| name | omni-gateway-benchmark |
| description | Execute performance and load benchmarks against MuleSoft Omni Gateway (formerly Flex Gateway)
on Amazon EKS using the harness under this skill's `scripts/` directory. Use when the user
wants to provision the benchmark cluster, deploy a specific Flex version, drive load with k6,
capture Grafana evidence, retrieve a Markdown report and dashboard PNGs, compare gateway
versions, validate rate-limit or client-id-enforcement behavior under load, or tear the
environment back down. Covers the full lifecycle: AWS provisioning, image push, deploy,
run, report, and teardown.
|
Run Gateway Benchmark
Overview
This skill drives the benchmark harness in scripts/ to measure Flex Gateway throughput,
latency, and resource use under configurable API counts and policies. It provisions a
dedicated EKS cluster, deploys Flex + an upstream echo service, runs a k6 TestRun, exports
Grafana dashboards as PNGs, and emits a self-contained Markdown report per run.
Detailed architecture, dashboards, idempotency design, and design rationale are documented
in references/ARCHITECTURE.md. Read it before extending the harness; this skill assumes it
as background.
flowchart TD
Start{What do you want to do?}
Start -->|First-time setup| FT[Prerequisites + Registration + Push Upstream]
Start -->|Provision infra| UP["make up — EKS cluster"]
Start -->|Deploy + run a single benchmark| RUN["make benchmark or make run"]
Start -->|Re-run with new scenario knobs| KNOB[Edit env + make run]
Start -->|Retrieve results| REP[reports/RUN_ID/]
Start -->|Reset between sessions| CLEAN["make clean-deployment"]
Start -->|Stop AWS billing| DOWN["make down — destructive"]
Safety and Cost Guardrails
The harness provisions billable AWS infrastructure (EKS control plane, NAT gateway, EBS
volumes, c6i.2xlarge nodes, ECR). Two operations are destructive and must be confirmed with
the user before executing — never run them autonomously based on inferred intent:
| Operation | Effect | Confirm before running |
|---|
make preflight | Read-only checks on CLIs, docker daemon, AWS auth, .env, registration, and connectivity; reports remediation per gap | No — safe; never mutates state |
make prepare-registration | Generates .run/registration/registration.yaml and, when POLICIES includes client-id-enforcement, prompts for CLIENT_ID / CLIENT_SECRET and writes them to .env (keeps existing values unless FORCE=1) | Confirm before re-running with FORCE=1 (rotates gateway identity, forces a Flex redeploy) |
make up | Creates VPC + EKS + ECR; starts AWS billing | Yes — confirm region, cluster name, and that costs are expected |
make down | Destroys all infra including the cluster, ECR repository contents, and Terraform state references | Yes — confirm the user has retrieved any reports they want to keep |
make clean-deployment | Removes Flex + upstream + k6 TestRuns, keeps cluster | Safe to run between runs; preserves billing-relevant infra |
If TEARDOWN=1 is set in .env, make benchmark runs make down automatically at the end
of the pipeline. Verify this is the user's intent before invoking make benchmark with that
flag set.
Step 1 — Verify prerequisites
All commands run from skills/omni-gateway/omni-gateway-benchmark/ (where the
Makefile lives — the shell scripts the Makefile calls are under scripts/).
Run the bundled preflight; it covers every check below in one pass and prints a remediation
command for each gap:
make preflight
What make preflight verifies:
- Required CLIs present:
terraform, kubectl, helm, aws, docker (with buildx),
flexctl, curl, jq, python3, envsubst, sha256sum, shellcheck.
- Docker engine — client + server versions reported, and
docker info confirms the daemon
is reachable on the current context.
- AWS identity (
aws sts get-caller-identity), the resolved AWS_PROFILE, and AWS_REGION
loaded from .env.
.env exists and .run/registration/registration.yaml is present.- When
POLICIES includes client-id-enforcement, both CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET are
non-empty.
- Egress to
flex-packages.anypoint.mulesoft.com (the Helm chart source).
Exits non-zero if any check fails — wire it into your shell pipeline (make preflight && make up) so a missing prerequisite stops the run before AWS billing starts.
The AWS principal must have permissions to create EC2, EKS, VPC, ECR, IAM, and EBS resources
in the target region.
Step 2 — Configure the environment
Copy the example .env and fill in scenario knobs:
cp .env.example .env
Edit .env based on the scenario the user wants. Reference table — the harness reads every
variable below:
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|
AWS_REGION | us-east-2 | AWS region for the EKS cluster |
CLUSTER_NAME | flex-bench | EKS cluster + VPC name prefix |
FLEX_VERSION | 1.13.0 | Flex Gateway Helm chart and image version |
FLEX_IMAGE_REPOSITORY | mulesoft/flex-gateway | Override to use a private mirror |
FLEX_IMAGE_TAG | (empty → FLEX_VERSION) | Override to decouple tag from version |
N_APIS | 10 | Number of ApiInstance resources to create |
POLICIES | rate-limit,client-id-enforcement | Comma-list of policies to attach per API |
RPS | 1000 | Target requests per second (constant-arrival-rate) |
VUS | 200 | Pre-allocated k6 virtual users |
DURATION | 2m | k6 test duration (e.g., 2m, 5m) |
CLIENT_ID | (empty) | Required when client-id-enforcement is in POLICIES |
CLIENT_SECRET | (empty) | Required when client-id-enforcement is in POLICIES |
GRAFANA_PORT | 33000 | Local port used by export-grafana-snapshot.sh |
TEARDOWN | 0 | Set to 1 to auto-run make down after make benchmark |
REGISTRATION_FILE | .run/registration/registration.yaml | Path to Flex local-mode registration |
Validation checklist before continuing:
- If
POLICIES contains client-id-enforcement, both CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET are set.
- If
POLICIES= (empty), no auth headers are required.
FLEX_VERSION matches a chart version published at flex-packages.anypoint.mulesoft.com/helm.
Step 3 — Generate the Flex registration artifact (one-time)
The benchmark runs Flex in local mode. Use the bundled target — it generates the artifact
once and, when POLICIES includes client-id-enforcement, prompts for CLIENT_ID /
CLIENT_SECRET and writes them into .env:
make prepare-registration
Behavior:
- Skips registration generation if
.run/registration/registration.yaml already exists. To
rotate the gateway identity (forces a Flex redeploy), re-run with FORCE=1 make prepare-registration — the existing file is backed up to *.bak first.
- Skips the credential prompt unless
POLICIES contains client-id-enforcement.
- Skips overwriting existing non-empty
CLIENT_ID / CLIENT_SECRET unless FORCE=1.
- Supports non-interactive use:
CLIENT_ID=... CLIENT_SECRET=... make prepare-registration.
Manual equivalent (use only if flexctl is being driven outside the harness):
flexctl registration create \
--connected=false \
--output-directory=.run/registration
Do not commit .run/registration/registration.yaml — it is gateway identity material and
.run/ is gitignored.
Step 4 — Build and push the upstream image (one-time)
The k6 driver hits an in-cluster echo server. The image must exist in ECR before
deploy-upstream runs:
make push-upstream
This builds for linux/amd64 via docker buildx (cross-compiling on Apple Silicon) and pushes
to the ECR repository created by Terraform. If make up has not yet run, this fails because
the ECR repo does not exist — provision infra first (Step 5).
Skip condition: If make up has already been run and the upstream image is unchanged,
this step is a no-op. The deploy-upstream hash check will skip redeployment if the rendered
manifest matches the live state.
Step 5 — Provision infrastructure (destructive on AWS billing)
Confirm with the user before running. This creates a VPC, EKS cluster, ECR, and installs the
observability + k6-operator Helm releases:
make up
Expected duration: 15–25 minutes for a fresh cluster. Re-running on an existing cluster is
idempotent and finishes in seconds.
After completion, verify the cluster is reachable:
aws eks update-kubeconfig --region "$AWS_REGION" --name "$CLUSTER_NAME"
kubectl get nodes
You should see two system nodes (t3.large, tainted) and three workload nodes
(c6i.2xlarge, node-role=workload).
Step 6 — Deploy Flex + upstream
These targets are idempotent and content-addressed via SHA-256 hashes stored as pod template
annotations / Deployment labels. Re-running with unchanged config is a no-op:
make deploy-upstream
make deploy-flex
deploy-flex renders flex-config.yaml from assets/config/flex-config-header.yaml +
assets/config/snippets/api-instance.yaml + assets/config/policies/<policy>.yaml, hashes it together with
the image reference, and skips helm upgrade if the hash matches the live deployment. Config
changes apply via kubectl apply to CRDs without restarting Flex pods.
Step 7 — Run the benchmark
A single load test, including report generation:
make run
This sequences: render scenario.js → create the per-run ConfigMap → apply the k6 TestRun
CRD → poll until finished (default timeout 1800s) → port-forward Grafana and export PNGs →
emit the Markdown report.
RUN_ID defaults to a UTC timestamp (20260612T140530Z). Override it for a stable identifier:
RUN_ID=baseline-1.13.0-rl make run
For the full pipeline (up → deploys → run, optionally down if TEARDOWN=1):
make benchmark
Re-running with different scenario knobs does not require redeploying:
RPS=2000 VUS=400 DURATION=5m make run
N_APIS=50 POLICIES= make run
FLEX_VERSION=1.14.0 make deploy-flex && make run
If a TestRun is already in flight in the k6-operator-system namespace, the new run will
fail with a name collision — wait for the previous run to finish or run make clean-deployment
to clear stale TestRuns.
Step 8 — Retrieve results
Each run persists artifacts under reports/<RUN_ID>/:
| Artifact | Path | Notes |
|---|
| Markdown report | reports/<RUN_ID>/flex<VERSION>_n<N_APIS>_<POLICIES>_rps<RPS>_<RUN_ID>.md | Scenario params, raw k6 metrics (http_reqs, http_req_failed, http_req_duration, checks_succeeded), Grafana deep-links |
| Dashboard PNGs | reports/<RUN_ID>/<DashboardTitle>.png | 1600×900, one per dashboard (Flex / Envoy, Flex / Pods, k6 / Driver, plus default kube-prometheus-stack boards) |
Ephemeral render output lives under .run/<RUN_ID>/ (flex-config.yaml, scenario.js,
flex-values.yaml, upstream-deployment.yaml) and is safe to delete.
To re-export Grafana for the most recent run without re-running k6:
make report
To open Grafana interactively while a run is in flight (anonymous Viewer is
enabled; no login required):
make watch
kubectl -n monitoring port-forward svc/kps-grafana 3000:80
make watch accepts RUN_ID=<id> to filter the k6 / Driver dashboard to a
specific run, and OPEN_BROWSER=0 to skip the auto-open.
Step 9 — Clean up
Two cleanup paths, ordered by aggressiveness:
make clean-deployment
make down
clean-deployment is safe between sessions and preserves the cluster cost (~$0.10/hr for the
EKS control plane plus node-group on-demand pricing). make down stops all AWS billing for
this environment but is irreversible — any reports not copied out of reports/ will remain
locally, but ECR images and cluster state are gone.
Scenario Cookbook
Common parameter combinations:
| Goal | Configuration |
|---|
| Baseline, no policies | N_APIS=10 POLICIES= RPS=1000 VUS=200 DURATION=2m |
| Rate-limit only | POLICIES=rate-limit RATE_LIMIT_RPS=500 |
| Client-ID enforcement only | POLICIES=client-id-enforcement CLIENT_ID=... CLIENT_SECRET=... |
| Both policies, high fan-out | N_APIS=50 POLICIES=rate-limit,client-id-enforcement RPS=2000 VUS=400 DURATION=5m |
| Version comparison | Run twice with FLEX_VERSION=1.13.0 and FLEX_VERSION=1.14.0; both make deploy-flex && make run; diff the two reports/<RUN_ID>/*.md files |
The k6 thresholds in the rendered scenario are hard failures: http_req_failed < 1%,
p(95) < 500ms, p(99) < 1000ms. A run that exceeds them will surface in the report's
checks_succeeded line — the harness still completes and reports.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|
make up fails with AccessDenied | AWS principal lacks EKS/VPC/ECR/IAM permissions | Attach a policy granting the missing actions; verify with aws sts get-caller-identity |
make push-upstream fails with repository does not exist | make up not yet run; ECR repo missing | Run make up first, then retry make push-upstream |
deploy-flex fails pulling the chart | FLEX_VERSION not published at the public chart repo | Check helm search repo flex-gateway/flex-gateway --versions; pick a published version |
make run blocks past the 1800s timeout | k6 TestRun stuck in error or creating; missing image; namespace not ready | kubectl -n k6-operator-system get testruns,pods; inspect kubectl describe testrun <name> |
| Report missing PNGs | Grafana port-forward race or image-renderer plugin unavailable | Re-run make report; if persistent, check kubectl -n monitoring logs deploy/kps-grafana for the renderer container |
client-id-enforcement returns 401 on every request | CLIENT_ID / CLIENT_SECRET empty or do not match a Contract resource | Set both in .env; verify the Contract resource exists for the API instance |
Flex pod in CrashLoopBackOff after deploy-flex | Missing or stale flex-registration secret | Regenerate via flexctl registration create --connected=false; rerun make deploy-flex |
bench/spec-hash annotation never updates | Hash collision (rare) or annotation patch failed | Force redeploy: kubectl -n flex annotate deploy flex-gateway bench/spec-hash- --overwrite then make deploy-flex |
RUN_ID collision causes TestRun apply to fail | Previous TestRun with same RUN_SLUG still in the namespace | make clean-deployment or kubectl -n k6-operator-system delete testrun <name> |
For deeper triage of the gateway itself (not the harness), invoke omni-gateway-logs or
omni-gateway-diagnose.
Available Scripts
The make targets above are the supported entry points. They delegate to the scripts in
scripts/, listed here for reference when debugging the harness or composing steps manually.
Every script reads its configuration from .env and accepts --help for usage:
| Script | Driven by | Purpose |
|---|
preflight.sh | make preflight | Read-only check of every CLI, daemon, credential, and one-time artifact before any run |
prepare-registration.sh | make prepare-registration | Generate the local-mode Flex registration artifact; collect CLIENT_ID/CLIENT_SECRET when needed |
push-upstream.sh | make push-upstream | Build the upstream echo image for linux/amd64 and push to ECR |
deploy-upstream.sh | make deploy-upstream | Deploy (or hash-skip) the bench-upstream Service + Deployment |
deploy-flex.sh | make deploy-flex | Render config, then deploy (or hash-skip) the Flex Gateway Helm release + CRDs |
render-flex-config.sh | deploy-flex.sh | Assemble flex-config.yaml from header + API-instance + policy snippets |
wait-for-flex.sh | deploy-flex.sh | Block until the Flex Gateway deployment finishes rolling out |
render-k6-script.sh | run-bench.sh | Render the k6 scenario.js from scenario knobs |
run-bench.sh | make run | Create the per-run k6 TestRun, wait for it, and export the Grafana snapshot |
wait-for-testrun.sh | run-bench.sh | Poll a k6 TestRun until it reaches finished (or times out) |
export-grafana-snapshot.sh | run-bench.sh | Port-forward Grafana and export dashboard PNGs for a time window |
generate-report.sh | make run | Parse k6 summary from runner logs and emit the per-run Markdown report |
watch-grafana.sh | make watch | Open a Grafana port-forward and print live dashboard URLs |
clean-deployment.sh | make clean-deployment | Tear down per-run workloads while keeping the cluster, observability, and k6-operator |
Related Jobs
omni-gateway-install — install Flex on Linux/Docker/Kubernetes (this skill provisions its
own EKS install for benchmarking; use omni-gateway-install for production deployments)omni-gateway-config — validate the rendered flex-config.yaml before make deploy-flexomni-gateway-logs — parse Flex pod logs when a benchmark surfaces unexpected failuresomni-gateway-diagnose — triage non-harness gateway issues observed during a run
