PRODUCT RELEASE

Announcing Ambassador API Gateway & Edge Stack 1.0 General Availability

Edge Policy Console, Automatic HTTPS, OAuth/OpenID Connect, and more

We're pleased to announce the General Availability of the Ambassador Edge Stack 1.0, a self-service, comprehensive edge stack for managing the boundary between end users and Kubernetes services. We're also simultaneously releasing the Ambassador API Gateway 1.0, which contains the core API Gateway that is built on Envoy Proxy.

We first shipped Ambassador in March 2017 with an initial “ready-to-use” release. The Ambassador community has grown rapidly since then and been adopted by a huge number of companies such as PTC, Chick-Fil-A, and ADP. Feedback and contributions from the community have helped accelerate the maturity of Ambassador.

So, today, we’re excited to be shipping 1.0!

The Ambassador Edge Stack Adds Extra Functionality to the Ambassador API Gateway

The Ambassador Edge Stack builds on the Ambassador API Gateway and adds a number of new capabilities:

• Edge Policy Console. The Edge Policy Console gives your users a graphical UI to visualize and manage all of your edge policies.
• Lots of new security features. The AES includes automatic TLS setup via ACME integration, OAuth/OpenID Connect integration, rate limiting, and fine-grained access control. This includes all the functionality that was previously in Ambassador Pro.
• Developer Onboarding. Your developer community, both internal and external, needs to understand your APIs. The AES includes an API catalog, Swagger/OpenAPI documentation support, and a fully customizable developer portal. This includes all the functionality that was previously in Ambassador Dev Portal.

The Edge Stack is free for all users, and includes all the functionality of the Ambassador API Gateway. Due to popular demand, we’re releasing a free tier of our core features (e.g., Single Sign-On) as part of the Ambassador Edge Stack, designed for startups.

For more details on the different editions of the Edge Stack here

New features in 1.0 GA and breaking changes

For all Ambassador users, 1.0 includes a number of key changes and improvements:

• Service resolution has changed. In 1.0, an upstream service is assumed to be in the same namespace as its resource. For example, if a user has a Mapping in namespace storefront that contains a service cart, Ambassador will assume that cart is in namespace storefront unless the namespace is explicitly set. This is a breaking change from the pre-1.0 behavior, where Ambassador assumed service cart was in the same namespace as Ambassador itself.
• Full switch to CRDs. Annotations are still supported, but we’re officially recommending the CRD approach. In 1.0, we’ve officially moved our CRDs to apiVersion:getambassador.io/v2.
• Significantly improved performance for deployments with large numbers of Mappings. We’ve conducted a broad range of performance and scalability tests on the core API Gateway engine, and have introduced a number of improvements as a result.
• We’re switching the Helm repository back to Ambassador due to the imminent deprecation of the official Helm charts repository.
• We’re officially adopting Semantic Versioning for all future Ambassador Edge Stack and Ambassador API Gateway releases going forward.

Installing the Ambassador Edge Stack 1.0 and Ambassador API Gateway 1.0

To install the Ambassador Edge Stack, follow the quick start.

The core Ambassador API Gateway image is also available with the Docker tag quay.io/datawire/ambassador:1.0.0.

You can also install with Helm:

# Add repository and create namespace
helm repo add datawire https://www.getambassador.io
kubectl create namespace ambassador
# Using Helm 3
helm install ambassador --namespace ambassador datawire/ambassador
# Using Helm 2
helm install --name ambassador --namespace ambassador datawire/ambassador

Upgrading

If you’re an existing Ambassador user, you can upgrade to the Ambassador Edge Stack 1.0 by following the upgrade instructions. This will add core functionality such as automatic HTTPS, the Edge Policy Console, Single Sign-On with OAuth/OpenID Connect, and the Developer Portal.

If you want to just upgrade to the official Ambassador API Gateway 1.0 image, Ambassador relies on Kubernetes deployments for updates. Update your existing deployment manifest with quay.io/datawire/ambassador:1.0.0and kubectly apply to update to 1.0.

Get Started Today

The Edge Stack installs in minutes in any Kubernetes cluster. To get started, visit https://www.getambassador.io/user-guide/getting-started/.

And, if Ambassador is working well for you, we’d love to hear about it. Drop us a line in the comments below, or @ambassadorlabs on Twitter.