api gateway for spring boot microservices in open shift

Question

We have a microservices based application running in openshift for which we need to design an API gateway.

This API gateway is expected to perform minimal checks like authentication , routing to appropriate micro services , logging , tracing etc ( Authorisation would be handled by respective micro services )

Should we go for a commercial product ( nginx , Red Hat OpenShift API gateway) or an open source spring cloud gateway would suffice ?

Please note these APIs are not exposed to external world and does not need all features of a full fledged API gateway like developer portal ,usage limits by consumer etc.

Answer 1

Should we go for a commercial product ( nginx , Red Hat OpenShift API gateway) or an open source spring cloud gateway would suffice ?

Open-source version of Kong will work also.

i would suggest to check & read this article first : https://medium.com/@harsh.manvar111/api-gateway-identity-server-comparison-ec439468cc8a

You can check for the Kong API gateway once, as it supports authentication & authorization with API key along with options like OIDC, JWT, and many plugin supports.

As you don't require a developer portal otherwise there is a good option Konga.

Kong is very lightweight and in the background runs on the Nginx platform has verities of the plugin supports also and good community support.

There is also a plugin for logging & monitoring you can attach or enable them use them and Kong will forward the data to the central log system.

People also use Kong at edge & service mesh internally for mtls and networking if required.

we been using Kong for a long and have written some good articles on Kong & keycloak also if you are using Keycloak IAM. : https://faun.pub/securing-the-application-with-kong-keycloak-101-e25e0ae9ec56

You can also check out basic setup of Kong & Konga : https://faun.pub/kong-api-gateway-with-konga-dashboard-ae95b6d1fec7

Kong installation : https://docs.konghq.com/enterprise/2.5.x/deployment/installation/docker/

There is also another API gateway called : https://wso2.com/api-manager/