Gateway API v1.1: New Features for Developers and DevOps Teams!

Following the general release of the Gateway API last October, the Kubernetes SIG Network is excited to announce the release of v1.1 of the Gateway API. In this version, several features are now available in the Standard Channel (GA), including support for Service Mesh and GRPCRoute. Additionally, we are introducing some new experimental features, such as session persistence and client certificate validation.

What’s New?

Graduation to Standard

In this version, four eagerly anticipated features have graduated to standard. This means they are no longer experimental concepts; their inclusion in the standard release channel indicates a high level of confidence in the API surface and provides guarantees for backward compatibility. Of course, features in the Standard Channel can continue to evolve, with backward-compatible additions expected over time. For more information, see the Gateway API Versioning Policy.

Service Mesh Support

Service Mesh support in the Gateway API allows users to use the same API to manage both ingress traffic and mesh traffic by reusing the same policy and routing interfaces. In Gateway API v1.1, routes (such as HTTPRoute) can now have a service as a parentRef to control how traffic flows to specific services. For more information, read the Gateway API Service Mesh documentation or check out the list of Gateway API implementations.

An example of a canary deployment of a workload deep in an application’s call graph might look like this:

apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  name: color-canary
  namespace: faces
spec:
  parentRefs:
    - name: color
      kind: Service
      group: ""
      port: 80
  rules:
  - backendRefs:
    - name: color
      port: 80
      weight: 50
    - name: color2
      port: 80
      weight: 50

This would split the traffic sent to the color service in the faces namespace 50/50 between the original color service and the color2 service, using a portable configuration that can be easily moved from one mesh to another.

GRPCRoute

If you are already using the experimental version of GRPCRoute, we recommend waiting to upgrade to the standard version of GRPCRoute until the controllers you use have been updated to GRPCRoute v1. Until then, it is safe to upgrade to the experimental version of GRPCRoute in v1.1, which includes both v1alpha2 and v1 API versions.

ParentReference Port

The port field has been added to ParentReference, allowing you to attach resources to Gateway listeners, services, or other parent resources (depending on implementation). Binding to a port also allows you to attach to multiple listeners simultaneously.

For example, you can attach an HTTPRoute to one or more specific listeners of a Gateway, as indicated by the listener’s port, rather than by the listener name field.

For more information, see Attaching to Gateways.

The new version of Gateway API v1.1 offers developers and DevOps teams many exciting opportunities to make their Kubernetes applications even more efficient. ayedo is proud to be an active partner in the Kubernetes community and to assist you in implementing these new features.

Source: Kubernetes Blog