Improving the Reliability of Kubernetes Load Balancers

Load balancers are a critical part of application ingress for Kubernetes clusters. This talk delves into the common failure modes and inefficiencies associated with Kubernetes Services of type LoadBalancer, particularly in public cloud environments. It examines how the Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager (KCCM) interacts with cloud provider APIs to provision and manage load balancers, and the limitations of the current node readiness model. The presentation highlights issues such as unnecessary reconfigurations, blind traffic routing without application-specific health checks, and suboptimal performance. It then outlines proposed improvements and future work aimed at enhancing the reliability and stability of Kubernetes load balancing, including the concept of connection draining and more intelligent handling of node terminations.