July 2021 Summaries

The tutorial provides a comprehensive guide on deploying a gRPC service to Kubernetes and making it accessible externally using Kong's Kubernetes Ingress Controller, with a practical example featuring a service that delivers quotes from the science fiction novel "Dune." It outlines the foundational aspects of gRPC, which uses HTTP2 for transport and Protocol Buffer (Protobuf) for interface definitions, highlighting its advantages over traditional REST APIs, such as bidirectional streaming and efficient binary encoding. The author demonstrates setting up a Kubernetes deployment with TLS security using a self-signed certificate, configuring the Kong Ingress Controller and cert-manager to automate certificate management, and integrating these with the gRPCS protocol for secure communication. The tutorial concludes by testing the service using Insomnia to verify the functionality of the GetQuote and GetQuoteStream methods, and it encourages readers to explore further Kubernetes tutorials and engage with the Kong community for additional support and resources.

A recent digital outage highlighted the critical role of Domain Name System (DNS) services and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in maintaining the uptime and security of online platforms. The outage, caused by a software bug, affected a major distributed edge computing platform's DNS, leading to widespread downtime and illustrating the costly impact on businesses reliant on continuous service availability. APIs, essential for connecting software components, face threats from poor performance and ineffective security, necessitating robust management to prevent downtime and security breaches. Effective API performance requires optimizing availability and latency, while security demands strict access control and traffic management to prevent unauthorized access and cyberattacks. Solutions like API gateways can enhance performance by providing scalable, reliable, and secure connectivity. Modernizing API infrastructure through decentralized architecture and traffic management plugins can mitigate risks, ensuring consistent application availability and safeguarding organizations from potential digital disasters.

API gateway request transformation policies offer significant flexibility and power for developers needing to modify the structure and content of incoming requests to better fit their APIs. These transformations can be particularly useful when transitioning between API specifications, correcting longstanding documentation errors, or enhancing security by filtering sensitive data. The text explores the use of request transformations via the Kong Gateway and its built-in Request Transformer plugin, which allows developers to manipulate headers, query strings, request bodies, and HTTP methods. Through practical examples, the text demonstrates various transformations such as copying API keys from query strings to headers, sanitizing sensitive data, and converting request methods, all of which can be configured effortlessly within Kong's declarative setup. The ability to perform these transformations at the gateway level without altering the upstream service provides developers with a versatile tool to maintain seamless API operations while addressing evolving requirements.

A true service mesh focuses on managing and orchestrating global connectivity rather than creating separate meshes for each use case, thereby allowing for scalability and integration across different environments. In this context, Kuma and Kong Mesh use a global control plane as the central interaction point for API management, distributing configurations to various zones and services. Each zone contains control planes and Envoy instances that use Kuma DNS for local resource resolution, while mutual TLS (mTLS) facilitates secure traffic routing. The process involves setting up a control plane, deploying zones, and applying traffic policies to enable seamless communication across environments, such as AWS EKS and vSphere clusters. This setup supports multi-zone deployments and progressive delivery, which optimizes traffic flow and deployment speed, ensuring efficient application connectivity and interaction. The tutorial emphasizes using tools like kubectx for context switching, Helm for installations, and traffic policies to manage service mesh operations, offering insights into advanced connectivity strategies with Kuma and Kong Mesh.

NexJ, a leader in intelligent customer management for the financial services industry, detailed their journey in transitioning from a monolithic architecture to an API-first approach using Kong Gateway, an open-source API management tool. To achieve scalability and enhanced security, NexJ integrated Kong with their existing identity provider, leveraging plugins such as OpenID Connect for JWT token validation and Key Authentication for client verification. The microservices architecture was deployed on Kubernetes, using tools like the Kong Ingress Controller for efficient service routing and load balancing. The architecture emphasizes zero-trust security with mutual TLS for communication between microservices and strict data isolation across environments. NexJ employed a declarative approach using YAML files for configuring Kong and Kubernetes resources, allowing for version control and ease of rollback. Moving forward, NexJ plans to expand their use of Kong’s Development Portal for API tracing, enhance observability, and explore Kong Konnect to reduce operational overhead, aligning with their API-first strategy.

NexJ, a leader in intelligent customer management for the financial services industry, embarked on a transition from a monolithic architecture to an API-first model to better accommodate both large and smaller, cloud-centric clients. The company, which serves major clients like Wells Fargo and the Royal Bank of Canada, faced challenges scaling its on-premises deployments, especially for smaller firms that preferred cloud solutions. To address these challenges, NexJ adopted an API-first approach with Kong Gateway, allowing for seamless integration and connectivity within financial services ecosystems. This strategy enabled the company to efficiently serve multiple clients, reduce costs, and enhance the flexibility of deployments without compromising existing operations. By choosing Kong, NexJ was able to maintain a consistent interface, ensure secure third-party integrations, and provide a robust development environment through Kong's Dev Portal, thus aligning with global financial industry standards. The company plans to expand its use of Kong for monitoring API usage and implementing GitOps integration, while evaluating Kong's new service connectivity platform, Kong Konnect, as part of their ongoing architectural evolution.

The article provides a comprehensive guide on building a simple gRPC server using Node.js and demonstrates how to use Insomnia, a popular API client, to make gRPC requests. It begins by outlining core concepts of gRPC, a protocol for remote procedure calls that allows for cross-platform, language-neutral service connections. The guide details the four types of gRPC service methods: unary, client-streaming, server-streaming, and bidirectional streaming, with practical examples focusing on unary, client-streaming, and server-streaming methods. The project involves creating a gRPC server that supplies real-time data about the International Space Station, utilizing the Open Notify API. The article walks through setting up the server, writing a Protocol Buffer file to define service methods, and implementing the server's functionality with Node.js. It then explains how to use Insomnia to send different types of gRPC requests to the server, highlighting Insomnia's capabilities in API testing, including features like bidirectional streaming, request canceling, and template tags. The article concludes by encouraging further exploration of gRPC and Insomnia's API testing tools, providing a foundation in gRPC server development and Insomnia usage.

For the first time, Kong Summit 2021 will feature the Cloud Connectivity Innovator Awards, recognizing individuals and teams that have utilized Kong's technology for digital transformation. This hybrid event, where participants can attend either virtually or in-person, will host developers, architects, and business leaders to explore tools and ideas for secure connectivity. The awards aim to honor innovative projects or use cases that enhance end-to-end connectivity in modern software environments, with nominees evaluated on challenges faced, uniqueness, and differentiators. Submissions are open until August 24, 2021, with winners announced in early September and celebrated at the summit on September 28, 2021. Winners will receive a trophy, social media recognition, and a charitable donation made by Kong's co-founders on their behalf.

Kong Gateway (OSS) 2.5 introduces a new Performance Testing Framework to enhance the performance benchmark capabilities of the gateway, allowing users to assess and debug performance bottlenecks efficiently, which is crucial for maintaining robust production systems. This update also strengthens the Hybrid Mode foundation, adding features like upstream health check endpoints on the Data Plane and improved compatibility checks for Control and Data Planes, aiming to enhance observability and resiliency. The release includes significant plugin updates, such as improvements to the HMAC Authentication plugin to support the @request-target field, facility configuration options in the Syslog plugin, and new metrics for the Prometheus plugin to assist in troubleshooting. Additionally, support for new tags in the Zipkin plugin facilitates better tracing of API requests. The update acknowledges the contributions of several community members who played a vital role in this release.

Over the past decade, the focus for tech startups has shifted from speed to agility, emphasizing the ability to swiftly replicate and adopt market innovations while maintaining existing systems and practices. Agility involves leveraging existing momentum and integrating legacy systems with modern architectures. This can be achieved using service meshes like Kuma or Kong Mesh, which enable connectivity across varied environments and protocols, facilitating the transition from monolithic to microservices architectures. An example illustrates this by detailing how a service mesh can connect a legacy VM-based natural language processor to a Kubernetes environment, allowing for continued operation and gradual integration despite internal challenges. This approach provides temporary solutions and preserves policy enforcement and connectivity, highlighting the strategic importance of maintaining service connectivity to enhance business agility.

APIs, traditionally a tool for programmers, have evolved into essential business assets facilitating inter-application communication and driving innovation across various industries. They enable organizations to modernize legacy systems, improve customer experiences, and rapidly develop new digital products by serving as modular, reusable components akin to corporate "lego bricks." This transformation has allowed APIs to become central to business strategies, supporting the development of data-rich, automated, and intelligent systems across sectors such as healthcare, finance, and transportation. Companies like Google Maps and Tesla have built their success around APIs, leveraging them to offer new digital experiences and services, while enterprises like SpaceX utilize APIs for complex tasks such as space exploration. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted APIs' critical role in public health management, showcasing their capacity to facilitate rapid information sharing and response coordination. As APIs continue to advance, they are expected to fuel the next industrial revolution, connecting applications, companies, and communities in unprecedented ways, with companies like Kong playing a pivotal role in managing and scaling these digital transformations.

The transition from Dockerized applications to orchestrated deployments using Kubernetes represents a significant advancement in managing software environments, offering scalability and high availability. This tutorial guides users through deploying a Dockerized application consisting of a web server, database, and key-value store to a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). It demonstrates the use of Kong's Kubernetes Ingress Controller to manage external access and introduces the integration of Kong plugins for enhanced functionality. The process involves creating a GKE cluster, configuring it using kubectl, and setting up an ingress controller to facilitate communication between the external world and the K8s services. Additionally, the tutorial covers the implementation of cert-manager for HTTPS support and the application of plugins such as HTTP Log and Correlation ID to customize traffic handling and enhance observability within the Kubernetes environment. This walkthrough provides a comprehensive foundation for deploying Dockerized applications to Kubernetes with advanced features like secure access and logging capabilities.

In this article, Viktor Gamov, a developer advocate with Kong, guides readers through setting up service connectivity using Kong Konnect and Kubernetes. The process involves deploying an application within a Kubernetes cluster, configuring a runtime using Konnect, and showcasing management capabilities like enabling plugins. The setup begins with preparing a Kubernetes cluster and installing Helm for deploying Kong Gateway and Ingress Controller. A secure connection is established between the control plane and the data plane, followed by the creation of secrets in Kubernetes. The article details creating a mock service through Konnect, demonstrating how requests are proxied through Kong Gateway, and emphasizes managing API gateways by configuring services and implementations within the Konnect UI. Additionally, Gamov explains the application of rate limiting and request validator policies to manage traffic and request validation, highlighting the power of Kong's plugins in enhancing service functionality without altering the application itself. The article concludes by inviting readers to try Kong Konnect with a free trial and explore further tutorials for optimizing their developer pipeline.

Kong API Summit 2021, themed "Developing the Connected World," is scheduled for September 27-30, aiming to equip participants with the skills to advance organizational transformation and innovation through connectivity. The event will focus on integrating clouds, architectures, and APIs to achieve comprehensive connectivity in modern enterprises, building on the existing momentum in digital transformation driven by Kubernetes and microservices. It invites attendees to share their insights and learn from others, with a call for speakers open and a session request form available. Following last year's virtual attendance of over 3,500 people, this year promises to be even larger, with more information on registration and the agenda forthcoming.

MS3, a company specializing in enterprise integration software, cloud migration strategies, and API enablement, has developed Tavros, an enterprise integration platform designed to streamline technical issues like logging, tracing, and security. Tavros leverages Kong Gateway as an API manager and Kuma service mesh to provide observability, security, and continuous delivery, enabling companies to focus on their competitive advantages. The platform supports containerization and is independent of specific languages and frameworks, allowing flexibility in deployment. Tavros utilizes open-source components like Elastic, Jaeger, Jenkins, and Flux to achieve its goals, with Kuma managing observability and providing mutual TLS (mTLS) by default to enhance security. This setup simplifies application delivery in a microservices architecture, addressing key software concerns and allowing application developers to concentrate on business value.