AKO is an operator which works as an ingress controller and performs NSX Advanced Load Balancer specific functions in an OpenShift/Kubernetes environment with the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller. It runs as a pod in the cluster and translates the required OpenShift/Kubernetes objects to NSX Advanced Load Balancer objects and automates the implementation of ingresses/routes/services on the Service Engines (SE) through the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller .

The following illustration outlines the components of the Avi Kubernetes integration.

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller

The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller provides the central control, management, and observability functions in the NSX Advanced Load Balancer architecture. It manages the lifecycle of the Service Engines, their configurations, and provides centralized analytics and observability.

NSX Advanced Load Balancer Service Engines (cluster-external)

The NSX Advanced Load Balancer Service Engines are the data-plane engines that implement the virtual services for Kubernetes ingresses. These SEs handle all the data plane responsibilities in the platform.