A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector vs Airlock Microgateway

A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector (TKC) monitors Kubernetes application lifecycles and updates an external Thunder ADC load balancer to route traffic. Running inside a Kubernetes cluster, it identifies a web service’s NodePort and dynamically configures Thunder ADC to load-balance traffic to Kubernetes nodes, avoiding manual network-resource provisioning. A10 describes TKC for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud deployments, where Thunder ADC can apply consistent security and business policies across public and private clouds. Centralized traffic routing provides operations teams with application traffic and analytics visibility for troubleshooting. TKC supports Terraform and Ansible for CI/CD integration and is listed as an automated Kubernetes service-discovery option. Related Thunder ADC capabilities include Layer 4–7 load balancing, customizable health checks, aFleX scripting, TLS/SSL offloading, rate limiting and a web application firewall. TKC v2.4.2 is documented for Linux, self-hosted deployments using the ingress API model.

Airlock Microgateway is a Kubernetes-native Web Application and API Protection solution that also serves as an identity-aware proxy. It runs as a container in Kubernetes clusters and is configured through GitOps. The gateway supports Kubernetes Gateway API and is positioned as an upgrade from Ingress NGINX. It validates identities through OIDC, JWT, token exchange or mutual TLS, then applies role- and path-based access control. Protection features include deny rules, CSRF protection, OpenAPI specification enforcement and GraphQL validation against OWASP Top 10 threats. Its Envoy-based reverse proxy supports routing, TLS termination, client certificate authentication and caller IP forwarding. Integrations include Cilium and Istio, and the product is certified for Red Hat OpenShift. Prometheus and Grafana provide monitoring, while logs use ECS format. Deployment can be multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud, but remains self-hosted. Community Edition is free for small environments or local development, with enforced throughput and six-month license validity. The free evaluation license specifies 5 requests per second, at most two replicas per gateway and six-month validity. Premium Edition has no listed price and is intended for enterprise setups.