[Alan] From nginx to Envoy: What Actually Happens When You Swap Your Proxy in Production

Alan's team faced the challenge of migrating from the nginx Ingress Controller to Envoy Gateway after Kubernetes announced the deprecation of nginx. Collaborating with Qovery, their platform provider, they followed a phased approach to ensure a smooth transition across over a hundred services, which included deploying Envoy alongside nginx for shadow testing, before making Envoy the primary controller, and eventually phasing out nginx. Although the migration seemed straightforward on paper, it presented unexpected challenges such as the "204 Empty Response Bug," "Port Mismatch Outage," and "0KB File Mystery," which were addressed through quick debugging and fixes. The experience underscored the importance of having robust production observability, fast rollback mechanisms, and a culture that emphasizes transparency and shared responsibility over blame. Qovery's responsive support and flexible timelines were crucial to the project's success, highlighting the value of strong partnerships in navigating infrastructure changes. Alan's journey reflects the necessity of being prepared for inevitable infrastructure evolution, leveraging the right tools and partnerships to turn potential disruptions into manageable changes.

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