krakend

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for krakend

KrakenD is a high-performance, open source API Gateway that aggregates, transforms, filters, and secures requests to your microservices from a single declarative configuration file.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/krakend:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard krakend image is a drop-in replacement for the upstream KrakenD Community Edition Docker Official Image (docker.io/library/krakend, formerly docker.io/devopsfaith/krakend). The krakend binary is installed at /usr/bin/krakend, and the image keeps the upstream entrypoint (docker-entrypoint.sh), default command (krakend run -c krakend.json), and working directory (/etc/krakend), so existing configuration and invocations continue to work.

Like most Chainguard Containers, this image runs as a nonroot user and includes only the minimum set of packages needed to run the gateway. There are two differences from the upstream image worth calling out:

• Runtime user. This image runs as uid:gid 65532:65532 (the nonroot krakend user). The upstream image instead starts as root and drops to its own krakend user (uid 1000, gid 65533) via su-exec. Deployments that assume runAsUser: 1000, a particular fsGroup, or bind-mount ownership tied to uid 1000 must be updated to 65532. The shipped entrypoint still drops to the krakend user via su-exec if you deliberately start the container as root.
• libc and plugins. The upstream krakend binary is musl/Alpine, built with Go 1.26; this image is glibc, built with Go 1.27. KrakenD plugins are Go plugins that must match the host's libc and Go toolchain, so plugins built with the default krakend/builder:2.13.11 (musl) image will not load here. Build them with the glibc builder variant, krakend/builder:2.13.11-linux-generic, instead.

A minimal default configuration is shipped at /etc/krakend/krakend.json so the container starts without any additional setup; mount your own configuration over that path to run a real gateway. KrakenD serves on port 8080 by default and, when telemetry is enabled, exposes metrics on port 8090 (the upstream image declares EXPOSE 8080 8090).

Prerequisites

KrakenD is configured entirely from a declarative configuration file (krakend.json by default). To run a useful gateway you need a valid configuration describing your endpoints and backends. You can validate a configuration with krakend check before deploying it.

Getting Started

Validate and run a configuration by mounting it over the default config path:

# Validate the configuration first.
docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)/krakend.json:/etc/krakend/krakend.json:ro" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/krakend:latest check -c /etc/krakend/krakend.json

# Run the gateway (KrakenD listens on port 8080 by default; 8090 for metrics).
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 \
  -v "$(pwd)/krakend.json:/etc/krakend/krakend.json:ro" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/krakend:latest

The gateway exposes a built-in health endpoint at /__health that returns HTTP 200 once it is serving:

curl http://localhost:8080/__health

Deploying with Helm

KrakenD can be deployed to Kubernetes with the community krakend Helm chart. Because this image runs as uid 65532 (the chart defaults runAsUser to 1000) and because the chart otherwise deploys its own sample configuration, point the chart at this image, pin the securityContext, and supply your gateway configuration through the chart's krakend.config value. Create a values file:

helm repo add equinixmetal https://helm.equinixmetal.com

cat > values.yaml <<'EOF'
image:
  registry: cgr.dev
  repository: ORGANIZATION/krakend
  tag: latest
# This image's only user is uid 65532; pin the securityContext to it while
# keeping the chart's hardened defaults.
securityContext:
  allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
  runAsNonRoot: true
  runAsUser: 65532
  runAsGroup: 65532
  readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
  capabilities:
    drop: ["ALL"]
    add: ["NET_BIND_SERVICE"]
krakend:
  config: |
    {
      "version": 3,
      "port": 8080,
      "echo_endpoint": true,
      "endpoints": [
        {
          "endpoint": "/test",
          "backend": [
            { "host": ["http://127.0.0.1:8080"], "url_pattern": "/__echo/" }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
EOF

Then install the chart with that values file:

helm install krakend equinixmetal/krakend --values values.yaml

Configuration

KrakenD reads a single declarative configuration file. A minimal krakend.json that enables the built-in echo backend and proxies a /test endpoint to it looks like:

{
  "version": 3,
  "port": 8080,
  "echo_endpoint": true,
  "endpoints": [
    {
      "endpoint": "/test",
      "backend": [
        { "host": ["http://127.0.0.1:8080"], "url_pattern": "/__echo/" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

version must be 3 for current KrakenD releases, port selects the listening port (also settable with the -p flag), and each endpoint maps an exposed route to one or more backend services. The built-in /__health endpoint is always available and requires no configuration. See the KrakenD configuration documentation for the full schema, and use krakend check -c krakend.json to validate changes.

Documentation and Resources

• KrakenD documentation
• Running KrakenD
• KrakenD Community Edition source
• krakend Helm chart

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.