Garbage collecting load balancers
The method of automatically removing or clearing out inactive or outdated load balancer resources in a Kubernetes cluster is referred to as “garbage collecting load balancers.” A cloud provider’s load balancer resource (such as the AWS Elastic Load Balancer or Google Cloud Load Balancer) typically appears when you create a LoadBalancer service in Kubernetes. However, the corresponding load balancer resource could keep running even after the service is terminated or no longer required, generating unnecessary costs and use of resources.
The setting up of mechanisms to detect and delete these not wanted load balancer resources is required for garbage disposal load balancers. This can be achieved through various means:
- Controller Managers: Installing existing controller managers, such as the Kubernetes cloud-controller-manager, which may manage resources specific to cloud providers, such load balancers, or creating custom ones.
- Custom Scripts or Tools: Using third-party tools or writing custom scripts to automatically search for and remove not wanted load balancer resources based on established standards.
- Kubernetes Cluster Auto-scaling: Leveraging the auto-scaling features of Kubernetes clusters to dynamically scale load balancer resources up or down in accordance with workload demands, ensuring that only resources that are needed are provided.
- Resource Labels and Annotations: Labeling or tagging load balancer resources to demonstrate that they belong to Kubernetes resources makes it simpler to find and delete stranded resources.
Kubernetes – Load Balancing Service
Before learning Kubernetes (or K8S in Short), you should have some knowledge of Docker and Containers. Docker is a tool that helps the developer create containers in which applications can run in an isolated environment. Containers are just an abstraction for the applications inside. Docker also provides some facilities for these containers to talk to each other, store data on the host machine, and much more. Similarly, Kubernetes is used to control these containers and enhance their availability as well as functionality. Docker has containers, but Kubernetes has Containers, Pods, and then Nodes. Nodes contain pods, and pods have containers. Kubernetes ensures more isolation of the container.