The Ultra Performant API Gateway

Abdullah Fathi

Bengkel DevOps

Pan Borneo, Kota Kinabalu

11 September 2024

Introduction

In today’s digital landscape, managing microservices highlights the need for efficient API Gateways. They facilitate communication between client applications and backend services, enhancing performance, security, and microservice orchestration.

What is ?

Extensible, declarative, high performance open-source API Gateway
Written in Go
Stateless Architecture
Needs no programming as it offers a declarative way to create the endpoints
KrakenD core engine has joined The Linux Foundation on 2021 with a codename Lura Project

Effortlessly adopt microservices

1.

Move from dealing with every particular microservice to talking to a single entry point that handles the interaction with all your microservices

2. Secure by Default

Authorization, protection against scrapping, security best practices and abuse prevention implementation out of the box

3. Scale Out Without Single Points of Failure

Stateless design provides true linear scalability. KrakenD does not require node coordinator or data centralization

KrakenD is more than a typical proxy that forwards clients to backend services, but a powerful engine that can transform, aggregate or remove data from your own or third party services

Performance Benchmarks

~18,000 requests/second on an ordinary laptop

#	Hardware specs	Requests second	Average response
1.	Amazon EC2 (c4.2xlarge)	10126.1613 reqs/s	9.8ms
2.	Amazon EC2 (c4.xlarge)	8465.4012 reqs/s	11.7ms
3.	Amazon EC2 (m4.large)	3634.1247 reqs/s	27.3ms
4.	Amazon EC2 (t2.medium)	2781.8611 reqs/s	351.3ms
5.	Amazon EC2 (t2.micro)	2757.6407 reqs/s	35.8ms
6.	MacBook Pro (Aug 2015) 2,2 GHz Intel Core i7	18157.4274 reqs/s	5.5ms

Performance Benchmarks

For each instance type there are 2 different tests:

Proxy: When the KrakenD is just used as a gateway and calls to a single endpoint to the web server
Aggregate: When the KrakenD calls to 3 different endpoints in the web server and aggregates the results

Instance Type	Number of vCPU	Memory
t2.micro	1	1 GB
t2.medium	2	4 GB
m4.large	2	8 GB
c4.xlarge	4	7.5 GB
c4.2xlarge	8	15 GB

Performance Benchmarks

KrakenD vs other products in the market. Requests per second in equal conditions

https://www.krakend.io/docs/benchmarks/api-gateway-benchmark/

KrakenD: The Leading Performer in API Gateway as proven by the 2023 AGE Study

Performance

KrakenD supports more than 70K req/s on commodity software. They're the fastest and more performant solution in the market.

Low Operational Cost

Higher performance results in lower requirements in terms of resources, allowing you to save costs in your infrastructure

Stateless Design

The stateless design is a competitive advantage over other solutions. It provides a true linear scalability and no need of node coordination

True Linear Scalability

Every KrakenD node can operate independently without any coordination or centralized persistence of configuration needed

What makes KrakenD different from others?

Simple to Operate
and Run

Support from Creators

Rich Open-Source
Ecosystem

No Lock-In

Only need KrakenD binary and a JSON config file to get KrakenD up & running

Rather than "trained" or "sales engineers. you'll receive support and advice from the engineers that coded the software

Able to integrate with standard and proved open-source solutions for every specific task

Integrate with existing solutions in the technical stack, and easily replace them when needed. Compatible to both Community or Enterprise Edition

What makes KrakenD different from others?

What else?

A Feature-Rich Gateway: Supports various protocols and APIs with access controls, data transformation, integrations, and caching.
Customizable to Your Needs: Add features via plugin system, tailoring KrakenD to your requirements.
Innovative Content Aggregation: A pioneer in the Backend For Frontend pattern, KrakenD aggregates multiple APIs in one call, handling different encodings.
Uncompromised Security: Compliant with OWASP best practices, KrakenD offers top security without storing data, ensuring regulatory compliance.
Transparent, Predictable Pricing: The pricing model includes unlimited requests and services, with a free open-source version and an Enterprise Edition for premium features and support.

What else?

A Feature-Rich Gateway: Supports a variety of protocols and API specifications, offering fine-grained access controls, data transformation, multiple integrations, and caching.
Customizability to Cater to Your Needs: Add custom features through our plugin system, extending KrakenD to fit your unique requirements.
Innovative Content Aggregation: KrakenD is a pioneer in implementing the Backend For Frontend pattern. It aggregates responses from multiple APIs in a single call, translating different encodings seamlessly.
Uncompromised Security: Aligned with OWASP best practices and a certified CNA, KrakenD offers top-notch security. Our software doesn't store any data, ensuring compliance with stringent data regulation policies.
Transparent, Predictable Pricing: Our pricing model includes unlimited requests and APIs/services, ensuring transparency and predictability. Our open-source community version is free and unlimited, and our Enterprise Edition offers a premium feature layer with expert support