July 2020 Summaries

Dynamic routing in Kong can be efficiently managed using various techniques to address different use cases, such as URL rewriting and header-based routing to adapt to changes in service structures or API versions. Kong's API gateway allows for the setup of services and routes, enabling requests to be proxied to the appropriate upstream service. A common use case involves rewriting requested URLs to ensure client calls remain unaffected by backend changes, achieved through URL rewriting. Additionally, routing based on headers can direct requests to different upstream services, allowing for scenarios like A/B testing or gradual user migration to new API versions. The route-by-header plugin facilitates this by routing requests based on specified header values. Another technique involves the use of the route-transformer-advanced plugin, which allows dynamic routing adjustments, such as changing the upstream server based on request headers or URI parts, enhancing flexibility for scenarios where services are hosted on different instances for various end customers. These capabilities offer robust solutions for dynamic routing, catering to a wide range of customer needs and enabling efficient service management in complex environments.

Cargill, a major global player in food and agriculture, has partnered with Kong and AWS to enhance its digital infrastructure, transitioning from a legacy IT system to a modern, cloud-native microservices architecture. This transformation enables Cargill to address evolving customer needs more effectively by increasing agility and reducing latency, crucial for deploying high-performance services. By integrating Kong's lightweight and flexible platform with AWS's services, including EKS and Kubernetes, Cargill has achieved significant improvements, such as up to 65 times faster deployment times, the launch of over 450 new digital services within six months, and dynamic auto-scaling capabilities. The collaboration also simplifies API management and monitoring across Cargill's complex architecture, facilitating quicker market introductions and better management of services in production.

Kong Enterprise offers a range of out-of-the-box plugins for access control solutions, but for non-standard or custom security requirements, developing a custom Kong plugin is a viable option. This approach is particularly beneficial when integrating with in-house authentication and authorization services, as it simplifies microservices by centralizing security logic within Kong. The process involves developing a custom plugin, such as "custom-auth," which includes defining a configuration schema and implementing core logic to validate JWT tokens and check user permissions. This plugin structure includes files like schema.lua for configuration and handler.lua for executing token introspection and permission checks. Once the plugin is developed, it can be deployed and tested in Kong Enterprise to ensure it manages API access effectively. The ability to extend Kong with custom plugins allows for seamless integration with existing systems, ensuring current and future security needs can be met, which is a key advantage for Kong users.

Tech conferences, once bustling hubs for idea exchange and networking, are fondly remembered by the author, who recounts attending a session at North American KubeCon in San Diego. The session introduced K3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution optimized for IoT and Edge Computing, developed by Rancher Labs. The author shares a personal project involving K3s and Kong Gateway, aiming to expose services within a K3s server, highlighting the necessity of Kong for its plugin functionalities. The guide details the installation and configuration of K3s on Ubuntu, the deployment of Kong Ingress Controller, and the use of a rate-limiting plugin, demonstrating how Kong can manage traffic to Kubernetes applications. The author appreciates the flexibility offered by Kong’s plugins, suggesting their usefulness in home automation projects, and invites further inquiries via email.