API gateway

Overall flowchart

                                                                   ┌──────────────────┐                 
                                                                   │      Client      │                 
                                                                   └──────────────────┘                 
                                                                             │                          
                                                                             ▼                          
                           Step 2.                                 ┌──────────────────┐                 
       ┌────────────────────Watch ─────────────────────────────────│     Gateway      │                 
       │                   changes                                 └──────────────────┘                 
       │                                                                     │                          
       │        ┌────────────┐                                               │                          
       │        │Control     │      Step 5. Command to restart               │                          
       │        │center      │◀──────────business logic 1────────────────────┤                          
       │        │service     │                                               │                          
       │        └────────────┘                                               │                          
       ▼               │                                        Step3.       ├──────────────────┐       
┌─────────────┐        │                        ┌─────────────Establish ─────┤                  │       
│   Service   │        │                        │                Long        │                  │       
│Registration │        │                        │                            │                  │       
└─────────────┘        │                        │                            │                  │       
       ▲               │                        │                            │                  │       
       │        Step 6: Restart                 │                            │                  │       
       │        business logic                  │                            ▼                  ▼       
       │            unit 1   ┌──────────────────┼────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
       │               │     │                  ▼                │  │                 │  │             │
 Step 1. register      │     │   ┌────────────────────────────┐  │  │                 │  │             │
    IP:Port and        │     │   │Thread for business logic   │  │  │                 │  │             │
    establish a        │     │   │                            │  │  │                 │  │             │
  connection for       │     │   │   Step 4. Agent/Process    │  │  │                 │  │             │
     heartbeat         │     │   │  for business logic dies   │  │  │                 │  │             │
       │               │     │   │      for some reason       │  │  │                 │  │             │
       │               │     │   └────────────────────────────┘  │  │                 │  │             │
       │               │     │                                   │  │                 │  │             │
       │               │     │   ┌────────────────────────────┐  │  │                 │  │             │
       └───────────────┼─────┼───│Agent for heartbeat         │  │  │                 │  │             │
                       │     │   └────────────────────────────┘  │  │                 │  │             │
                       │     │                                   │  │                 │  │             │
                       │     │   ┌────────────────────────────┐  │  │ Business logic  │  │  Business   │
                       │     │   │Agent for restart           │  │  │    unit ...     │  │logic unit n │
                       │     │   │a). Kill agent for heartbeat│  │  └─────────────────┘  └─────────────┘
                       │     │   │b). Sleep long enough to    │  │           │                          
                       └─────┼──▶│wait removal of the entry   │  │           │                          
                             │   │within service registration │  │           ▼                          
                             │   │c). Restart the unit        │  │  ┌─────────────────┐                 
                             │   └────────────────────────────┘  │  │Data access layer│                 
                             │                                   │  │                 │                 
                             │                                   │  └─────────────────┘                 
                             │                                   │           │                          
                             │       Business logic unit 1       │           │                          
                             │                                   │           ▼                          
                             │                                   │  ┌─────────────────┐                 
                             └───────────────────────────────────┘  │    Database     │                 
                                                                    │                 │                 
                                                                    └─────────────────┘

Gateway architecture

Revolution history

Initial architecture

Only need to support web browser

BFF (Backend for frontEnd) layer

BFF layer exists to perform the following:
- Security logic: If internal services are directly exposed on the web, there will be security risks. BFF layer could hide these internal services
- Aggregation/Filter logic: Wireless service will typically need to perform filter (e.g. Cutting images due to the device size) / fit (client's customized requirements). BFF layer could perform these operations
However, BFF contains both business and cross-cutting logic over time.

Gateway layer and Cluster BFF Layer

BFF contains too many cross-cutting logic such as
- Rate limiting
- Auth
- Monitor
Gateway is introduced to deal with these cross cutting concerns.

Clustered BFF and Gateway layer

Cluster implementation is introduced to remove single point of failure.

Gateway vs reverse proxy

Web Age: Reverse proxy (e.g. HA Proxy/Nginx) has existed since the web age
- However, in microservice age, quick iteration requires dynamic configuration
MicroService Age: Gateway is introduce to support dynamic configuration
- However, in cloud native age, gateway also needs to support dynamic programming such as green-blue deployment
Cloud native Age: Service mesh and envoy are proposed because of this.

Reverse Proxy (Nginx)

Use cases

Use distributed cache while skipping application servers: Use Lua scripts on top of Nginx so Redis could be directly served from Nginx instead of from web app (Java service applications whose optimization will be complicated such as JVM/multithreading)
Provides high availability for backend services
- Failover config: proxy_next_upstream. Failure type could be customized, such as Http status code 5XX, 4XX, ...
- Avoid failover avalanche config: proxy_next_upstream_tries limit number. Number of times to fail over

Gateway internals

API Gateway has become a pattern: https://freecontent.manning.com/the-api-gateway-pattern/
Please see this comparison (in Chinese)

Gateway comparison

Service discovery

Approach - Hardcode service provider addresses

Pros:
- Update will be much faster
Cons:
- Load balancer is easy to become the single point of failure
- Load balancing strategy is inflexible in microservice scenarios. TODO: Details to be added.
- All traffic volume needs to pass through load balancer, results in some performance cost.

                                   ┌────────────────┐                                    
                                   │   DNS Server   │                                    
         ┌────────────────────────▶│                │              ┌────────────────────┐
         │                         └────────────────┘              │ Service provider 1 │
         │                                                 ┌──────▶│                    │
         │                                                 │       └────────────────────┘
         │                                                 │                             
         │             ┌────────────────────────────┐      │                             
┌────────────────┐     │Load balancer               │      │       ┌────────────────────┐
│Service consumer│     │                            │      │       │Service provider ...│
│                │────▶│service provider 1 address  │──────┼──────▶│                    │
└────────────────┘     │service provider ... address│      │       └────────────────────┘
                       │service provider N address  │      │                             
                       └────────────────────────────┘      │                             
                                                           │       ┌────────────────────┐
                                                           │       │ Service provider N │
                                                           └──────▶│                    │
                                                                   └────────────────────┘

Approach - Service registration center

Pros:
- No single point of failure.
- No additional hop for load balancing
For details on service registration implementation, please refer to [Service registration center]((https://github.com/DreamOfTheRedChamber/system-design/blob/master/serviceRegistry.md))

How to detect failure

Heatbeat messages: Tcp connect, HTTP, HTTPS
Detecting failure should not only rely on the heartbeat msg, but also include the application's health. There is a chance that the node is still sending heartbeat msg but application is not responding for some reason. (Psedo-dead)

Detect failure

centralized and decentralized failure detecting: https://time.geekbang.org/column/article/165314
heartbeat mechanism: https://time.geekbang.org/column/article/175545
https://iswade.github.io/database/db_internals_ch09_failure_detection/#-accrual

How to gracefully shutdown

Problem: Two RPC calls are involved in the process
1. Service provider notifies registration center about offline plan for certain nodes
2. Registration center notifies clients to remove certain nodes clients' copy of service registration list

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                               Within the Shutdown Hook                               │
│                     (e.g. Java's Runtime.addShutdownHook method)                     │
│                              ┌──────────────────┐                                    │
│                              │For requests which│                                    │
│                        ┌───▶ │happens before    │───────┐                            │
│                        │     │flag is turned on,│       │        ┌──────────────────┐│
│ ┌──────────────────┐   │     └──────────────────┘       │        │Close the machine ││
│ │Turn on the       │   │                                ├───────▶│                  ││
│ │shutdown flag upon│───┴┐                               │        │                  ││
│ │hook is triggered │    │                               │        └──────────────────┘│
│ └──────────────────┘    │    ┌──────────────────┐       │                            │
│                         │    │For new request,  │       │                            │
│                         └───▶│notify the caller │───────┘                            │
│                              │about the closure │                                    │
│                              └──────────────────┘                                    │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

How to gracefully start

Problem: If a service provider node receives large volume of traffic without prewarm, it is easy to cause failures. How to make sure a newly started node won't receive large volume of traffic?

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                     Within the start Hook                                     │
│                                                                                               │
│                 ┌───────────────────────────┐    ┌───────────────────────────┐    ┌─────────┐ │
│  ┌─────────┐    │Register the node info and │    │                           │    │         │ │
│  │ Service │    │     start time within     │    │  Adaptive load balancer   │    │         │ │
│  │provider │    │    registration center    │    │  based on the start time  │    │Finished │ │
│  │  node   │───▶│                           │───▶│                           │───▶│pre-warm │ │
│  │ starts  │    │    Service: addToCart     │    │ +10% weight every certain │    │         │ │
│  │         │    │ Address: 192.168.1.2:9080 │    │          period           │    │         │ │
│  └─────────┘    │StartTime: 02172020-11:34pm│    │                           │    │         │ │
│                 └───────────────────────────┘    └───────────────────────────┘    └─────────┘ │
│                                                                                               │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Future readings

https://blog.51cto.com/cloumn/detail/6

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Last updated 7 months ago