Higress Project Introduction
Overview
Higress is a cloud-native API gateway that utilizes Istio and Envoy at its core. Developers can extend its functionality using Wasm plugins written in Go, Rust, JS, and more. Higress provides a host of plugins and comes with a user-friendly console. This API gateway was developed to address specific challenges in Alibaba and has since been adopted to provide high availability for various enterprise customers.
Key Features
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Easy Deployment: With just Docker, Higress can be easily set up either for personal development or to build simple sites. It listens on ports for UI access and HTTP/HTTPS gateways.
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AI Gateway: Higress excels as an AI gateway, interfacing with major AI models and offering advanced features like AI observability, load balancing across models, token flow control, and caching solutions.
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Kubernetes Ingress Gateway: Acting as an ingress gateway for Kubernetes clusters, Higress allows for smooth migration from K8s Nginx Ingress, supporting both Ingress API and Gateway API, with noticeably reduced resource consumption.
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Microservices Gateway: Supporting numerous service registry systems (e.g., Nacos, ZooKeeper), Higress serves as an efficient microservices gateway with deep integration into popular tech stacks like Dubbo and Sentinel.
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Security Gateway: In the role of a security gateway, Higress offers web application firewall capabilities and supports a range of authentication methods, ensuring comprehensive protection for APIs.
Core Advantages
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Production-Grade Reliability: Higress is built on over two years of production experience at Alibaba, designed to handle high traffic with no disruptions on configuration changes.
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Stream Processing Support: It supports fully streaming request/response body processing, significantly cutting down memory usage in high-bandwidth scenarios, making it ideal for AI applications.
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Scalability and Extensibility: Offers a rich set of official plugins and supports Wasm plugin extensions, ensuring robust memory safety through sandbox isolation, and simplifying traffic management.
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Security and Usability: Providing standards-compliant APIs and UI consoles, along with WAF protection plugins, Higress integrates with Let's Encrypt for automated certificate management and can run independently of K8s too.
Unique Use Cases and Demonstrations
- Higress showcases its capabilities in various demonstration videos, including rapid migration between AI models.
- The UI console features extensive monitoring options, plugin extension mechanisms, and versatile service discovery.
Community and Contributions
The success of Higress is built upon the foundational work of Envoy and Istio, and it stands on the shoulders of these open-source projects with gratitude. The community around Higress continues to grow with eager contributors and users alike, sharing knowledge through exchanges and updates.
Through its innovative approach, flexible architecture, and robust features, Higress empowers developers and enterprises to handle cutting-edge AI workloads and streamline their microservices and security strategies.