Supporting a large variable amount of ip:port endpoints as a backend

[wtzhang23]

I'm wondering if there is any configuration I missed where I could configure a large number of external endpoints as a backend (>3000). Envoy Gateway's Backend CRD which seems designed for this use case imposes a limit of 64. We are currently thinking of patching our CustomResourceDefinition to support larger number of endpoints but was wondering if there was a more idiomatic way of passing in these configurations (e.g. fetch endpoints outside of etcd through another xDS api like Istio's consul-mcp). EndpointSlices also don't seem appropriate due to our endpoints having variable ports.

New to Envoy Gateway so asking this question here instead of opening up a new issue.

[arkodg]

you could use your custom CRD as an backendRef using the Extension Server
more in #6342

[wtzhang23]

Thanks for the reference; got a prototype working here that seems promising for our use case.

[arkodg]

Ha awesome !
please flag any issues you see that can help improve opex and performance for the extension server
cc @guydc @nareddyt @Xunzhuo @mathetake