Boost Microservice Performance: Replacing Spring Cloud Gateways with Higress

Motivation for Replacing Java‑Based Gateways

Traditional Java gateways such as Spring Cloud Gateway and Zuul rely on blocking I/O and suffer from Full GC pauses under high request volume. These characteristics increase response latency and can destabilise services, prompting the need for a cloud‑native, high‑performance alternative.

Higress Overview

Higress is an open‑source, cloud‑native API gateway from Alibaba that uses a C++ kernel. Benchmarks show 2–4× higher throughput compared with Java gateways. It integrates with multiple service registries (Nacos, Zookeeper, Eureka) and ecosystems (Spring Cloud, Dubbo, Sentinel, OpenSergo) and conforms to the Kubernetes Ingress/Gateway API.

Prerequisites

Deploy Higress and the Istio CRDs in a Kubernetes cluster (see the Higress deployment guide).

Deploy Nacos (see the Nacos quick‑start guide).

All components are assumed to run in a local Kubernetes cluster for the demonstration.

1. Service Discovery and Routing

1.1 Deploy a Spring Cloud Alibaba Sample

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: spring-cloud-demo-v1
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: spring-cloud-demo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: spring-cloud-demo
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: server
          image: higress-registry.cn-hangzhou.cr.aliyuncs.com/samples/spring-cloud-demo:v1
          imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
          env:
            - name: NACOS_REGISTRY_ADDRESS
              value: nacos-server.default.svc.cluster.local
            - name: SPRING_CLOUD_NACOS_DEMO_VERSION
              value: v1

The deployment registers itself to Nacos using the environment variables NACOS_REGISTRY_ADDRESS (the Nacos service address) and SPRING_CLOUD_NACOS_DEMO_VERSION (the version label). The Spring Cloud application reads these variables via:

spring.cloud.nacos.discovery.server-addr=${NACOS_REGISTRY_ADDRESS}:8848
spring.cloud.nacos.discovery.metadata.version=${SPRING_CLOUD_NACOS_DEMO_VERSION}

1.2 Configure a Nacos Service Source in Higress

In the Higress console, create a service source of type Nacos 2.x and provide the Nacos address, port, namespace and group. This enables Higress to discover services registered in Nacos.

Higress console URL: http://console.higress.io/

1.3 Create a Domain and Route

Define a domain demo.springcloud.com and a route named demo that forwards the path /version to the Spring Cloud service discovered in step 1.2.

1.4 Verify Routing

Map demo.springcloud.com to the cluster’s LoadBalancer IP (or local IP) and send an HTTP request to http://demo.springcloud.com/version. The service should return the version string (e.g., v1).

2. Blue‑Green Deployment

2.1 Deploy a New Version (v2)

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: spring-cloud-demo-v2
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: spring-cloud-demo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: spring-cloud-demo
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: server
          image: higress-registry.cn-hangzhou.cr.aliyuncs.com/samples/spring-cloud-demo:v2
          imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
          env:
            - name: NACOS_REGISTRY_ADDRESS
              value: nacos-server.default.svc.cluster.local
            - name: SPRING_CLOUD_NACOS_DEMO_VERSION
              value: v2

After applying this manifest, Nacos will list two endpoints for the same service, each carrying a different version metadata (v1 and v2).

2.2 Define Subsets Based on Version

apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
  name: demo
  namespace: higress-system
spec:
  host: service-provider.DEFAULT-GROUP.public.nacos
  subsets:
    - name: v1
      labels:
        version: v1
    - name: v2
      labels:
        version: v2

This DestinationRule creates two subsets ( v1 and v2) that Higress can address via the version label.

2.3 Switch All Traffic to v2

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    higress.io/destination: service-provider.DEFAULT-GROUP.public.nacos v2
    higress.io/ignore-path-case: "false"
  labels:
    higress.io/domain_demo.springcloud.com: "true"
    higress.io/resource-definer: higress
  name: demo
  namespace: higress-system
spec:
  ingressClassName: higress
  rules:
    - host: demo.springcloud.com
      http:
        paths:
          - backend:
              resource:
                apiGroup: networking.higress.io
                kind: McpBridge
                name: default
            path: /version
            pathType: Prefix

Updating the higress.io/destination annotation routes 100 % of traffic to the v2 subset.

2.4 Verify and Roll Back

Send a request to confirm the response is from v2. To roll back, change the annotation back to ... v1.

3. Canary Release

3.1 Configure Weighted Traffic

metadata:
  annotations:
    higress.io/destination: |
      80% service-provider.DEFAULT-GROUP.public.nacos v1
      20% service-provider.DEFAULT-GROUP.public.nacos v2

This splits inbound traffic: 80 % to v1, 20 % to v2. Adjust the percentages gradually to increase the share of v2 until it reaches 100 %.

3.2 Verify Canary Distribution

Issue multiple requests (e.g., 20) and observe that roughly 4 of them are served by v2, matching the configured weight.

4. A/B Testing (Header‑Based Routing)

4.1 Define an A/B Ingress

kind: Ingress
metadata:
  annotations:
    higress.io/destination: service-provider.DEFAULT-GROUP.public.nacos v2
    higress.io/canary: "true"
    higress.io/canary-by-header: "User-Agent"
    higress.io/canary-by-header-pattern: ".*Android.*"
    higress.io/ignore-path-case: "false"
  labels:
    higress.io/domain_demo.springcloud.com: "true"
    higress.io/resource-definer: higress
  name: demo-ab
  namespace: higress-system
spec:
  ingressClassName: higress
  rules:
    - host: demo.springcloud.com
      http:
        paths:
          - backend:
              resource:
                apiGroup: networking.higress.io
                kind: McpBridge
                name: default
            path: /version
            pathType: Prefix

This route directs requests whose User-Agent header matches the regex .*Android.* to the v2 subset, while all other requests continue to hit v1.

4.2 Verify A/B Routing

Send a request with an Android User‑Agent and confirm the response comes from v2. Requests with other User‑Agents should still receive v1. After validation, replace the original demo route’s destination with v2 and delete the demo-ab Ingress to complete the rollout.

References

Higress installation guide (Helm): https://higress.io/zh-cn/docs/ops/deploy-by-helm/#%E6%94%AF%E6%8C%81-istio-crd%E5%8F%AF%E9%80%89

Nacos quick‑start (v2): https://nacos.io/zh-cn/docs/v2/quickstart/quick-start.html

Higress user quick‑start: https://higress.io/zh-cn/docs/user/quickstart