System Requirements
Ensure your environment meets the following requirements before installing API7 Enterprise.
Hardware Requirements
The hardware requirements depend on the expected traffic volume and the number of active plugins.
Control Plane (CP)
The control plane manages configurations and provides the dashboard.
| Metric | Minimum (Dev/Test) | Recommended (Prod) |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 2 Cores | 4 Cores |
| Memory | 4 GB | 8 GB |
| Disk | 20 GB | 100 GB (SSD recommended) |
Use the production values above as a starting point. For larger deployments, size the control plane primarily by the number of gateway instances it manages, the volume of configuration changes, and whether you enable observability features such as embedded Prometheus. If you expect frequent config churn or many connected data planes, add CPU and memory headroom and validate the deployment under your own workload before rollout.
Data Plane (DP)
The data plane processes API traffic. Scale the data plane horizontally as traffic increases.
| Metric | Minimum (Dev/Test) | Recommended (Prod) |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1 Core | 4+ Cores |
| Memory | 2 GB | 8+ GB |
| Disk | 10 GB | 40 GB (SSD recommended) |
Plugin count and plugin type directly affect data plane sizing. Lightweight proxy workloads can stay close to the baseline above, while authentication, rate limiting, body transformation, AI, logging, and other policy-heavy routes require more CPU and memory per instance. Benchmark representative traffic with the plugins and route/consumer counts you actually plan to run, then scale each gateway node vertically and horizontally based on the observed CPU, memory, and latency profile. See Performance Benchmark for the reference methodology and example plugin-impact scenarios.
Operating System Requirements
API7 Gateway supports the following 64-bit Linux distributions:
| Distribution | Supported Versions |
|---|---|
| Ubuntu | 22.04 LTS (Recommended), 20.04 LTS |
| CentOS | 7.x (with updated kernel) |
| RHEL | 7.x, 8.x, 9.x |
| Debian | 10, 11 |
Container Runtime Requirements
If deploying via Docker or Kubernetes:
| Component | Required Version |
|---|---|
| Docker | 20.10.x or later |
| Kubernetes | 1.25 or later |
| Helm | 3.10.x or later |
Network Requirements
Ensure the following ports are open for communication between components and for external access.
Control Plane Ports
| Port | Protocol | Usage | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7443 | HTTPS | Inbound | Dashboard (HTTPS) |
| 7900 | HTTP | Inbound | DP Manager (HTTP) |
| 7943 | HTTPS | Inbound | DP Manager (HTTPS/mTLS) |
| 5432 | TCP | Outbound | PostgreSQL connection |
Data Plane Ports
| Port | Protocol | Usage | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9080 | HTTP | Inbound | Gateway Traffic (HTTP) |
| 9443 | HTTPS | Inbound | Gateway Traffic (HTTPS) |
| 9091 | HTTP | Inbound | Metrics/Prometheus |
Database requirements
API7 Enterprise uses PostgreSQL for configuration storage by default. MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server are also supported — see Supported Versions and Interoperability for the full list.
| Requirement | Minimum version |
|---|---|
| PostgreSQL | 12.0 or later (15.x shipped with the Helm chart) |
| MySQL | 5.7 or 8.x |
| Microsoft SQL Server | 2019 or 2022 |
API7 Enterprise does not require any PostgreSQL extensions. A default PostgreSQL installation with a dedicated database and user is sufficient.
Browser Requirements
The API7 Dashboard supports the latest two versions of the following browsers:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Microsoft Edge
- Apple Safari