NGINX Gateway Fabric

Implement the Gateway API across hybrid and multi-cloud Kubernetes environments with a secure, fast, and reliable NGINX data plane.

About

NGINX Gateway Fabric provides an implementation of the Gateway API using NGINX as the data plane. The goal of the project is to implement the core Gateway APIs needed to configure an HTTP or TCP/UDP load balancer, reverse proxy, or API gateway for Kubernetes applications.

For a list of supported Gateway API resources and features, see the Gateway API Compatibility documentation.

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Changelog

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Design

NGINX Gateway Fabric separates the control plane and data plane into distinct deployments. The control plane interacts with the Kubernetes API, watching for Gateway API resources.

When a new Gateway resource is provisioned, it dynamically creates and manages a corresponding NGINX data plane Deployment and Service.

Each NGINX data plane pod consists of an NGINX container integrated with NGINX Agent. The control plane translates Gateway API resources into NGINX configurations and sends these configurations to the agent to ensure consistent traffic management.

This design enables centralized management of multiple Gateways while ensuring that each NGINX instance stays aligned with the cluster’s current configuration.

For more information, see the Gateway architecture topic.