Ace the ITGSS DevOps Challenge 2026 – Elevate Your Engineering Game!

In the context of Kubernetes networking, the term "ingress" specifically refers to the traffic that is entering the cluster from external networks. This concept is crucial because it defines how external entities can interact with services running within the Kubernetes environment.

Ingress in Kubernetes is managed through an Ingress resource and controller, which provide rules and configuration to manage the routing of external HTTP(S) traffic to the appropriate services within the cluster. By utilizing ingress, users can expose services to the outside world while controlling access and performing tasks such as SSL termination, path-based routing, and load-balancing.

This is distinctly different from the other options. For instance, traffic leaving the cluster pertains to egress, which is governed by different rules and practices. Internal communication between pods relates to the use of services and network policy for intra-cluster communication, and data storage in the cluster refers to persistent storage solutions and volumes, not network traffic. Thus, the correct identification of ingress as the incoming traffic from external networks highlights its importance in managing how the cluster interfaces with the outside world.