How to use an API Gateway | System Design Basics

API Gateway
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Introduction


An 𝗔𝗣𝗜 𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘄𝗮𝘆 is a server that acts as a single point of entry for a set of #microservices

𝗔𝗣𝗜 𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘄𝗮𝘆 receives client requests, forwards them to the appropriate microservice, and then returns the server’s response to the client.

The 𝗔𝗣𝗜 𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘄𝗮𝘆 is responsible for routing, authentication, and rate-limiting tasks. This enables microservices to focus on their individual tasks and improves the overall performance and scalability of the system.

API gateways are used for a variety of purposes in microservice architectures, including the following:

API Gateway 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴:

The API gateway receives client requests and routes them to the appropriate microservice. This enables clients to access the various microservices through a single entry point, simplifying the overall system design.

API Gateway 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:

The API gateway can be used to authenticate clients and enforce access control policies for the microservices. This helps to ensure that only authorized clients can access the microservices and helps to prevent unauthorized access.

API Gateway 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴:

You can rate limit client access to microservices with an API gateway. This can help prevent denial of service attacks and other types of malicious behaviour.

API Gateway 𝗟𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴:

The API gateway can distribute incoming requests among multiple instances of a microservice, enabling the system to handle a more significant number of requests and improving its overall performance and scalability.

API Gateway 𝗖𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴:

The API gateway can cache responses from the microservices, reducing the number of requests that need to be forwarded to the microservices and improving the overall performance of the system.

API Gateway 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴:

The API gateway can collect metrics and other data about requests and responses, providing valuable insights into the performance and behaviour of the microservices. This can help to identify and diagnose problems and improve the overall reliability and resilience of the system.

Get in touch with Rahul.Miglani@Knoldus.com for more insights

Written by 

Rahul Miglani is Vice President at Knoldus and heads the DevOps Practice. He is a DevOps evangelist with a keen focus to build deep relationships with senior technical individuals as well as pre-sales from customers all over the globe to enable them to be DevOps and cloud advocates and help them achieve their automation journey. He also acts as a technical liaison between customers, service engineering teams, and the DevOps community as a whole. Rahul works with customers with the goal of making them solid references on the Cloud container services platforms and also participates as a thought leader in the docker, Kubernetes, container, cloud, and DevOps community. His proficiency includes rich experience in highly optimized, highly available architectural decision-making with an inclination towards logging, monitoring, security, governance, and visualization.