How HTTP and HTTPS Traffic Flows Through an AWS ALB to EKS When an application runs in Amazon EKS , users normally don’t connect directly to Kubernetes Pods. An AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) sits in front of the application and receives incoming traffic. But where exactly are HTTP and HTTPS used? And if the user connects over HTTPS, does that mean the traffic stays HTTPS all the way to the Pod? Let’s follow one request from the browser to an application running in EKS. Imagine an application running with multiple Pods: The Basic Traffic Flow The ALB provides the entry point for traffic coming from outside the Kubernetes cluster. Before looking deeper into this flow, let's understand HTTP and HTTPS. What Is HTTP? HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol  is a protocol used by clients and servers to communicate. For example : http://app.example.com HTTP traffic is not encrypted. That means we generally don't want sensitive information such as passwords, authentication tokens,...

Kubernetes Pod States (Phases) A Pod can be in one of these main states during its lifecycle. 1. Pending Pod is created Not running yet Waiting for: a node images to pull resources “I exist, but I’m not running.” 2. Running Pod is assigned to a node Containers are started Application is running (or starting) “I’m running on a node.” 3. Succeeded All containers finished successfully Common for Job-based Pods “I finished my work successfully.” 4. Failed One or more containers exited with an error The Pod will not restart itself “I failed and stopped.” 5. Unknown Kubernetes cannot determine the Pod state Usually caused by node communication issues “I don’t know what’s happening.” 6. Terminating (not an official phase, but important) Pod is being deleted Grace...