Traefik, a well-known name in the world of open-source proxies, serving as a dynamic ingress controller and application proxy designed to route and manage traffic for modern cloud-native applications, released its major 3.0 version.
Without overstating, we can confidently describe this release as a new stage in the software’s evolution. Why? It just brings a whole bunch of new opportunities. Additionally, since its last major 2.0 release five years back, in 2019, Traefik has seen staggering engagement, boasting over 3 billion downloads, 700+ contributors, and maintaining its position as the top API gateway.
Yes, there are easier-to-use solutions in the world of reverse proxies, like Nginx Proxy Manager or Caddy, for example. However, when we talk about an enterprise that is tightly integrated with the needs of DevOps and Kubernetes professionals, Traefik is the name that comes out on top. Let’s see what the new release brings us.
Traefik 3.0: Innovations and Improvements
After a long time in experimental mode, Traefik 3.0 finally brings stable support for HTTP/3, offering enhanced performance and simpler encryption over UDP, marking a shift from the traditional TCP reliance.
This is complemented by the introduction of gRPC-Web, allowing web applications to directly call gRPC services, and enhanced security features like SPIFFE mTLS for secure service communication.
Furthermore, the update brings innovative routing capabilities, like SNI routing with Postgres STARTTLS, and security features for Tailscale networks, including TLS certificate provisioning via Let’s Encrypt. These enhancements ensure that Traefik remains at the forefront of network management technology.
Traefik 3.0 also extends its observability features, incorporating OpenTelemetry to provide state-of-the-art tooling for metrics and tracing, supporting a seamless transition from older systems like OpenCensus and OpenTracing.
In addition, the system’s extensibility has been augmented through the adoption of WebAssembly, which allows developers to write plugins directly in Traefik, significantly widening the scope for customizations.
Of course, the new release also brings several Kubernetes-related updates, including support for cross-namespace references in Gateway API and the ability to handle middleware in filters for better traffic management. Other Kubernetes enhancements include the addition of the Gateway status address and the removal of deprecated APIs.
Lastly, Traefik 3.0 has updated documentation that fixes previous errors and provides clearer guidance on effectively utilizing new features. This includes improvements to the quick start guide, more detailed explanations in the migration documentation, and updated examples that reflect the current version’s capabilities.
Planning an upgrade to 3.0? The good news is that the new version maintains backward compatibility with v2 syntax while introducing a new, more intuitive v3 syntax. Despite this, it’s strongly recommended that you refer to the upgrade documentation for guidance on transitioning to the new version.
Check out the release announcement or look here for more details about the new version. Additionally, the changelog provides the full list of all novelties in Traefik 3.0.
