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Version: 3.1

Deployment modes

APISIX has three different deployment modes for different production use cases. The table below summarises the deployment modes:

Deployment modeRolesDescription
traditionaltraditionalData plane and control plane are deployed together. enable_admin attribute should be disabled manually.
decoupleddata_plane / control_planeData plane and control plane are deployed independently.
standalonedata_planeOnly data plane is deployed and the configurations are loaded from a local YAML file.

Each of these deployment modes are explained in detail below.

Traditional#

In the traditional deployment mode, one instance of APISIX will be both the data plane and the control plane.

There will be a conf server that listens on the UNIX socket and acts as a proxy between APISIX and etcd. Both the data and the control planes connect to this conf server via HTTP.

An example configuration of the traditional deployment mode is shown below:

conf/config.yaml
apisix:
node_listen:
- port: 9080
deployment:
role: traditional
role_traditional:
config_provider: etcd
admin:
admin_listen:
port: 9180
etcd:
host:
- http://${etcd_IP}:${etcd_Port}
prefix: /apisix
timeout: 30

The instance of APISIX deployed as the traditional role will:

  1. Listen on port 9080 to handle user requests, controlled by node_listen.
  2. Listen on port 9180 to handle Admin API requests, controlled by admin_listen.

Decoupled#

In the decoupled deployment mode the data plane and control plane instances of APISIX are deployed separately. i.e one instance of APISIX is configured to be a data plane and the other to be a control plane.

The instance of APISIX deployed as the data plane will:

  1. Fetch the configuration from the control plane. The default port is 9280.
  2. Performs a health check on all configured control plane addresses before starting the service.
    1. If the control plane addresses are unavailable, the startup fails and an exception is thrown.
    2. If at least one control plane address is available, it prints the unhealthy control planes logs, and starts the APISIX service.
    3. If all control planes are normal, APISIX service is started normally.
  3. Once the service is started, it will handle the user requests.

The example below shows the configuration of an APISIX instance as data plane in the decoupled mode:

conf/config.yaml
deployment:
role: data_plane
role_data_plane:
config_provider: control_plane
control_plane:
host:
- https://${Control_Plane_IP}:9280
prefix: /apisix
timeout: 30
certs:
cert: /path/to/ca-cert
cert_key: /path/to/ca-cert
trusted_ca_cert: /path/to/ca-cert

The instance of APISIX deployed as the control plane will:

  1. Listen on port 9180 and handle Admin API requests.
  2. Provide the conf server which will listen on port 9280. Both the control plane and the data plane will connect to this via HTTPS enforced by mTLS.

The example below shows the configuration of an APISIX instance as control plane in the decoupled mode:

conf/config.yaml
deployment:
role: control_plane
role_control_plane:
config_provider: etcd
conf_server:
listen: 0.0.0.0:9280
cert: /path/to/ca-cert
cert_key: /path/to/ca-cert
client_ca_cert: /path/to/ca-cert
etcd:
host:
- https://${etcd_IP}:${etcd_Port}
prefix: /apisix
timeout: 30
certs:
cert: /path/to/ca-cert
cert_key: /path/to/ca-cert
trusted_ca_cert: /path/to/ca-cert
tip

As OpenResty <= 1.21.4 does not support sending mTLS requests, to accept connections from APISIX running on these OpenResty versions, you need to disable the client certificate verification in the control plane instance as shown below:

conf/config.yaml
deployment:
role: control_plane
role_control_plane:
config_provider: etcd
conf_server:
listen: 0.0.0.0:9280
cert: /path/to/ca-cert
cert_key: /path/to/ca-cert
etcd:
host:
- https://${etcd_IP}:${etcd_Port}
prefix: /apisix
timeout: 30
certs:
trusted_ca_cert: /path/to/ca-cert

Standalone#

In the standalone deployment mode, APISIX is deployed as a data plane and it reads in configurations from a YAML file (apisix.yaml) in the local file system.

This deployment mode is useful when you have to declaratively define the configuration or when you are using a different configuration center other than etcd.

To configure APISIX in standalone mode:

conf/config.yaml
deployment:
role: data_plane
role_data_plane:
config_provider: yaml