Gateway API with OpenShift Networking - Developer Preview Update

As a follow-up to the OpenShift 4.12 Developer Preview of Gateway API, Red Hat has released an enhanced Developer Preview for Gateway API support in OCP 4.13.5. If you haven't read our first blog post, Introducing Gateway API with OpenShift Networking - Developer Preview, please take a minute to review it. It contains an overview of the Gateway API components.

New features in the Developer Preview

With this Developer Preview update, you can now install and configure Gateway API with the Ingress Operator, seamlessly installing all the necessary Gateway API components without any external downloads. By delegating the responsibility of installation and configuration to the Ingress Operator, developers can now focus on exploring and leveraging the powerful API that Gateway API offers.

The Ingress Operator enables the use of Gateway API by:

• Installing version 0.5.1 Gateway API custom resource definitions (CRDs)
• Installing and configuring Istio as the Gateway API implementation via OpenShift Service Mesh (OSSM)
• Enabling the creation of Load Balancers via Istio's automated deployments
• Automatically creating DNS Records for Gateways

These updates allow OpenShift developers to explore and utilize Gateway API using Red Hat's existing range of product offerings. By integrating the Ingress Operator with OpenShift Service Mesh, we can offer this Developer Preview of Gateway API with the existing robust and security-focused Istio solution.

Behind a feature gate

The features mentioned in this Developer Preview update are accessible through OpenShift's feature gate mechanism. By implementing Gateway API support under a feature gate, it is not activated by default, requiring users to explicitly opt-in to use it. The feature gate can be enabled by configuring the "CustomNoUpgrade" feature set, which means the cluster will no longer be upgradable after enabling it.

Only enable this feature on a non-production cluster. Once this feature gate is enabled, it can never be disabled. Since feature gates are stored in the machine config, patching the feature gate config will result in the machine config operator rebooting each node sequentially, according to your machine config pool configuration.

Get started

Instructions for getting started with Gateway API via the Ingress Operator

Get creative

Instructions for more advanced capabilities using Gateway API