ingress-nginx is not the same as nginx ingress

Tags:
Categories:

After two weeks of reading documents, I finally realized that Ingress-Nginx and Nginx Ingress are not the same thing; they differ in functionality as well as implementation. There are even documents guiding the migration.

Ingress-NGINX is the community edition with more participants and a greater number of search results. NGINX Ingress is the commercial edition, richer in features but with lower community participation.

According to Deploy with NGINX Ingress Controller - Overview

NGINX Ingress Controller can be used for free with NGINX Open Source. Paying customers have access to NGINX Ingress Controller with NGINX Plus. To deploy NGINX Ingress Controller with NGINX Service Mesh, you must use either:

Open Source NGINX Ingress Controller version 3.0+ NGINX Plus version of NGINX Ingress Controller Visit the NGINX Ingress Controller product page for more information.

You can use NGINX Ingress Controller for free via NGINX Open Source, while paying customers can access it through NGINX Plus.

Additionally, the Nginx commercial edition’s official website has moved to www.f5.com

The Nginx Ingress Controller product page is https://www.f5.com/products/nginx/nginx-ingress-controller

This May 2021 blog post compared their differences: There are two Nginx Ingress Controllers for k8s. What?

Aspect or Feature kubernetes/ingress-nginx nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress with NGINX nginxinc/kubernetes-ingress with NGINX Plus
Fundamental
Authors Kubernetes community NGINX Inc and community NGINX Inc and community
NGINX version Custom NGINX build that includes several third-party modules NGINX official mainline build NGINX Plus
Commercial support N/A N/A Included
Implemented in Go/Lua (while Nginx is written in C) Go/Python Go/Python
Load balancing configuration via the Ingress resource
Merging Ingress rules with the same host Supported Supported via Mergeable Ingresses Supported via Mergeable Ingresses
HTTP load balancing extensions - Annotations See the supported annotations See the supported annotations See the supported annotations
HTTP load balancing extensions – ConfigMap See the supported ConfigMap keys See the supported ConfigMap keys See the supported ConfigMap keys
TCP/UDP Supported via a ConfigMap Supported via custom resources Supported via custom resources
Websocket Supported Supported via an annotation Supported via an annotation
TCP SSL Passthrough Supported via a ConfigMap Supported via custom resources Supported via custom resources
JWT validation Not supported Not supported Supported
Session persistence Supported via a third-party module Not supported Supported
Canary testing (by header, cookie, weight) Supported via annotations Supported via custom resources Supported via custom resources
Configuration templates See the template See the templates See the templates
Load balancing configuration via Custom Resources
HTTP load balancing Not supported See VirtualServer and VirtualServerRoute resources See VirtualServer and VirtualServerRoute resources
TCP/UDP load balancing Not supported See TransportServer resource See TransportServer resource
TCP SSL Passthrough load balancing Not supported See TransportServer resource See TransportServer resource
Deployment
Command-line arguments See the arguments See the arguments See the arguments
TLS certificate and key for the default server Required as a command-line argument/ auto-generated Required as a command-line argument Required as a command-line argument
Helm chart Supported Supported Supported
Operator Not supported Supported Supported
Operational
Reporting the IP address(es) of the Ingress controller into Ingress resources Supported Supported Supported
Extended Status Supported via a third-party module Not supported Supported
Prometheus Integration Supported Supported Supported
Dynamic reconfiguration of endpoints (no configuration reloading) Supported with a third-party Lua module Not supported Supported