Modern enterprise applications require a robust, scalable, and secure networking infrastructure. The rise of microservices architectures, global user bases, and data-intensive workloads has fundamentally changed what organizations need from their Kubernetes networking layer.
Many enterprises running Kubernetes in production cite networking as a challenge, with connection limitations frequently reported as a barrier to scaling applications. The complexity increases when we consider that enterprise Kubernetes deployments typically contain dozens of microservices, each requiring multiple connections to function properly.
Introducing LKE-E’s New Networking Capabilities:
Today, we’re excited to announce comprehensive networking enhancements for Linode Kubernetes Engine Enterprise (LKE-E). Our approach combines enhanced capabilities with the simplicity that has always defined our platform.
VPC Integration: End-to-End Network Isolation
LKE-E now integrates with Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to provide complete network isolation, ensuring that ingress, services-to-service communication, and control plane traffic remain private. With this enhancement, organizations can confidently run sensitive workloads in a fully isolated environment without exposing internal resources to the public Internet.
Enterprise-Grade Ingress with NodeBalancer
LKE-E’s NodeBalancer now serves as an external ingress controller, handling up to 100K concurrent connections and delivering up to 10 Gbps throughput across layer 4 and layer 7. By keeping traffic management outside your cluster, NodeBalancer helps optimize resource utilization, reduce operational overhead, and enhance scalability during high-traffic events.
Why These Enhancements Matter
Traditional in-cluster ingress controllers consume valuable cluster resources that could otherwise power your applications. With LKE-E’s NodeBalancer as an ingress solution, organizations can:
- Free up Kubernetes cluster resources for application workloads.
- Eliminate the need for managing in-cluster ingress components.
- Eliminates common scaling bottlenecks during traffic spikes with an increase to 100K concurrent connection capacity and 10 Gbps throughput, especially for microservices-heavy architectures.
Our comprehensive VPC integrates with both the LKE-E cluster itself and the NodeBalancer service. This ensures all components of your Akamai Kubernetes environment operate within a private network. The cluster’s control plane, worker nodes, and pod communications all remain private, while NodeBalancer completes the picture by distributing traffic to resources in the VPC without requiring public-facing endpoints.
What’s Next: Our Networking Roadmap
These networking enhancements are a significant step forward in our mission to provide enterprise-grade Kubernetes that maintains the simplicity and cost-effectiveness that Akamai Cloud customers expect.
By addressing the networking challenges that enterprises face when running Kubernetes at scale, we’re removing barriers to adoption and enabling organizations to confidently run their most demanding workloads on our platform.
Our commitment to enhancing Akamai’s cloud networking capabilities extends beyond these initial improvements. We have an exciting roadmap of additional networking capabilities planned for 2025 that will further strengthen our platform’s ability to support mission-critical enterprise workloads.
Stay tuned for updates as we continue to evolve our networking infrastructure to meet the ever-growing demands of modern cloud applications.
LKE-E is available in limited availability and is available in all the new core compute regions. To get on the list for access, contact us. If you’re an existing customer, contact your account team to try out LKE-E. For new customers, sign up for a Linode account and contact us to provision LKE-E or to discuss your specific requirements.
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