I gave this presentation at the API Days conference on Dec 3rd 2012 Once upon a time, people wanted to send a billion SMS per month through an API ... This session will tell you the story of how this can be achieved. Taking example on the design behind the apiGrove opensource project, you will hear about the under the hood technology details relating to API policy distribution across large scale clusters of API gateways. In the cloud. With throughput above tens of thousands transactions per second. With high availability and high accuracy in rate limit enforcement.

1. American
Idol
:
The
tale
of
1
Billion
SMS
/
month
through
an
API
Guilhem
Ensuque
@apigrove
#apidays

2. How
it
started
• 10s
of
millions
of
viewers
• Worldwide
franchise
• Vote
by
SMS
• 2-­‐hour
window
to
vote
• Through
an
API

3. The
Big
Picture

4. Mission
:
Impossible
• Replace
legacy
system
in
<
1
year
• 99.999%
reliability
(5
mins
downSme
/
year)
• American
Idol-­‐scale
– Peak
throughput
=
20,000
TPS
– Average
volume
=
1
billion
messages
/
month
• Secure
• In
the
cloud

5. Key
decisions
• Code
fast,
show
results
early
• Open
Source
2-­‐ways
• K.I.S.S.
:
meter
/
protect
/
scale
• Integrate
easily
in
bigger
system
through
…
APIs

6. OpSons
vs
Challenges
Web
Proxy
(ligh2pd)
ESB
(Fuse)
+
+
Custom
C/C++
Custom
Java
Performance
Dev.
Time

7. Technology
• Choosing
a
technology
is
important
…
• …
unSl
you
find
a
be^er
one
DON’T
BE
RELIGIOUS
• “Business”
code
is
middleware-­‐agnosSc

8. Policy
Model
AUTH
API
- authId
-apiId - status
-endpoint - type
-type - key
-validationType - username
-authenticationTypes
- password
-nbRequestCertificate - policyContext id
-notificationFlag - apiContext id
-contexts
- id
- status auths0
: ..*
- targetHosts
- sbRequestsType
- sbRequestsCredentials
- maxRateLimits
apis 0
: ..*
POLICY
- policyId
- contexts
- id
- status
- quotas
- rateLimits

9. E3'Route Camel
Pipeline
HTTP
Request
Jetty%Camel Validation Auth0Manager Rates0Quatas Custom
<jetty> <validate> <auth> <rates0quotas> <other>
Client' Target'Host'
Application OK Exception Service
Error
Gateway%Error%
Processor
Status%
Error%TDR Billing%TDR
TDR
Tdr0Lib
<TDR%Queue>
Emit%tdr
File%
System
!

10. Clustering

11. Hard
Stuff:
Rate
limits
Sync
• How
to
sync
rate
limits
data
?
• Main
difficulty:
large
cluster
(40
instances)
• SoluSon
:
Speaker
Manager
+
maths

12. Wrap
Up
/
Q&As
guilhem.ensuque@alcatel-­‐lucent.com
Twi^er:
@gensuque_alu
h^p://apigrove.net
h^p://github.com/apigrove/apigrove