The Kubernetes Project announced in November 2025 that the open-source Ingress NGINX controller is being retired, an announcement that immediately impacted platform engineering teams globally. As the deprecation deadline is this month (March 2026), crucial support, security patches, and critical bug fixes will cease suddenly.
The deadline is rapidly creating understandable anxiety among platform teams as they urgently seek a supported, viable alternative. This imminent migration, however, can be viewed as a strategic opportunity to reduce existing technical debt and adopt a modern Kubernetes solution that supports Gateway API out of the box as well as existing ingress APIs .
To achieve an architectural upgrade with VMware Avi Load Balancer (Avi), we are thrilled to introduce the latest Avi Conversion Tool (ACT) to automate the migration from Ingress NGINX to Avi, streamlining the transition to modern Kubernetes solution. Avi supports Kubernetes workloads including VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS), details are covered in this blog.
Why Does This Matter?
The transition from the original Kubernetes Ingress API to the Avi Kubernetes solution that supports Gateway API is a critical industry shift. The core problem with the outdated Ingress API was its inability to go beyond the most basic HTTP routing capabilities. To implement necessary enterprise functions like detailed rewrites, rate limiting, traffic splitting, or unique health checks, users were forced to rely heavily on non-standard, custom Ingress NGINX annotations. This resulted in widespread “annotation sprawl,” which made configurations brittle, overly dependent on a specific vendor, and exceptionally challenging to manage, audit, and troubleshoot.
Read the full blog here.