DDoS Protection for AI API Endpoints

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

DDoS, short for Distributed Denial of Service, attacks are a significant threat to any service available via the internet, including AI API endpoints. The attacks aim to overload systems with requests to the point that they can no longer serve legitimate traffic. To protect against such attacks, cloud service providers offer various DDoS protection services.

Let's say you're hosting your AI API on the Azure platform, which has a feature called Azure DDoS Protection that provides enhanced DDoS mitigation capabilities for your resources. It integrates with Azure's virtual networks and protects all resources in the virtual network against DDoS attacks by scrutinizing the traffic and using standard attack mitigation practices to safeguard against common network layer attacks.

To set up DDoS Protection for AI API endpoints in Azure using Pulumi, first you would create an instance of `azure-native.network.DdosProtectionPlan` and then a `PublicIPAddress`, making sure to associate the DDoS Protection Plan with the Public IP Address. Your API's traffic would flow through this public IP, which is shielded by the protection plan.

The following program demonstrates how you could set up DDoS Protection for your AI API endpoints with Azure using Pulumi in Python:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_azure_native.network as network

# Name of the resource group and location might already be defined in your setup,
# so ensure to replace "resource_group_name" and "location" with your actual resource group name and location.
resource_group_name = "my-resource-group"
location = "East US"

# Create an Azure DDoS Protection Plan.
ddos_protection_plan = network.DdosProtectionPlan("ddosProtectionPlan",
                                                  location=location,
                                                  resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
                                                  tags={
                                                      "environment": "production"
                                                  })

# Create a public IP address with DDoS protection.
public_ip = network.PublicIPAddress("publicIP",
                                    location=location,
                                    resource_group_name=resource_group_name,
                                    sku=network.PublicIPAddressSkuArgs(
                                        name="Standard",  # Standard SKU is required for DDoS Protection
                                    ),
                                    # Associate the DDoS Protection Plan created before with this Public IP
                                    ddos_settings=network.DdosSettingsArgs(
                                        ddos_custom_policy=network.SubResourceArgs(
                                            id=ddos_protection_plan.id)
                                    ),
                                    public_ip_allocation_method="Static" # Static IP is recommended for API endpoints
                                    )

# Export the public IP address which will be used as an endpoint for AI API.
pulumi.export('publicIPAddress', public_ip.ip_address)
```

In the above program:

- We create a `DdosProtectionPlan` object which represents the DDoS Protection service in Azure.
- Then, we create a `PublicIPAddress` that is associated with the DDoS Protection Plan we've created. The IP is set to "Static," which is generally recommended for API services.
- The `sku` argument is set to "Standard" because the basic SKU does not support the DDoS Protection Plan feature.

Ensure that the rest of your infrastructure is set up in a way that routes traffic through this protected public IP address—this typically means updating your network interfaces, load balancers, or DNS settings accordingly.

Remember to replace `"my-resource-group"` and `"East US"` with your actual resource group name and preferred Azure location. After deploying this Pulumi program, the public IP address exported at the end will be the one you should use for your AI API endpoints to ensure they are protected against DDoS attacks.