Harnessing the Power of Kubernetes-native API Management with Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime

SUSE guest blog authored by:

Erwan Paccard, Head of Product at Traefik Labs

As digital transformation accelerates at an unprecedented pace, several design patterns and architectural choices have emerged to keep up with the rapid change. Microservices, multi-cloud deployments, Kubernetes, and APIs are not just buzzwords; they are critical components of the contemporary digital landscape, driving business agility, application agility, digitization, and B2B value creation.

The surge in digital services has led to a scenario where API requests comprise over 80% of all traffic types and continues to grow, with 90% of digital services being built using public & internal API-delivered services. APIs, therefore, form a critical component of digital transformation, and participating in the API economy has become a top priority for most organizations.

Amid this backdrop, today we’re going to explore the joint value proposition of Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime, two powerful tools that, when combined, can supercharge your digital transformation journey.

Embracing Kubernetes-native API Management

Traefik Hub is the industry’s first Kubernetes-native API management solution. It extends the Kubernetes capabilities with API Management through CRDs, seamlessly integrates with its API, enabling automatic discovery of services, and delivers Kubernetes native ways to publish and manage APIs. This provides a significant operational advantage over proprietary solutions that are not Kubernetes-native. Traefik Hub Kubernetes-native approach based solely on CRDs unlocks operational excellence with scalable and highly available deployments, a full GitOps compliance for powerful automation with tools like Helm, Terraform, and ArgoCD for repeatability and auditability. It also eliminates vendor lock-in by supporting any Kubernetes distribution and ingress controller, and offers a lightweight, portable, and efficient solution with separate control and data planes.

Ensuring High Availability & Security

Coupling Traefik Hub with Rancher Prime, the leading Kubernetes management platform, ensures high availability with built-in HA with replicas. This redundancy is a fundamental component of high availability, as it ensures that even if one node goes down, the service remains accessible. The Traefik Hub platform, as part of its core offering, allows for easy and automatic configuration of service replicas. Therefore, if one instance faces an issue, another can seamlessly take over, reducing downtime and maintaining service reliability.

Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime also help users extend security with seamless third-party integrations. Rancher Prime provides comprehensive security features including RBAC, SSO, AD/LDAP integrations, and secrets management. Combined with Traefik Hub’s built-in high availability and security features, you get a secure, robust, and reliable application deployment pipeline.

CI/CD Compliance

The combination of Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime provides a powerful toolset for those embracing the GitOps model and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) methodologies. They offer a streamlined workflow that seamlessly integrates with your CI/CD pipeline, making it an ideal solution for DevOps teams. Rancher Prime provides built-in CI/CD pipelines that can be configured to trigger deployments based on changes to a Git repository. Rancher Prime’s multi-cluster management capabilities allow CI/CD pipelines to deploy applications across multiple Kubernetes clusters. This feature is particularly beneficial in a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment. With Traefik Hub providing API management across these clusters, you get a unified, efficient and scalable deployment process.

Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) in Kubernetes provide a way to define custom resources with your own API types, extending the Kubernetes API. Traefik Hub, being a Kubernetes-native solution, treats CRDs as first-class citizens. This means that it provides native support for CRDs, allowing developers to create and manage custom resources easily.

Deploy Anywhere, with Any Ingress Controller

The Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime solution supports any deployment environment and any ingress controller. This flexibility is crucial for organizations looking to deploy APIs across diverse environments, including on-premises, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and edge deployments. 

Modern, lightweight, and open architecture

Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime boast a modern, lightweight, and open architecture. They unlock and unleash the full potential of Kubernetes for API Management. They are lightweight, so they won’t weigh down your systems, but they are feature-packed to keep your operations running smoothly. Their open architecture speaks the language of Kubernetes, making integration a breeze. And because they are modern, they are constantly evolving to meet the ever-changing demands of the DevOps world.

Embracing Edge Computing

Edge computing, another significant trend, is fueling new edge applications and creating infinite possibilities. The broad spectrum of edge use-cases can be divided into the Near Edge, Far Edge, and Tiny Edge (autonomous vehicles, industrial robotics, drones/UAV, smart grid), with each having specific requirements in terms of devices and proximity to data centers or users.

As applications move to the edge, so do APIs. Specialized Edge APIs are emerging with the same drivers around business value and time. Traefik Hub, Rancher Prime, RKE2, and K3s are well-positioned to cater to these needs due to their flexible deployment capabilities, GitOps compliance, and support for any ingress controller.

In conclusion, Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime offer a compelling value proposition for organizations looking to streamline their API management and Kubernetes operations. By embracing these tools, you can not only keep pace with the accelerating digital transformation but also lead, compete, and thrive in the digital economy. The future of API management is Kubernetes-native, flexible, and secure, with full CI/CD compliance. Embrace this future with Traefik Hub and Rancher Prime, and unlock the full potential of your digital transformation journey.

Traefik Labs is excited to announce its sponsorship of SUSECON 2023. We invite everyone to join us at the conference, which will take place in Munich next week from June 20th to June 22nd. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the latest developments in open source technology, and we would be thrilled to meet with you and discuss your API management strategy and how you can make the most of it. Please contact us to schedule an onsite meeting. We look forward to seeing you there!

Author: Erwan Paccard, Head of Product at Traefik Labs

Erwan Paccard is Head of Product at Traefik Labs where he leads product management and product marketing. Previously, he held worldwide senior product management and product marketing positions at Cisco, IBM and smaller software editors for the past 25 years. Armed with a wide and deep IT knowledge, he has seen the evolution of the technology stacks from virtualization, to containers and the Cloud-Native software stacks.