Kong Gateway Docker

Production-ready Kong API Gateway deployment with Docker Compose.

Features

• Authentication - JWT, OAuth2, API keys, and more
• Rate Limiting - Protect backend services from abuse
• Traffic Control - Request/response transformations
• Load Balancing - Distribute traffic across multiple backends
• Health Checks - Active and passive health monitoring
• Plugin Ecosystem - 100+ official and community plugins
• AI Gateway - Native LLM provider integration (Kong 3.9+)

Requirements

• Docker Engine 20.10+
• Docker Compose 2.0+
• 2GB RAM minimum

Quick Start

./setup.sh

The setup script will:

1. Create .env from default.env if not present
2. Start PostgreSQL database
3. Run database migrations
4. Launch Kong Gateway

Endpoints

Service	HTTP	HTTPS
Proxy	:8000	:8443
Admin API	:8001	:8444
Kong Manager	:8002	:8445

Verify the installation:

curl http://localhost:8001/status

Configuration

Environment Variables

Copy and edit the environment file:

cp default.env .env

Variable	Default	Description
KONG_VERSION	3.9	Kong Gateway version
KONG_PG_DATABASE	kong	PostgreSQL database name
KONG_PG_USER	kong	PostgreSQL username
KONG_PG_PASSWORD	kong	PostgreSQL password

Declarative Configuration

Place Kong configuration in config/kong.yaml:

_format_version: "3.0"

services:
  - name: my-service
    url: https://api.example.com
    routes:
      - name: my-route
        paths:
          - /api

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│  kong-database  │  PostgreSQL 17 (persistent storage)
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│ kong-migrations │  Database schema bootstrap
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│      kong       │  Kong Gateway 3.9 (read-only container)
└─────────────────┘

Container dependencies use health check conditions to ensure proper startup ordering.

Operations

Start Services

docker compose up -d

Stop Services

docker compose down

View Logs

docker compose logs -f kong

Backup Database

docker exec kong-database pg_dump -U kong kong > backup.sql

Restore Database

cat backup.sql | docker exec -i kong-database psql -U kong kong

Upgrade

Note: Upgrades may require service downtime. Always backup before upgrading.

1. Update KONG_VERSION in .env
2. Run migrations:

docker compose run --rm kong kong migrations up --vv
docker compose run --rm kong kong migrations finish --vv

3. Restart Kong:

docker compose up -d kong

Security

This deployment implements several security measures:

• Read-only container filesystem
• no-new-privileges security option
• Config directory mounted read-only
• tmpfs volumes for runtime data

Production Checklist

• Change default database credentials
• Enable TLS certificates for all endpoints
• Restrict Admin API access to trusted networks
• Configure firewall rules for exposed ports
• Set up log aggregation and monitoring

License

MIT License - See LICENSE for details.

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