Choosing Between Azure API Management and API Gateway for Your Project

API Management and API Gateway are two powerful tools in Azure, but they serve different purposes and have distinct features. API Management is designed for complex, large-scale APIs, while API Gateway is geared towards simpler, more straightforward APIs.

API Management supports multiple protocols and data formats, including HTTP, WebSocket, and gRPC, making it a versatile choice for developers. API Gateway, on the other hand, is primarily designed for RESTful APIs.

API Management offers advanced security features, such as OAuth, JWT, and API keys, which provide robust protection for your APIs. API Gateway also offers security features, but they are more limited compared to API Management.

Ultimately, the choice between API Management and API Gateway depends on the specific needs of your project.

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To set up Azure API Management, you'll need to choose a subscription plan. The Developer tier is a good choice for local development, as it's more cost-effective at $50/month compared to the Premium tier, which costs $2,800/month.

For a self-hosted gateway, you can use either the Developer or Premium tier, but keep in mind that a Premium Subscription with a self-hosted gateway is typically used internally at an enterprise environment.

If you're developing for an external application, it's recommended to use both a Developer Subscription and either a Basic or Standard Subscription for the production environment.

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To create a self-hosted gateway, you must use either the Developer ($50/month) or Premium ($2,800/month) Azure API Management Subscription.

The Developer tier is a good choice for local development, as it's a cost-effective option that meets most needs.

A Premium Subscription with a self-hosted gateway is typically used internally at an enterprise environment where an APIM solution can help manage internal traffic.

If you're developing for an external application, it's ideal to use both a Developer Subscription and a Basic or Standard Subscription for the production environment.

Deploying an Azure API Management instance in the same spoke as the application it serves can be beneficial for resource isolation, improving management of resources and APIs.

Having an instance of the Management API in the same application spoke can reduce latency and improve the performance of API requests, which is crucial for traffic-intensive applications.

Developers can have more autonomy and flexibility in managing their APIs by having an instance of Management API dedicated to the application spoke, allowing them to configure security policies, authentication, and authorization independently.

A dedicated API Management instance can also ensure compliance with application-specific regulations or regulations, by configuring the Management API specifically to meet compliance requirements without affecting the entire Hub and Spoke architecture.

However, managing multiple instances of API Management can lead to increased operational complexity and additional asset configuration and maintenance, which needs to be carefully assessed.

Having a dedicated API Management instance for a specific application can lead to higher costs, as Azure API Management is already a costly resource, and these costs need to be justified by the criticality of the application.

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You'll need to create an API Management Service instance, which involves selecting the instance name, administrator email, and pricing tier, all of which can be done through the Azure Portal.

To configure the management endpoint, you'll need to create a listener using the App Gateway self-signed digital certificate, a backend pool specifying the FQDN for the custom domain mapping, a custom health probe, and backend settings that include the Self-Signed Root CA digital certificate.

You'll also need to create a routing rule to link the management frontend to the backend pool.

For the portal endpoint, the process is similar, but you'll need to specify a different path for the health probe and a different certificate for the backend settings.

When configuring the Azure API, you may need to set the backend API URL through a policy, depending on whether you're running the application in Kestrel or Docker.

Here's a list of the steps involved in creating and configuring an API Management Service instance:

In a production environment, you'll want to consider implementing multiple resource groups, centralised logging and debugging, infrastructure as code, digital certificates from a valid CA, custom domain and DNS configuration, authentication and authorisation, and policy enforcement in APIM.

Products in Azure API Management are a grouping of APIs that you want to publish like a package to consumers, and you can control how APIs are accessed via subscription, set approvals for accesses, set policies at product level, and test the APIs in the Developer Portal Console.

Policies in Azure API Management are a set of instructions/rules in an XML-based format that influence how inbound requests and outbound responses are processed, and you can have multiple policies associated at once and they will run in the sequence of how they appear in the XML document.

Azure API Management Security is a top priority for any API developer. Authentication and rate limiting are key components of this security.

An API gateway provides a secure way to access APIs and prevent malicious activity. This includes generating and managing API keys for each consumer.

Clients accessing your API without the correct credentials will get a 401 Unauthorized response. This ensures that only authorized users can access your API.

Rate limiting can be enforced based on API keys, IP address, or other custom policies. This includes a limit of 100 requests per minute per API key.

Additional security policies such as bot detection can be included to prevent malicious activity. This also includes preventing the HTTP payload from being too large.

To deploy an Azure API Management instance, you need to create an APIM instance specifying the Developer pricing tier and virtual network settings referencing the VNET, APIM subnet, and APIM Public IP Address created earlier.

This process can take between 15–45 minutes, during which time an email will be sent to the Administrator email, notifying them of the instance’s readiness.

Once the APIM instance has been deployed, it will be available with a public and private IP address, but the public address will not be used to access the instance in this implementation.

To deploy an App Gateway instance, you need to specify the WAF V2 as the Tier and create a WAF Policy, configuring the Backend Pool, Backend Settings, and Routing Rule for the proxy endpoint in the APIM instance.

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The Backend setting configuration will use the Root CA certificate to allow the SSL handshake to complete from App Gateway to the proxy endpoint and allow the backend endpoint to override the hostname.

To create an API Management Service instance, you need to select the API Management Service from the Azure Portal, enter the API Management Instance name, Administrator Email, and select the Pricing Tier = Developer.

The administrator email will be the credentials used as administrator for the developer portal, and the rest of the information can be left as default.

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Troubleshooting an APIM service with an Application Gateway can be a challenge, but it's not impossible. You'll want to address common troubleshooting scenarios that may arise.

Isolating issues in the pipeline is key to resolving problems quickly. One method is to utilize a Jump Box VM, which you can create within the same Virtual Network (VNet) as the APIM.

The Jump Box VM can be used to test the APIM service's accessibility. Update the VM's host file with the private IP and endpoints for the APIM service, and if it's accessible from this VM, you can narrow down the issue to the App Gateway and DNS configuration.

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When troubleshooting issues with Azure API Management, it's essential to address common scenarios that may arise when integrating an APIM service with an Application Gateway.

We'll address some common troubleshooting scenarios that may arise when integrating an APIM service with an Application Gateway.

One of the most common issues is incorrect configuration, which can be resolved by verifying the APIM service settings and Application Gateway configuration.

Debugging Azure API Management Self-Hosted Gateway can be a complex task, but there are several strategies to make it more manageable.

If you're experiencing issues with your self-hosted gateway, try checking the logs for any errors or exceptions that may indicate the root cause of the problem.

There are several strategies to debugging a self-hosted gateway, including using tools like Fiddler or Wireshark to capture network traffic and analyze it for any issues.

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Isolating pipeline issues can be a challenging task, especially when multiple components are involved. Utilizing a Jump Box VM is a recommended approach.

Create an Azure VM within the same Virtual Network (VNet) as the APIM. This will allow you to test the APIM service in a controlled environment.

Update the VM's host file with the private IP and endpoints for the APIM service. This will enable you to test the connectivity to the APIM service.

If the APIM service is accessible from the VM within the same VNet, it helps narrow down the issue to the App Gateway and DNS configuration. This is a crucial step in isolating the problem.

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Debugging a self-hosted gateway can be a challenge, but it's not impossible. Running the self-hosted gateway locally is rather easy with the provided Docker command, but some tweaks will be involved.

To get started, you'll need to run the Docker image using the command: docker run -d -p 80:8080 -p 443:8081 --name local-apim-demo --env-file env.conf mcr.microsoft.com/azure-api-management/gateway:latest. This command is as simple as it gets.

There are several strategies to debugging a self-hosted gateway, and it's worth noting that the situation will depend on whether your app is running in a Kestrel server bound on the host or in Docker.

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API Gateway Comparison is a crucial aspect to consider when choosing between Azure API Management and API Gateway. Azure API Management offers a free tier, whereas API Gateway does not.

Both Azure API Management and API Gateway support REST, SOAP, and WebSocket protocols. API Gateway has a more extensive list of supported protocols, including gRPC and GraphQL.

API Gateway has a steeper learning curve due to its complex architecture. Azure API Management, on the other hand, has a more straightforward setup process.

Azure API Management offers a range of features that make it an attractive choice for managing APIs. One of the key benefits is auto-scaling, which can be configured based on metrics depending on the pricing tier.

Auto-scaling can help ensure that your API is always available and performing well, even during periods of high traffic. You can also use Azure API Management to manage and self-host API instances, giving you more control over your infrastructure.

Azure API Management also provides continuous logs and metrics to monitor API outflows, traffic bottlenecks, and other issues. This helps you identify and resolve problems quickly, ensuring that your API is always running smoothly.

Some of the key features of Azure API Management include:

These features make Azure API Management a powerful tool for managing APIs and ensuring they are always available and performing well.

Caching can handle a higher number of clients and absorb peak traffic, making it a great feature for e-commerce and travel APIs.

Certain types of content, like e-commerce and travel, can benefit greatly from caching, while others, such as banking and financial services, may not benefit from it.

You need to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether caching makes sense for your backend service.

CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) policies can be enforced to allow the API to be accessed from a web browser.

Azure API Management features a robust data validation and transformation mechanism, allowing you to add rules to your API.

API gateways can transform data formats, such as converting XML to JSON, which is useful for exposing legacy internal services as APIs.

This feature is particularly handy for integrating older services that use outdated content formats.

Data transformation can also involve URL rewriting, like changing api.example.com/search to search.example.com.

Combining responses from internal services is another capability of some API gateways, enabling you to return a single response to the client.

This makes working with your API easier for customers, as they don't need to perform API chaining.

An example of this is Apollo GraphQL, which can fetch multiple entities from various services and combine them into a single API endpoint.

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Azure API Management offers a range of features that make it a powerful tool for managing APIs. One of the key features is Auto-Scaling, which allows you to configure scaling based on metrics depending on your pricing tier. This means you can ensure that your API is always available and performing well, even during periods of high traffic.

With Azure API Management, you can also manage and self-host API instances, giving you flexibility and control over your API setup. You can choose to use the Azure-handled management gateway portal or configure your own management gateway portal to host your API backend and management gateway in the same infrastructure and region.

Monitoring API is another important feature, providing continuous logs and metrics to help you identify and troubleshoot issues with your API. This includes monitoring for API outages, traffic bottlenecks, and other performance issues.

Azure API Management also offers a range of built-in policies that allow you to control how inbound requests and outbound responses are handled. This includes features like limiting API requests in a given duration, restricting IPs, handling query parameters, and more.

Here are some of the key features of Azure API Management:

Product analytics is a powerful tool that helps you understand how your API is performing. You can track key metrics like Daily Active Users (DAU) and 90th percentile latency for key endpoints.

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API analytics tools provide more sophisticated analysis like cohort retention analysis and funnel analysis. This allows you to track KPIs like average Time To First Hello World (TTFHW) and conversion rates.

TTFHW measures how long it takes from first visit to your landing page to an MVP integration that makes the first transaction through your API platform. This is a cross-functional metric that tracks marketing, documentation and tutorials, to the API itself.

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Testing is a crucial part of Azure API Management. To test the User ToDos API, you can use any API testing tool or service like Postman API, ensuring Basic authentication and a request header with subscription information.

You can use Postman API to test the Get Users operation, which requires a Basic authentication and a request header with subscription information. The response of the Get Users operation will give you an idea of how the API is working.

To verify if a request is hitting the APIM, you can set a Mock Response. This allows the APIM to return a certain response and status. To create a mock response, click “Add Policy” on the “Inbound processing” pane.

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To test the User ToDos API, you can use any API testing tool or service like Postman API. Ensure that authentication is Basic, and the request header contains subscription information as shown below.

One way to see if a request is hitting the APIM is by setting a Mock Response. This will allow the APIM to return a certain response and status.

You can test the Get Users operation of the User ToDos API using Postman API with Basic authentication and the correct request header. Here is the response you can expect:

To test the API, you can also use the Mock Responses feature in the APIM. To create a mock response, click "Add Policy" on the "Inbound processing" pane.

To test the Bridge Network, you can use an interactive terminal in the Docker APIM.

Get an interactive terminal by running the command "docker exec -it local-apim-demo /bin/bash".

Then, you can use curl to test the gateway on port 5001.

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