We now have an arm64 container gateway image (for API Gateway 11.1) for users to experiment with. This image can be shared upon request, either through this forum or by contacting me directly.
There were two main drivers for creating an arm64 container gateway image:
- First, and most important, our partners and customers have told us their arm64 compute costs are lower then their amd64 compute costs. By providing an arm64 container gateway, we can save our customers money!
- Second, many more users have moved to Macs with the M1, M2 or M3 chips. These are arm64 chips. For many users, it has been difficult to run the gateway on those chips. Though that recently got better with Docker emulation improvements, emulation is still slow. Now, with the arm64 container gateway, running the container gateway on arm64 chips is much faster and more reliable.
Additional improvements were made to the way this image was built. It's not squashed, so instead of having a single mostly opaque layer, it now has several more transparent layers. This allows better tracing back to the base image (currently RHEL UBI 9 minimal from Iron Bank) and more efficient pulling (layers can be pulled in parallel, and only changed layers are pulled for updates).
Note, this experimental arm64 container gateway image does not include the Siteminder SDK for the Siteminder authentication integration.
Also note, this experimental feature is meant to be experimented with in non-production environments. It must be requested through this forum or by contacting me directly, and it's supported through this forum or by contacting me directly. Broadcom Support will refer you to this forum if you open a Broadcom Support case for this experimental feature. Whether, and if so when, it is enhanced and advanced from experimental to preview to generally available will depend on user adoption and feedback. If you would like to see this feature advance, please experiment with it and provide your feedback.
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Ben Urbanski
Product Manager, API Gateway
Layer7 API Management
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