<p>I'm using Azure Kubernetes Service and have a unique scenario where I want to allow only one connection per pod. I used the "advanced" networking option to set up my cluster such that each pod has its own internal IP address. The problem is, all of these pods are behind a public load balancer IP address, and the load balancer decides where to route the traffic.</p>

<p>I need to either A) set up a rule such that the load balancer only allows one connection per pod and routes new traffic to new pods, 1 per request, or B) set up an ingress controller to do the same. I think B) is the solution but I have no clear path on how to do this. I see that you can route by URL, but you'd have to set up a rule for each pod, which is definitely not a good idea. Is there any way to set up a rule that just limits 1 session per pod? Or some other method that works similarly.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

Sam
<p>This is a very good question. Based on solutions you suggested in the second part of your question, I would like to add my input here. However, it's not limited or possible only to use these, there are most effective advanced ways people are establishing connections to their pods.</p>

<p>A.) I am looking at how are you routing your traffic to your <code>pods</code> from a load balancer, in general each pod inside Kubernetes cluster by defaults get's its own ip. If we know this how you managing traffic flow from external world to each pod. I can add my answer to <code>A</code> part of possible solutions. But not advisable to go this method, because it is more likely your pod dies and a new pod with new ip might get created you need to manually route traffic to the newly created pod, which is why people opted for kubernetes rather than manually managing docker containers on a VM. But I might be wrong, you might be having different complex system it is debatable though. </p>

<p>B.) Like you said, and researched Ingress and Services is also a solution, unfortunately there are no ingress controller annotations available as of now that only limits one connection per pod, but like you said URL based would be one part of the solution but again as you already identified there will be a overhead with this way it is more like single service per single pod and a sub domain for each service. It is more like single deployment with a unique service associated with it and a unique service with unique subdomain. It's a complex setting but doable.</p>

<p><strong>Edit Based on Comments (Removed HPA)</strong></p>

<p>Based on the information you added I can suggest a different approach, but it is kinda <code>wrong</code> way of using kubernetes, but again it is debatable based on the kind of system you are planning to achieve. Run a proxy server (HAProxy, NGINX, or your fav) on it is own on one of the node and route traffic from the outside world to your pod directly with the internal ip of the pod in your proxy. And you can route based on number of connections, etc from the proxy config remember this is not your kubernetes pod, it's a standalone service your OS running. But caution when node dies pod dies, so is the ip address of the pod. </p>

<p>But this is something we shouldn't do, I am sure in couple of weeks or so you will get the bigger picture of K8s and it's moving parts, you might say this is wrong as there is lot of manual setup overhead.</p>

<p>Hope this is helpful.</p>
