Control plane configuration

Learn how to dynamically update the NGINX Gateway Fabric control plane configuration.

Overview

NGINX Gateway Fabric can dynamically update the control plane configuration without restarting. The control plane configuration is stored in the NginxGateway custom resource, created during the installation of NGINX Gateway Fabric.

NginxGateway is deployed in the same namespace as the controller (Default: nginx-gateway). The resource’s default name is based on your installation method:

Helm: <release-name>-config
Manifests: nginx-gateway-config

The control plane only watches this single instance of the custom resource.

If the resource is invalid to the OpenAPI schema, the Kubernetes API server will reject the changes. If the resource is deleted or deemed invalid by NGINX Gateway Fabric, a warning event is created in the nginx-gateway namespace, and the default values will be used by the control plane for its configuration.

Additionally, the control plane updates the status of the resource (if it exists) to reflect whether it is valid or not.

For a full list of configuration options that can be set, see the NginxGateway spec in the API reference.

Viewing and Updating the Configuration

Note:
For the following examples, the name ngf-config should be updated to the name of the resource created for your installation.

To view the current configuration and its status:

kubectl -n nginx-gateway describe nginxgateways ngf-config

...
Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Transition Time:  2024-08-13T19:22:14Z
    Message:               NginxGateway is valid
    Observed Generation:   1
    Reason:                Valid
    Status:                True
    Type:                  Valid

To update the configuration:

kubectl -n nginx-gateway edit nginxgateways ngf-config

This will open the configuration in your default editor. You can then update and save the configuration, which is applied automatically to the control plane.