Kubernetes: Ingress vs Load balancer
Kubernetes Ingeress and Load balancer are the main ways to expose access to applications inside a Kubernetes cluster.
Load Balancer service
The load balancer is type of service object among ClusterIP, NodePort and ExtrnalName. As obvious from the name, this type of service is responsible for directing external traffic to the backend Pods. Dendending on where we run a cluster, loadbalancer are provisioned. For example, Minikube doesn’t support loadbalancer, but cloud providers provition new loadbalancer type of resources.
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/#loadbalancer
Ingress
Ingress is responsible for routing outside traffic to internal services. In other to use Ingress, an Ingress Controller is required. There are many Ingress Controllers made by different folks (different capabilities). One very important note is, Ingress doesn’t export other than HTTP and HTTPS protocols. For exposing service other than HTTP and HTTPS to the internet typically used Loadbalancer and NodePort services.
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/ingress/
