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Kuadrant Controller
Overview
Kuadrant is a re-architecture of API Management using Cloud Native concepts and separating the components to be less coupled, more reusable and leverage the underlying kubernetes platform. It aims to deliver a smooth experience to providers and consumers of applications & services when it comes to rate limiting, authentication, authorization, discoverability, change management, usage contracts, insights, etc.
Kuadrant aims to produce a set of loosely coupled functionalities built directly on top of Kubernetes. Furthermore it only strives to provide what Kubernetes doesn’t offer out of the box, i.e. Kuadrant won’t be designing a new Gateway/proxy, instead it will opt to connect with what’s there and what’s being developed (think Envoy, Istio, GatewayAPI).
Kuadrant is a system of cloud-native k8s components that grows as users’ needs grow.
- From simple protection of a Service (via AuthN) that is used by teammates working on the same cluster, or “sibling” services, up to AuthZ of users using OIDC plus custom policies.
- From no rate-limiting to rate-limiting for global service protection on to rate-limiting by users/plans
Architecture
Kuadrant relies on Istio and the Gateway API to operate the cluster (istio's) ingress gateway to provide API management with authentication (authN), authorization (authZ) and rate limiting capabilities.
Kuadrant components
| CRD | Description |
|---|---|
| Control Plane | The control plane takes the customer desired configuration (declaratively as kubernetes custom resources) as input and ensures all components are configured to obey customer's desired behavior. This repository contains the source code of the kuadrant control plane |
| Kuadrant Operator | A Kubernetes Operator to manage the lifecycle of the kuadrant deployment |
| Authorino | The AuthN/AuthZ enforcer. As the external istio authorizer (envoy external authorization serving gRPC service) |
| Limitador | The external rate limiting service. It exposes a gRPC service implementing the Envoy Rate Limit protocol (v3) |
| Authorino Operator | A Kubernetes Operator to manage Authorino instances |
| Limitador Operator | A Kubernetes Operator to manage Limitador instances |
Provided APIs
The kuadrant control plane owns the following Custom Resource Definitions, CRDs:
| CRD | Description |
|---|---|
| RateLimitPolicy CRD [doc] [reference] | Enable access control on workloads based on HTTP rate limiting |
| AuthPolicy CRD | Enable AuthN and AuthZ based access control on workloads |
Additionally, kuadrant provides the following CRDs
| CRD | Owner | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Kuadrant CRD | Kuadrant Operator | Represents an instance of kuadrant |
| Limitador CRD | Limitador Operator | Represents an instance of Limitador |
| Authorino CRD | Authorino Operator | Represents an instance of Authorino |
| AuthConfig CRD | Authorino | The desired authN and authZ protection for a service |
Getting started
Pre-requisites
- Istio is installed in the cluster. Otherwise, refer to the Istio getting started guide.
- Kubernetes Gateway API is installed in the cluster. Otherwise, configure Istio to expose a service using the Kubernetes Gateway API.
- Kuadrant is installed in the cluster. Otherwise, refer to the kuadrant operator for installation.
If you are an API Provider
- Deploy the service/API to be protected ("Upstream")
- Expose the service/API using the kubernetes Gateway API, ie HTTPRoute object.
- Write and apply the Kuadrant's RateLimitPolicy and/or AuthPolicy custom resources targeting the HTTPRoute resource to have your API protected.
If you are a Cluster Operator
- (Optionally) deploy istio ingress gateway using the Gateway resource.
- Write and apply the Kuadrant's RateLimitPolicy and/or AuthPolicy custom resources targeting the Gateway resource to have your gateway traffic protected.
User guides
The user guides section of the docs gathers several use-cases as well as the instructions to implement them using kuadrant.
- Simple rate limiting for API owners
- Authenticated rate limiting for API owners
- Gateway rate limiting for cluster operators
Kuadrant Rate Limiting
Contributing
The Development guide describes how to build the kuadrant controller and how to test your changes before submitting a patch or opening a PR.
Join us on kuadrant.slack.com for live discussions about the roadmap and more.
Licensing
This software is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
See the LICENSE and NOTICE files that should have been provided along with this software for details.