Deployment recommendation for hybrid scenario

[#1]

Hi,

I have a scenario where some of my APIs are running on public cloud, serving my mobile app/partner app - need scale, while other APIs, which are mostly for internal consumption, are running on premises - need performance.

What kind of API Management deployment should I go for? Should my API manager be deployed on cloud or on-premises or in a hybrid model? And why?

In case it is a hybrid model, does Apigee allow a single management interface across on-premises and cloud?

Would also like to hear from others who have had similar situations.

[sudheendras]

Hi @Ritwik Chatterjee

In short, Apigee provides a single Edge platform to manage your APIs that can either run in Cloud, On-premises or hybrid mode. The choice of deployment often depends on the nature of customer's business and some of the criteria I described below.

Here are some of the options -

1. Edge in Apigee Cloud : In this option, you use Edge on Apigee cloud for hosting both external and internal APIs. The advantages of this approach are obvious. It reduces management overhead, reduces operations cost, enables quick time to market, supports single management console & centralized analytics to view the entire API program. We see a lot of customers adopting this route. In fact most Apigee customers do not differentiate between internal & external APIs. They configure them once and leverage API products to bundle them differently. With API products you can assign different quota limits and access control to APIs. However if the internal APIs are chatty, require a bunch of back and forth calls to complete a transaction, then this approach potentially introduce latency and might not be viable for performance reasons.
   
2. Edge in Private Cloud : In this model, you host Apigee Edge in a private cloud. These could either be private data centers or public cloud instances managed by your IT. Here you deploy both external and internal APIs in the same on-premises Apigee Edge instance. You get benefits of centralised management & analytics, more control, security, reduced latency and more. However this deployment will introduce additional managing cost (IT, resources and support etc.) But this is still a preferred deployment model for many Apigee customers because of performance and stringent security requirements.
   
3. Hybrid deployment with Edge Microgateway : With Edge Microgateway, you get the best of both worlds. You deploy one or more instances of Edge Microgateway in your network to handle internal APIs while the Apigee Edge on Cloud handle external APIs. Microgateway provides enterprise-grade security, and commonly used features such as spike arrest, quota, while pushing analytics back to Edge. You can install Microgateway in the same data center or even on the same machine as your backend services if you wish.You can read more about Edge Microgateway here.
   
   My 2 cents!

[edwincacho]

Do you have an example of a deployment plan for hybrid?