How to monitor Spike Arrest usage and limit

[2rpmatheus]

Our client wants to create a dashboard with the Spike Arrest limits and actual usage to be available on their Dev Portal, so the API users are able to know if it's possible to make a request without being blocked.

First, I wonder if such thing is possible to make using Apigee Edge's APIs or something similar.

And if that is even the best way to solve the problem.

[dknezic]

You ask if this is the best way to solve the problem, but what's the actual problem you're trying to solve.

The intent of the spike arrest is to prevent bursts of traffic / smooth out traffic. It's not the same as a quota. And because it's "smoothing out" traffic, if you set a rate of 10 requests per minute, it will effectively allow one request every 6 seconds. 

If the user exceeds the spike arrest limit, they get back a 429 which means too many requests. This should be intuitive enough for an API consumer.

[2rpmatheus · Accepted solution]

Yes, I know that. The matter is the client insists in using Spike Arrest instead of Quotas, and they want to know from our Dev Portal's UI if they can send a request without getting blocked by the Spike Arrest, they want to know if their request would be blocked before making the request itself.

Considering what you said, I won't be able to make a mess like that work with SA, right?