🔹 Feature: Kubernetes Gateway API on AKS
🔹 What It Does: The standardized, role-oriented replacement for Kubernetes Ingress — with native support for HTTP, TLS, TCP, UDP, gRPC
Why Move Off Ingress
🔸 Ingress API = One Resource, One Owner: Every advanced feature lives in vendor-specific annotations; HTTP/HTTPS only. Behavior depends entirely on which controller is installed — configs written for NGINX don’t work with Traefik or Application Gateway.
🔸 Ingress Solves Basic HTTP Routing Only: Canary deployments, header-based routing, TLS passthrough, gRPC, and mTLS across control planes all become bespoke annotation dialects per implementation.
What Gateway API Is Giving You
✅ Multi-Protocol Support: HTTPRoute, TLSRoute, TCPRoute, UDPRoute, GRPCRoute. Route gRPC with real semantics, handle TLS passthrough, and manage TCP/UDP load balancing consistently.
✅ Rich Traffic Matching Built In: Header, path (Exact / PathPrefix / Regex), query parameter, and method matching are first-class fields. Weighted backendRefs for canary/blue-green deployments natively.
ively.
✅ Multi-Tenancy & Cross-Namespace: A single Gateway in a platform namespace can route to app team services via ReferenceGrant — clean infra/app separation.
✅ Portable Across Implementations: Same YAML works with Istio, NGINX, Application Gateway for Containers, Envoy Gateway, and Cilium Gateway.
✅ Extensibility Without Annotations: Use HTTPRouteFilter for standard rewrites/mirroring; vendor-specific extensions are separate CRDs, not hidden string keys.
✅ Community Direction: Gateway API is the upstream future of Kubernetes L7 traffic management — AKS is aligned for the long term.
Two Ways to Run Gateway API on AKS Today
🔷 Application Routing Add-on (Gateway API Implementation): Managed Istio control plane deployed and upgraded with the cluster — turnkey for internal Gateway API usage.
🔷 Application Gateway for Containers (ALB Controller): Azure-managed L7 load balancer implementing Gateway API + Ingress in parallel. Ingress terminates outside the cluster with WAF, mTLS, AI-aware routing, and full traffic shaping. Successor to AGIC.
🌐 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/app-routing-gateway-api
🌐 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/application-gateway/for-containers/overview
🌐 https://gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io/
