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Kong for Kubernetes with Kong Enterprise

Kong for Kubernetes is a Kubernetes Ingress Controller built on top of Open-Source Kong Gateway.

If you are an Enterprise customer, you have an option of running the Enterprise version of the Ingress Controller, which includes all the Enterprise plugins but does not include Kong Manager or any other Enterprise features. This makes it possible to run the Ingress layer without a database, providing a very low operational and maintenance footprint.

However, in some cases, those enterprise features are necessary, and for such use-cases we support another deployment - Kong for Kubernetes with Kong Enterprise.

As seen in the diagram below, this deployment consists of Kong for Kubernetes deployed in Kubernetes, and is hooked up with a database. If there are services running outside Kubernetes, a regular Kong Gateway proxy can be deployed there and connected to the same database. This provides a single pane of visibility of all services that are running in your infrastructure.

In this deployment model, the database for Kong can be hosted anywhere. It can be a managed DBaaS service like Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL or a PostgreSQL instance managed in-house or even an instance deployed on Kubernetes. If you are following this model, please keep in mind the following:

• It is recommended to not deploy PostgreSQL on Kubernetes, due to the fact that running stateful applications on Kubernetes is challenging to get right.
• Ensure that you have the same image/package of Kong Enterprise running across the fleet. This means that all Kong instances that are connected to the same database must use the same version of Kong Enterprise package.

This guide walks through the setup of the above architecture.