API7 High Availability Overview

System administrators can configure high availability (HA) in an API gateway environment to ensure that there is no single point of failure in the system. This helps to eliminate any potential system downtime in production environments. This document describes the recommended API Gateway architecture in an HA production environment.

What Is High Availability

HA is a characteristic of a system to function even when some components fail. It aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance and guarantee continuous operability of systems for desirably long periods of time. HA protects businesses against the risks brought by a system outage.

API7 High Availability Architecture

• The data plane is responsible for forwarding API traffic to the upstream endpoints. If the data plane fails, services will be broken. Therefore, it is required to configure HA on the data plane to prevent a single point of failure.
• The control plane is charged for gateway management through an intuitive web interface (API7 Dashboard). When the control plane fails, configurations cannot be applied as required. However, this does not have an impact on service requests. Therefore, you can deploy HA on the control plane based on your requirements.