1. Proposed Title of the Feature Request
"Prevent router-default pods from scaling down to zero to ensure OCP console and CLI availability"

2. Nature and Description of the Request
Nature of the Request:
Introduce a mechanism to prevent router-default pods from scaling down to zero replicas in OpenShift. Similar to the image-registry behavior, even when replicas: 0 is set, the pods should remain running, and the related component/operator should display a degraded status instead.

Description:
The router-default pods play a critical role in providing external access to the OpenShift Console and CLI login. Allowing these pods to scale down to zero results in a complete outage of these services, rendering the cluster inaccessible to external users. This request proposes implementing a safeguard mechanism where setting replicas: 0 on the ingresscontroller/default does not affect the router-default deployment. Instead, a degraded status should be reported, ensuring continuous service availability.

3. Why Does the Customer Need This?
Business Requirements:

Ensure High Availability: Preventing outages of the OCP web console and CLI login is crucial for uninterrupted cluster operations, especially in production environments.
Cluster Accessibility: Maintaining at least one router-default pod ensures external users can access critical cluster entry points for managing workloads and troubleshooting issues.
Error Mitigation: This feature minimizes the risk of outages caused by intentional or unintentional configuration changes (e.g., setting replicas: 0).
Operational Consistency: Aligning this behavior with the existing mechanism for image-registry pods promotes consistent and predictable operator handling.

4. List of Affected Packages or Components
IngressController (openshift-ingress-operator)
Router-default Deployment (openshift-ingress namespace)
Ingress Operator