In this article, we'll showcase the new community site for Azure API management https://aka.ms/apimlove. This site is a one-stop shop for all things related to Azure API management, including videos, tutorials, and community resources.
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What is Azure API management?
If you're completely new to Azure API management, it's a service that allows you to create, publish, and manage APIs in a secure and scalable way. With Azure API management, you can expose your APIs to external developers, partners, and internal teams, and monitor and analyze their usage. Additionally it also has a great story around generative AI and how you can take these APIs to production. How you might wonder?
Well, the short answer is that there are some great policies made specifically for generative AI that you can apply to your APIs, let's describe it a bit more in detail.
Problems and Solutions with generative AI APIs
A good way to understand the capabilities of Azure API management is to look at some common problems faced when working with generative AI APIs and how Azure API management solves them. Here are some key problems and solutions:
Token Usage Management
- Problem: Tracking token usage across multiple applications and ensuring fair distribution.
- Solution: Azure APIM provides a token limit policy that allows you to set quotas on token usage per application. This ensures that no single application consumes the entire token quota1.
Load Balancing and Error Management
- Problem: Distributing load across multiple instances and managing errors to ensure high availability.
- Solution: APIM supports load balancing to distribute requests across multiple endpoints. It also implements a circuit breaker pattern to stop requests to failing instances and redirect them to healthy ones2.
Monitoring and Metrics
- Problem: Monitoring API usage, request success/failure rates, and token consumption.
- Solution: APIM provides detailed monitoring and metrics capabilities, including policies to emit token usage metrics. This helps in tracking how many tokens are used and how many are left.
Security
- Problem: Securing API access and managing API keys.
- Solution: APIM allows you to use managed identities for secure authentication, reducing the need to distribute API keys manually. This enhances security by ensuring only authorized applications can access the APIs2.
Cost Management
- Problem: Managing costs associated with API usage and ensuring efficient resource utilization.
- Solution: APIM helps in caching responses to reduce load on the AI model, saving costs and improving performance. It also ensures that committed capacity in Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) is exhausted before falling back to pay-as-you-go instances1.
Summary: Key Policies and Constructs
- Token Limit Policy: Sets quotas on token usage per application.
- Emit Token Metric Policy: Tracks and emits metrics related to token usage.
- Load Balancing: Distributes requests across multiple endpoints.
- Circuit Breaker Pattern: Manages errors by redirecting requests from failing instances to healthy ones.
- Managed Identities: Provides secure authentication without the need for API keys.
- Caching: Reduces load on the AI model by caching responses.
Learn more here
Community Site Features
So what does this new site offer? Here are some key features:
- Videos: Watch tutorials and demos on Azure API management and generative AI.
- Tutorials: Step-by-step guides on how to use Azure API management for generative AI.
- Community Resources: Connect with other developers, share tips and tricks, and get help with your projects.
This site will be updated regularly with new content, so be sure to check back often for the latest updates.
Resources
- Community site, https://aka.ms/apimlove
- Azure API management documentation, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/
- Generative AI gateway capabilities, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/genai-gateway-capabilities
Microsoft