KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023, Amsterdam, Netherlands – In case you've been napping, API security and management have become a big deal. After all, as Salt Security recently observed, there’s Been a 400% Increase in unique API attackers. That's especially true in Kubernetes, so when Traefik (pronounced traffic) Labs, creator of the popular Traefik ingress controller, launched a Kubernetes-native API management program: Traefik Hub, at KubeCon Europe, it was a big deal.
This service can be used for publishing, securing and managing APIs with support for Traefik and third-party ingress controllers such as NGINX. Their slogan for this project is "Your APIs deserve better." That's both apt and true.
Thanks to the rise of APIs, API-first strategies are becoming more commonplace in organizations. As McKinsey Digital put it: APIs have "become a significant engine of business growth." They are the connective tissue linking technologies and organizations. Existing API management solutions, however, are struggling to deal with their complexities. That's especially true in the cloud-native ecosystem. API users trying to manage their numerous APIs face steep learning curves, growing operational complexity and a lack of deployment flexibility.
The beta Traefik Hub, the company claims, has created a modern, intuitive, and open approach to API management that drastically simplifies and accelerates the API management lifecycle. Given the success of Traefik Ingress, an open-source, HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer with 42.6-thousand GitHub Stars, we don't think that's an idle boast.
How does it do it?
The company explains the program was built with Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) to create a Kubernetes-native API management operating model. This eliminates unnecessary complexity and offers a clean and intuitive configuration experience. Users can group their APIs and facilitate the reuse of the groupings across multiple API initiatives.
It uses a centralized, fully GitOps-compliant control plane to run the show. This control plane simplifies the environment's fleet configuration of API gateways. This eliminates manual configurations. That's a good thing because it drastically reduces the risk of human error. It also helps ensure that your project's service levels are met.
Furthermore, DevOps, site reliability engineers (SRE) and platform engineers can fully leverage Traefik Hub’s strict GitOps compliance to automate common design patterns. So, besides the APIs themselves, developers can more easily manage access control, rate limiting and certificate management. It's no single pane of glass — well, not yet anyway — but it simplified every aspect of API management.
Deployment flexibility
Another design element that potential customers at KubeCon told Silverlinings that they liked was its deployment flexibility. Developers can deploy it with support for third-party ingress controllers across hybrid, multi-cloud and edge environments: Traefik isn't trying to force users into their ecosystem.
The company also claims Traefik Hub fits into any existing Kubernetes architecture with no additional tooling. From our quick look at the software, that appears to be true. If it lives up to its promise, this will provide a seamless experience across any deployment environment. It also provides support for Traefik and third-party ingress controllers. In cloud-native computing, where both open source and open systems are valued, this is no small thing.
“While API management is by no means a new concept, and several API management tools have been around for years, current API management solutions impose invasive changes and steep learning curves,” said Emile Vauge, Traefik Labs's founder and CEO.
He's not wrong. “Now, engineers don't need to change their current tech stack, or learn a new one, to start using Traefik Hub's API management – they can go back to focusing on building great applications.”
And, at the end of the day, that's exactly what cloud developers want from their tools.
The latest version of Traefik Hub is currently in closed Beta. It will be publicly available on May 16.