When running multiple applications in Kubernetes, exposing them through different LoadBalancers becomes costly and hard to manage.
This is where Ingress comes in – it allows path-based routing, so a single LoadBalancer can serve multiple applications.

In this guide, we’ll deploy 3 Nginx apps in GKE and configure Ingress so that:

/app1/* → routes to app1 service
/app2/* → routes to app2 service
/* → routes to app3 service (default)

🟢 Step-01: Introduction

We will:

Deploy App1, App2, App3 with Nginx containers.
Expose them via NodePort services.
Configure a single Ingress with path-based rules.

🟡 Step-02: Deploy App1, App2 & App3

🔹 app1-deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: app1-nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: app1-nginx
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: app1-nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: app1-nginx
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: app1-nginx
          image: ghcr.io/stacksimplify/kube-nginxapp1:1.0.0
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: app1-nginx-nodeport-service
spec:
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    app: app1-nginx
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80

🔹 app2-deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: app2-nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: app2-nginx
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: app2-nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: app2-nginx
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: app2-nginx
          image: ghcr.io/stacksimplify/kube-nginxapp2:1.0.0
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: app2-nginx-nodeport-service
spec:
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    app: app2-nginx
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80

🔹 app3-deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: app3-nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: app3-nginx
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: app3-nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: app3-nginx
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: app3-nginx
          image: ghcr.io/stacksimplify/kubenginx:1.0.0
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: app3-nginx-nodeport-service
spec:
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    app: app3-nginx
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80

🔹 ingress-cpr.yaml

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: ingress-cpr
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "gce"   # GKE Ingress Controller
spec:
  defaultBackend:
    service:
      name: app3-nginx-nodeport-service
      port:
        number: 80
  rules:
    - http:
        paths:
          - path: /app1
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: app1-nginx-nodeport-service
                port:
                  number: 80
          - path: /app2
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: app2-nginx-nodeport-service
                port:
                  number: 80

🟣 Step-04: Deploy & Verify

# Apply manifests
kubectl apply -f ingress/

# Check pods
kubectl get pods

# Check services
kubectl get svc

# Check Ingress
kubectl get ingress
kubectl describe ingress ingress-cpr

👉 Wait 3–5 minutes for the LoadBalancer to be created.

🔴 Step-05: Access the Applications

Once the LoadBalancer is ready, check the ADDRESS field in Ingress output.

http://<INGRESS-ADDRESS>/app1/index.html
http://<INGRESS-ADDRESS>/app2/index.html
http://<INGRESS-ADDRESS>/

🟠 Step-06: Verify in Google Cloud Console

Go to:

➡️ Load Balancing → Click on the LoadBalancer → Explore tabs:

DETAILS: Frontend, Host/Path rules, Backend services, Health checks
MONITORING: Traffic & Latency
COMPONENTS: Forwarding rules, Target proxies, Certificates

🟤 Step-07: Clean Up

kubectl delete -f ingress/

✅ Summary

We deployed 3 Nginx apps.
Exposed them via NodePort Services.
Configured Ingress for context path routing.
Verified traffic routing through a single GKE LoadBalancer.

This is one of the most common real-world patterns for microservices routing in Kubernetes 🎯.

🌟 Thanks for reading! If this post added value, a like ❤️, follow, or share would encourage me to keep creating more content.

— Latchu | Senior DevOps & Cloud Engineer

☁️ AWS | GCP | ☸️ Kubernetes | 🔐 Security | ⚡ Automation
📌 Sharing hands-on guides, best practices & real-world cloud solutions

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