Cloud routing for supergraphs

When you create a cloud supergraph with GraphOS Studio, GraphOS automatically provisions and manages a router that acts as an entry point to your GraphQL APIs. In this architecture, individual GraphQL APIs are called subgraphs. Clients send operations to your router's public endpoint, instead of sending them directly to your subgraphs.

GraphOS only hosts the runtime for your supergraph's cloud router. GraphQL servers for your individual subgraphs are still hosted in your infrastructure.

Create your first cloud supergraph

Federation and subgraph compatibility

Cloud supergraphs use Apollo Federation 2 for their core architecture. Many GraphQL server libraries support Federation 2. Your GraphQL API doesn't already need to be using Apollo Federation to add it to a cloud supergraph.

Initializing your router

Your router is provisioned automatically whenever you create a cloud supergraph in GraphOS Studio, or whenever you create a new variant for an existing cloud supergraph. Each variant has its own distinct router.

When you first create a variant, the router provisioning process can take a few minutes. If this process hasn't completed yet for a particular variant, an INITIATING ENDPOINT label is shown at the top of the variant's page in Studio:

Once initialized, you can configure your cloud router.

Cloud router regions

Cloud routing for Serverless plans is only available in Chicago, USA. Apollo's infrastructure has interconnects with major public cloud providers, so latency is minimal. For example, latency between Chicago and AWS in Virginia is approximately 10 ms.

Dedicated cloud routers have a wider variety of options. Region selection for cloud routers is only available on the Dedicated plan. Contact Sales to learn more.

Cloud launches

Publishing a new subgraph schema or editing a cloud router's configuration triggers a new launch. Every launch automatically deploys new router instances for your supergraph.

Router version updates

With cloud routing, GraphOS runs a fully managed fleet of Apollo Routers for you. Apollo manages the version of Apollo Router that is deployed and ensures that newly released versions are deployed to cloud routers within 30 days of release. Some minor and patch versions may be skipped.

Router releases go through rigorous testing before deployment on GraphOS Cloud. During the deployment of new versions, an Apollo engineer actively oversees the process and rolls back any cloud routers that fail to boot up. While some edge cases may arise—for example, a query planner update could result in slightly degraded performance—router updates should not disrupt your supergraphs.

Automatic deletion of unused routers

Apollo automatically deletes variants of Serverless cloud supergraphs that receive zero operations for 60 consecutive days. This deletes the router, along with all the variant's historical metrics.

• Apollo will notify you via email whenever a Serverless variant is approaching this 60-day limit.
• To prevent deletion, execute at least one GraphQL operation on the variant's router before the 60-day limit.

Limited compute on Serverless

Serverless has limited underlying compute resources, so certain types of workloads might require you to upgrade to Dedicated. Serverless capacity can be exhausted in the following circumstances:

• Complex schemas can exceed available machine memory for Serverless cloud routers. For example, Serverless cloud routers don't support schemas with over 1,000 input types.
• Too many simultaneous requests can cause your Serverless cloud router to return 429 errors to your clients.

You can upgrade to Dedicated for control over scaling and performance. Contact Sales for a free trial.

Security and compliance

The entire GraphOS platform, including its cloud routing infrastructure, is SOC2 Type 2 certified. Secrets are encrypted both in transit and at rest. Secrets are only available inside the runtime environment, and you have total control over when those secrets are resolved in configuration.

The Apollo Router (the underlying technology for cloud routing) has been tested and audited by Doyensec.

GraphOS Cloud on AWS

GraphOS Cloud on AWS is a managed API solution. It runs the Apollo Router on AWS infrastructure to provide a high-performance, configurable GraphQL router. All Dedicated cloud routers run on AWS.

Download an overview of GraphOS Cloud on AWS security and compliance practices. For more information on Apollo's compliance and security measures, visit the Trust Center.