Kong announces Kuma, an open-source project to overcome the limitations of first-generation service mesh technologies

Today, the team at Kong, the creators of the API and service lifecycle management platform for modern architectures announced the release of Kuma, a new open-source project.

Kuma is based on the open-source Envoy proxy that addresses limitations of first-generation service mesh technologies by seamlessly managing services on the network. The first-generation meshes didn't have a mature control plane, and later on, when they provided a control plane, it wasn’t easy to use them as they were hard to deploy. Kuma is easy to use and enables rapid adoption of mesh.

Also Read: Kong CTO Marco Palladino on how the platform is paving the way for microservices adoption [Interview]

Features of Kuma

Runs on all the platforms

Kuma can run on any platform including Kubernetes, containers, virtual machines, and legacy environments. It also includes a fast data plane as well as an advanced control plane that makes it easier to use.

It is reliable

The initial service mesh solutions were not flexible and it was difficult to use them. Kuma ensures reliability by automating the process of securing the underlying network.

Support for all the environments

Kuma has support for all the environments in the organization, so the existing applications can still be used in their traditional environments. This provides comprehensive coverage across an organization.

Couples a fast data plane using control plane

Kuma couples a fast data plane with a control plane that helps users to set permissions, routing rules and expose metrics with just a few commands.

Tracing and logging

Kuma helps users to implement tracing and logging and analyze metrics for rapid debugging.

Routing and Control

Kuma provides traffic control capabilities including circuit breakers and health checks in order to enhance L4 (Layer 4) routing.

Marco Palladino, CTO and co-founder of Kong, said, “We now have more microservices talking to each other and connectivity between them is the most unreliable piece: prone to failures, insecure and hard to observe.”

Palladino further added, “It was important for us to make Kuma very easy to get started with on both Kubernetes and VM environments, so developers can start using service mesh immediately even if their organization hasn’t fully moved to Kubernetes yet, providing a smooth path to containerized applications and to Kubernetes itself. We are thrilled to be open-sourcing Kuma and extending the adoption of Envoy, and we will continue to contribute back to the Envoy project like we have done in the past. Just as Kong transformed and modernized API Gateways with open-source Kong, we are now doing that for service mesh with Kuma.”

The Kuma platform will be on display during the second annual Kong Summit, which is to be held on October 2-3, 2019.