The Amalgam8 sidecar has a flexible architecture that can be configured and used by applications in a number of ways. The sidecar can be split into the following functional components:

sidecar architecture

  • Service Registration - Registers a microservice instance in the Registry and sends periodic heartbeats.
  • Route Management - Receives route updates from the Controller and updates the Proxy without disruption.
  • Supervisor - Manages the lifecycle of an Amalgam8 Proxy server and optionally the associated microservice itself.
  • Proxy - An OpenResty-based Nginx server that acts as a request forwarder and load-balancer.

The rest of this guide is organized as follows:

  • Deployment Options section describes different ways of packaging the sidecar with a microservice (as part of a container or a pod)

  • Usage section describes how to use the sidecar as a proxy to make API calls to dependent microservices.

  • Configuration section provides details on various runtime configuration options while launching the sidecar, including automatic service registration, health checks, and request proxying.

  • Logging describes how the to monitor API calls made by the sidecar.