Volterra adds distributed API gateway and security services for edge cloud service

Organizations of all sizes are adopting cloud-native application design and deployment practices as they continue to digitally transform business processes, including the extensive use of microservices and APIs, as well as distributing clusters across multiple cloud providers. The “Ensure Your API Management Solution Supports Modern API Trends Such as Microservices and Multicloud” from Gartner notes that “45% of surveyed organizations reported using microservices architecture (MSA) to build APIs”. A key DevOps requirement is that new clusters must be deployed dynamically and connect with each other seamlessly, while having the proper security to automatically identify and control APIs — all while providing a superior end user experience.

To address these often conflicting requirements, Volterra has expanded its VoltMesh service and made it available as a free or paid self-service subscription.

Distributed Applications Require Distributed Load Balancers and API Gateways

A key aspect of modern cloud-native applications is their modularity and distributed deployment architectures. The tens or hundreds of microservices that comprise a cloud-native app can be deployed in many clusters across many different locations or cloud providers. Distributed workloads present a significant deployment and operational challenge for DevOps teams as they require a dedicated set of infrastructure point products like a load balancer/ADC, API gateway, web app firewall (WAF) and more for each cluster.

VoltMesh directly addresses many of the operational challenges of distributed cloud-native applications by consolidating multiple networking and security services into a single SaaS-based offering. Instead of implementing a separate load balancer, API gateway and WAF for each cluster, DevOps can activate VoltMesh globally to provide all these services at every cluster with centralized management, end-to-end visibility and policy control. DevOps can dramatically accelerate deployment and simplify operations, while developers can achieve better code integration and application enablement vs. disparate services.

VoltMesh can be deployed in clusters across multiple cloud providers. It can also be seamlessly enabled within Volterra’s application delivery network (ADN) for securing and accelerating application performance to global users.

Cloud-Native Applications Require Zero-Trust at the API Layer

As cloud-native applications are built on microservices, a broad new attack vector is emerging — embedded and unseen APIs. The major increase in APIs per application has made existing security controls like network microsegmentation ineffective, as inter-application communication is now occurring at the API layer with all traffic encrypted and multiplexed on the same network port. This is forcing DevOps, DevSecOps and CISO teams to up-level zero-trust from the network- to the API-layer, including discovering all APIs and enforcing policy and control on them.

VoltMesh’s new API auto-discovery and control capabilities simplify the implementation of zero-trust security for cloud-native applications and multi-cloud environments. VoltMesh uses machine learning (ML) to automatically identify all APIs present in an application — whether they were inserted by the current developer team or were legacy or open-source software components — as well as learn normal user behavior. It then applies policy to whitelist just those APIs that are required — automating zero-trust at the API-level.

DevOps and DevSecOps teams can more rapidly implement the controls required for new service rollouts while reducing the attack surface by only allowing APIs that the applications expose.

Distributed Networking and Security = Core Component of Distributed Cloud

Distributed cloud includes a broad range of application and infrastructure services. These services must all work seamlessly together to provide a distributed cloud environment for distributed workloads like cloud-native applications.

“When we founded Volterra, we envisioned a platform for application teams to deploy and operate distributed applications and infrastructure in a true cloud environment — wherever needed,” said Ankur Singla, Volterra co-founder and CEO. “With the addition of a globally distributed load balancer, API gateway and strong API security, we are further bringing our vision to market and empowering DevOps with a cloud-native alternative to legacy point products.”

The updated VoltMesh service is available as a free software download for base users with two multi-cloud clusters and a paid enterprise subscription for larger footprint and/or globally-distributed deployments.

Article Topics

DevOps  |  edge content delivery  |  edge PaaS  |  microservice  |  Volterra