Tyk Self-Managed

Last updated: Dec 14, 2023 3 minutes read.

What is Tyk On-Premises / Self-Managed ?

Tyk Self-Managed allows you to easily install our Full Lifecycle API Management solution in your own infrastructure. There is no calling home, and there are no usage limits. You have full control.

Tyk Components

The full Tyk Self-Managed system consists of:

Tyk Gateway: Tyk Gateway is provided ‘Batteries-included’, with no feature lockout. It is an open source enterprise API Gateway, supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP and gRPC protocols, that protects, secures and processes your APIs.
Tyk Dashboard: The management Dashboard and integration API manage a cluster of Tyk Gateways and also show analytics and features of the Developer portal. The Dashboard also provides the API Developer Portal, a customisable developer portal for your API documentation, developer auto-enrolment and usage tracking.
Tyk Pump: Tyk Pump handles moving analytics data between your gateways and your Dashboard (amongst other data sinks). The Tyk Pump is an open source analytics purger that moves the data generated by your Tyk nodes to any back-end.
Tyk Identity Broker (Optional): Tyk Identify Broker handles integrations with third-party IDP’s. It (TIB) is a component providing a bridge between various Identity Management Systems such as LDAP, Social OAuth (e.g. GPlus, Twitter, GitHub) or Basic Authentication providers, to your Tyk installation.
Tyk Multi-Data Center Bridge (Optional, add-on): Tyk Multi-Data Center Bridge allows for the configuration of a Tyk ecosystem that spans many data centers and clouds. It also (MDCB) acts as a broker between Tyk Gateway Instances that are isolated from one another and typically have their own Redis DB.

Architecture

Tyk Self-Managed Archtecture

Dependencies & Database Support

MongoDB / PostgreSQL

Tyk Dashboard requires a persistent datastore for its operations. By default MongoDB is used. From Tyk v4.0, we also support PostgreSQL. See Database Options for a list of versions and drop-in replacements we support.

Redis

Tyk Gateway requires Redis for its operations. See supported Redis versions for the list of releases.

Visit the Gateway page for more info.

Init Systems

Tyk packages support systemd, Upstart (both 0.6.x and 1.x) and SysVinit Linux init systems. During package installation only one is chosen depending on the operating system support, e.g.:

CentOS 6, RHEL 6, Amazon Linux ship with Upstart 0.6.x
Ubuntu 14.04, Debian Jessie with Upstart 1.x
CentOS 7, RHEL 7, Ubuntu 16.04, Debian Stretch are running with systemd
Certain older distros may only provide SysVinit but all of them typically provide compatibility with its scripts

Note that any init scripts of your choosing can be used instead of automatically detected ones by copying them from the install/inits directory inside the package directory.

This init system variance implies there are different ways to manage the services and collect service logs.

Upstart

For Upstart, service management can be performed through the initctl or a set of start, stop, restart and status commands. Upstart 1.x also works with the service command.

systemd

For systemd, either systemctl or service commands may be utilised.

The service command can usually be used with SysVinit scripts, as well as invoking them directly.

Service logs availability

Upstart 0.6.x and SysVinit: log files are located in /var/logs for every respective service, e.g. /var/logs/tyk-gateway.stderr and /var/logs/tyk-gateway.stdout
Upstart 1.x: by default everything is stored in /var/logs/upstart directory, e.g. /var/logs/upstart/tyk-gateway.log
systemd utilises its own logging mechanism called journald, which is usable via the journalctl command, e.g. journalctl -u tyk-gateway

Please consult with respective init system documentation for more details on how to use and configure it.