Posted on 11/15/2012

3scale: New High Performance Open Source API Proxy

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You have just finished building your API. It took you days, weeks to design and implement it. You have everything under control. Now it is all about the final touch: an API Management infrastructure layer.

But you don’t want that technology layer to disrupt what it took you days, weeks to build. You want that API Management solution to be able to adapt to your specific architecture and not the contrary…

As a provider of API Management solution, 3scale has been constantly exploring ways to guarantee this “Universal Access” described by Alex Williams in one of his TechCrunch Blog post.3scale Open Source Proxy for On-Premise or Cloud API Traffic Management

This is why today, we are excited to announce the launch of a new Open Source API Proxy!

The new 3scale Open Source API Proxy based on the highly acclaimed NGNIX Web Server technology provides powerful on-premise and in the cloud API Traffic Management.

This new API proxy also extends and consolidates the set of deployment options (Plugin, API, Cloud or On-Premise API Proxy with Varnish, Akamai) that 3scale has been building since its creation.

What does this mean for you as an API Provider?

Faster.Better.Cheaper

 

1.Faster

Because of the Sandbox Proxy hosted by 3scale, connecting your API to your 3scale API Management account will take you less than 5 Minutes. It is as simple as just entering the URL of your API endpoint and defining mapping rules via the graphical interface. No complex details, unless wanted.

In your API Admin console under the “API” section you will find the menu “Integration”. As illustrated in the screenshot below you will have to provide your API endpoint URL and then turn on 3scale’s Hosted Sandbox Proxy.

3scale's Open Source API Proxy: Faster, Better, Cheaper

2.Better

It will make your life easier, better. If you are in a hurry to test/use 3scale’s API Management solution or if you are a bit lazy like I am, you will love how reporting rules can super easily be configured. Just point, click and enable full features to manage, control and monitor your API.

3scale's Open Source Proxy - Reporting Rules Configuration

  1. Select the type of API function you want to report (GET, POST, etc).
  2. Input the URL you would like to report for monitoring, accounting and reporting purposes.
  3. Define by how many units your Metric or Method shall be incremented.
  4. Select the Metric or Method you want to report on.
  5. Eventually add new reporting rules.

3.Cheaper

Once you are done with configuration the deployment of your API proxy for production is made super easy: Download your Config file generated by 3scale. Based on your configuration and parameters, you then just have to Upload it to your API Proxy instance hosted wherever you want (on-premise, public cloud, private cloud).

And guess what? This new 3scale’s API proxy has been built using an open source solution, NGINX.

This means, NO blackbox, NO expensive proprietary technology like the Mashery’s, Apigee’s or Layer7′s.

3scale Open Source API Proxy Download NGINX Config

In case you don’t know NGINX, here is a short introduction that speaks by itself:
NGINX is a high performance, high concurrency open source web server excelling at large scale content delivery, web acceleration and protecting application containers. NGINX is used by over 25% of the top 10,000 busiest sites, including Netflix, Facebook, Zappos, Groupon, LivingSocial, Hulu, TechCrunch, Dropbox and WordPress, as well as by over 12% of the entire Internet web sites population.