Supported Versions and Interoperability

This document outlines the compatibility between API7 Enterprise components and supported third-party software.

Component Interoperability

API7 Enterprise validates same-version Control Plane (CP) and Data Plane (DP) releases in its release QA. During upgrades, newer CP minor versions can continue to manage older DP minor versions temporarily so you can roll the upgrade forward without downtime.

Scenario	Compatibility
CP and DP on the same release line (recommended)	Full support
Newer CP minor version with older DP minor version during upgrade	Supported for rolling upgrades
Older CP minor version with newer DP minor version	Not recommended

Keep CP and DP versions aligned after each upgrade. If you temporarily run mixed versions during a rolling upgrade, check the status of each DP node in the CP and upgrade any instances flagged as incompatible.

Infrastructure Compatibility

Ensure your infrastructure components are within the supported version range.

Kubernetes versions

API7 Enterprise requires Kubernetes 1.25 or later. The Control Plane and Data Plane Helm charts depend only on standard Kubernetes primitives (Deployments, StatefulSets, Services, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Ingress) and have no hard pin to a specific API version, so any Kubernetes release in the upstream support window should work. API7 engineering runs its CI e2e suite against the latest kind default Kubernetes release.

Cloud platforms

API7 Enterprise is regularly deployed on the following managed Kubernetes services. Use any version supported by your cloud provider that is 1.25 or later:

• AWS EKS
• GCP GKE
• Azure AKS
• Red Hat OpenShift — see Deploy on OpenShift for SCC and service account specifics.

Database support

PostgreSQL is the primary and recommended storage backend for API7 Enterprise. All official installers (Helm chart, Docker Compose, quick-start scripts) ship with PostgreSQL, and all production deployment guidance in this documentation targets PostgreSQL. In addition, the Control Plane also supports MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server as alternative storage backends — pick one of these only if your organization has a strong operational reason to use a specific RDBMS.

Database	Role	Supported versions	DSN scheme
PostgreSQL	Primary (recommended)	12.x – 18.x (Helm chart ships 15.x by default; 16, 17, and 18 are covered in the release CI matrix)	postgres://user:pass@host:5432/api7ee
MySQL	Also supported	5.7, 8.x	mysql://user:pass@tcp(host:3306)/api7ee
Microsoft SQL Server	Also supported	2019, 2022	sqlserver://user:pass@host:1433?database=api7ee

note

Helm values, Docker Compose examples, and backup/restore procedures in this documentation assume PostgreSQL. If you deploy API7 Enterprise against MySQL or SQL Server, adapt the database.dsn value in your Control Plane configuration accordingly and use the native mysqldump / sqlcmd tooling for backups instead of pg_dump.

Plugin Compatibility

API7 Enterprise is compatible with standard Apache APISIX plugins. Enterprise-only plugins require specific CP and DP versions to function correctly.

Plugin Type	CP Version	DP Version
Standard (Open Source)	v3.1+	v3.1+
Enterprise Features	v3.2+	v3.2+
AI Gateway Plugins	v3.2+	v3.2+

Client tools

Tools used to interact with the API7 Control Plane.

Tool	Supported versions
ADC (API Declarative CLI)	Use the latest release. API7 Enterprise build pipelines always pair each Control Plane release with the latest ADC version.
kubectl	v1.25 or later (match your target cluster version)
Helm	v3.10 or later