Traefik load balancer via helm chart does not route any traffic

Question

I was trying to set up a traefik load balancer as an alternative LB for nginx-ingress. I used the helm chart from https://github.com/helm/charts/tree/master/stable/traefik and installed on my GKE cluster with rbac enabled since I use Kubernetes v1.12:

helm install --name traefik-lb --namespace kube-system --set rbac.enabled=true stable/traefik

My test application's ingress.yaml points to the new ingress class now:

kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "traefik"

What I've seen in the logs is that Traefik reloads its config all the time. I would also like to know if Traefik definitely needs a TLS cert to "just" route traffic.

Answer 1

What I've seen in the logs is that traefik reloads its config all the time.

It should reload every time you change the Ingress resources associated with it (The Traefik ingress controller). If it reloads all the time without any change to your cluster, there may be an issue with Traefik itself or the way your cluster is set up.

I would also like to know if traefik definitely needs a TLS cert to "just" route traffic.

No, it doesn't. This basic example from the documentation shows that you don't need TLS if you don't want to set it up.