DevOps Intermediate

What is API Gateway?

A server that acts as the single entry point for API requests, handling routing, authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring.

API gateways sit between clients and backend services, providing a unified interface. They handle cross-cutting concerns like authentication, SSL termination, request/response transformation, rate limiting, caching, and logging.

Popular solutions include Kong, AWS API Gateway, Apigee, and Traefik. In microservices architectures, the gateway simplifies client communication by providing a single endpoint instead of requiring clients to know about individual services.

Related Terms

Immutable Infrastructure

An approach where servers are never modified after deployment — changes require building and deploying entirely new server instances.

An infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication, providing load balancing, encryption, and observability.

Log Aggregation

The process of collecting, centralizing, and indexing log data from multiple sources for unified search and analysis.

A communication mechanism that enables asynchronous message passing between services, decoupling producers from consumers.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

The practice of managing infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files rather than manual processes.

Infrastructure Drift

The divergence between the actual state of infrastructure and its defined desired state, caused by manual changes or untracked modifications.

View All DevOps Terms →