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Version: 3.9.x

Configure Fault Injection

Chaos engineering is essential for building reliable systems. The fault-injection plugin allows you to test your application's resilience by simulating failures and latency at the Gateway level before requests reach your upstream services.

Prerequisites​

  • An API7 Enterprise instance is running.
  • A Gateway Group is created and a Gateway instance is running.
  • A token from the Dashboard.

Configure HTTP Aborts​

You can return specific HTTP status codes to a percentage of requests to simulate service failures.

curl -k "https://localhost:7443/apisix/admin/services/fault-injection-service?gateway_group_id={gateway_group_id}" -X PUT \
  -H "X-API-KEY: ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "fault-injection-service",
    "upstream": {
      "type": "roundrobin",
      "scheme": "http",
      "nodes": [
        {
          "host": "httpbin.org",
          "port": 80,
          "weight": 100
        }
      ]
    }
  }'

curl -k "https://localhost:7443/apisix/admin/routes/fault-injection-route?gateway_group_id={gateway_group_id}" -X PUT \
  -H "X-API-KEY: ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "fault-injection-route",
    "paths": ["/get"],
    "service_id": "fault-injection-service",
    "plugins": {
      "fault-injection": {
        "abort": {
          "http_status": 503,
          "body": "Service Temporarily Unavailable",
          "percentage": 10
        }
      }
    }
  }'

Configure Response Delays​

You can also simulate slow network conditions or backend latency by delaying responses.

curl -k "https://localhost:7443/apisix/admin/services/delay-fault-injection-service?gateway_group_id={gateway_group_id}" -X PUT \
  -H "X-API-KEY: ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "delay-fault-injection-service",
    "upstream": {
      "type": "roundrobin",
      "scheme": "http",
      "nodes": [
        {
          "host": "httpbin.org",
          "port": 80,
          "weight": 100
        }
      ]
    }
  }'

curl -k "https://localhost:7443/apisix/admin/routes/delay-fault-injection-route?gateway_group_id={gateway_group_id}" -X PUT \
  -H "X-API-KEY: ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "delay-fault-injection-route",
    "paths": ["/delay/5"],
    "service_id": "delay-fault-injection-service",
    "plugins": {
      "fault-injection": {
        "delay": {
          "duration": 5,
          "percentage": 20
        }
      }
    }
  }'

Validate the Configuration​

To validate an abort configuration with a 10% percentage, send multiple requests:

for i in {1..20}; do curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9080/get"; done

You should see some requests receiving the injected 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable response. For delays, the curl command should hang for the configured duration when the fault is injected.

To verify the delay example, measure a few requests against the delay route:

time curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9080/delay/5"

If the route returns 404 immediately after you apply the configuration, wait a few seconds for the latest configuration to reach the gateway and retry.

Next Steps​