A hitchhiker's guide to cloud native API gateways

Good APIs are the centerpiece of any successful digital product. But for complex systems with many API consumers, the proper management of these APIs is of utmost importance. The API gateway pattern is well established to handle concerns like routing, versioning, rate limiting, access control, or diagnosability in a cloud native application architecture. Mario-Leander Reimer guides you to cloud native API gateways.
You’ll take a closer look at the cloud native API gateway ecosystem: Ambassador, Gloo, Tyc, KrakenD, etc., and find out which one of these is right for your next project. Leander explains the API gateway pattern with its possible usage scenarios and defines a criteria catalog with essential characteristics in order to compare the current ecosystem. And he puts some of them to the test and demonstrates their usage live and uncut.

Transcript

1. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways
2. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 2 Mario-Leander Reimer Principal Software Architect QAware GmbH
3. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 3 Monolithic Vintage System Users system.example.com
4. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 4 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route
5. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 5 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route Service B Route service-b…
6. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 6 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route Service B Route service-b… Service C Route service-c…
7. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 7 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A’ system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route Service B Route service-b… Service C' Route service-c… 3rd Party Apps
8. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 8 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A’ system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route Service B Route service-b… Service C' Route service-c… 3rd Party Apps B Namespace Service X Service Y Service Z gRPC
9. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 9 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A’ system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route Service B Route service-b… Service C' Route service-c… 3rd Party Apps B Namespace Service X Service Y Service Z’ Unreliable Legacy Systems SOAP gRPC
10. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 10 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A’ system.example.com service-a.default.example.com Route Service B Route service-b… Service C' Route service-c… 3rd Party Apps B Namespace Service X Service Y Service Z’ Unreliable Legacy Systems SOAP gRPC Route Internal Systems
11. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 11 APIs are the center piece of any successful digital product. Proper management of your APIs right from the start is crucial, to not end up in API hell. https://thenewstack.io/history-service-mesh/
12. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 12 APIs are the center piece of any successful digital product. Proper management of your APIs right from the start is crucial, to not end up in API hell. https://thenewstack.io/history-service-mesh/
13. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 13 Users Monolithic Vintage System A Shared PasS A Namespace Service A Service B Service C 3rd Party Apps B Namespace Service X Service Y Service Z Unreliable Legacy Systems SOAP API Gateway Backend for Frontend Internal Systems API Gateway API
14. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 14 API Gateways are like the Façade Pattern in
 Cloud Native Application Design and Microservice Architectures
15. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware • Traffic Management: Path, Header, Host based Routing, Path Rewrite • Rollout and Deployment: A/B Deployment, Canary Release, et.al. • QoS and Resiliency: Circuit Breaker, Retry, Timeouts, Rate Limiting • Security: AAA, Terminate TLS, Support for JWT and JWKS, Open ID, … • Protocol Translation: XML to JSON, gRPC to JSON, … • Transformation: Fan Out / Collect, Backend for Frontend, GraphQL, … • Observability: Integration into Logging, Monitoring, Tracing Stacks 15
16. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 16 W E N S Ingress Egress API Gateways for North-South Communication Service Meshes for East-West Communication
17. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware API Gateways in a Nutshell • Benefits • Encapsulates internal structure of application • Provides client-specific APIs • BFF reduce the number of round trips • Simplifies client code 17 • Drawbacks • Yet another highly available component that needs to be managed and deployed • Risk of becoming a development bottleneck if managed centrally • Business logic in API gateway leads to accidental ESB
18. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware Possible Criteria for a Comparison • Open Source: no initial $$$ and no vendor lock-in please • Maturity: good and active community, little issues, frequent releases • Supported Features: Traffic Management, Deployment, Security, Translation, Transformation, QoS, Resiliency, Observability • DevOps Friendly: Easy setup and operability, supported platforms, CI/CD • Performance: Small overhead, high throughput, super scalable • Observability: good logging, monitoring, tracing capabilities + integration 18
19. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 19
20. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 20
21. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware Four Categories of API Gateways A. Build Your Own API Gateway B. API Management Solutions C. Service Proxies D. Cloud Native API Gateways 21
22. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware A. Build Your Own API Gateway 22 • Several frameworks available: Netflix Zuul 2, Spring Cloud Gateway, Node, Vert.x, Ballerina, Camel (K), Express Gateway, Sentinel • Provides a lot of flexibility. • But: your team needs to develop, maintain and operate the gateway!
23. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware B. API Management Solutions 23 • Several full-blown API Management solutions: Kong, Tyk, Mulesoft, 3scale, Apigee, … • Makes sense in Enterprise use cases. Generally cost $. • Provide additional features such as payment, developer portals with API key management, integrations into enterprise infrastructure. • Usually, centrally deployed and operated for the whole platform and all its applications.
24. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware C. Service Proxies 24 • Many choices: Nginx, OpenResty, Envoy, Traefik, Apache, HA Proxy, … • Lightweight and simple to use. • Provided features vary a lot between products.
25. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware D. Cloud Native API Gateways 25 • Few choices: KrakenD, Ambassador, Gloo • Usually build upon a service proxy such as Envoy and enhance it. • Provide tight integration with cloud native platform, like K8s.
26. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware Demos 26 https://github.com/lreimer/hitchhikers-guide-api-gateways https://speakerdeck.com/lreimer/a-hitchhikers-guide-to-cloud-native-api-gateways
27. | #OReillySACon Berlin 2019 | A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Cloud Native API Gateways | @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware 42. THE ANSWER TO LIFE, UNIVERSE, THE CLOUD AND API GATEWAYS. 27
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