Data Plane reference

A Data Plane node is a single instance of Kong Gateway that acts as a proxy and serves traffic. In Konnect, Data Plane nodes are managed by Control Planes. Control Planes manage and store configurations in Konnect, and they distribute those configurations to Data Planes nodes. Data Plane nodes don’t manage their own configurations.

Konnect provides Data Plane node installation scripts for various platforms. These Data Plane nodes are configured to run in your Konnect environment. Alternatively, Konnect offers fully-managed Data Planes through Dedicated Cloud Gateways.

Konnect supports the following installation options:

The following table can help you decide which Data Plane node strategy to use based on your use case:

Konnect supports using non-transparent forward proxies to connect your Kong Gateway Data Plane with the Konnect Control Plane. See the Forward proxy connections Kong Gateway documentation for more information.

Self-managed Data Plane nodes can be upgraded to a new Kong Gateway by initializing new nodes before decommissioning old ones. This method ensures high availability, allowing the new node to start data processing prior to the removal of the old node.

Managed nodes are upgraded automatically after selecting the new version of Kong Gateway. We recommend running one major version (2.x or 3.x) of a Data Plane node per Control Plane, unless you are in the middle of version upgrades to the Data Plane. Mixing versions may cause compatibility issues.

To upgrade a Data Plane node to a new version, follow these steps:

curl -X PUT "$KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_URL/v2/cloud-gateways/configurations" \
     -H "Accept: application/json"\
     -H "Content-Type: application/json"\
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $KONNECT_TOKEN" \
     --json '{
       "control_plane_id": "'$CONTROL_PLANE_ID'",
       "version": 3.1,
       "control_plane_geo": "ap-northeast-1",
       "dataplane_groups": [
         {
           "provider": "aws"
         },
         {
           "region": "'$REGION'"
         },
         {
           "cloud_gateway_network_id": "'$CLOUD_GATEWAY_NETWORK_ID'"
         },
         {
           "autoscale": [
             {
               "kind": "autopilot"
             },
             {
               "base_rps": 100
             }
           ]
         }
       ]
     }'

Data Plane certificates generated by Konnect expire every ten years. If you bring your own certificates, make sure to review the expiration date and associated metadata.

Renew your certificates to prevent any interruption in communication between Konnect and any configured Data Plane nodes. The following happens if a certificate expires and isn’t replaced:

• The Data Plane node stops receiving configuration updates from the Control Plane.
• The Data Plane node stops sending analytics and usage data to the Control Plane.
• Each disconnected Data Plane node uses cached configuration to continue proxying and routing traffic.

Depending on your setup, renewing certificates might mean bringing up a new Data Plane, or generating new certificates and updating Data Plane nodes with the new files.

The following parameters are the minimum settings required for a Data Plane node:

Labels are commonly used for metadata information. Set anything that you need to identify your Data Plane nodes – deployment type, region, size, the team that the node belongs to, the purpose it serves, or any other identifiable information. For more information, review the Konnect labels documentation.