Architecture¶

This page provides visual documentation of NthLayer's architecture, workflows, and integrations.

Platform Architecture¶

The NthLayer platform sits between your service definitions and your observability stack, generating the complete reliability infrastructure.

flowchart TB
    subgraph Git["📁 Git Repository"]
        specs["services/*.yaml"]
    end

    subgraph NthLayer["⚙️ NthLayer Platform"]
        reslayer["ResLayer\nSLOs & Error Budgets"]
        govlayer["GovLayer\nPolicy Enforcement"]
        obslayer["ObserveLayer\nMonitoring"]
    end

    subgraph Observability["☁️ Observability Stack"]
        prometheus["Prometheus"]
        grafana["Grafana"]
        pagerduty["PagerDuty"]
        loki["Loki"]
    end

    specs --> reslayer
    specs --> govlayer
    specs --> obslayer

    reslayer --> prometheus
    obslayer --> grafana
    obslayer --> pagerduty
    obslayer --> loki

Apply Workflow¶

When you run nthlayer apply, the following artifacts are generated from your service specification:

flowchart LR
    subgraph Input["📄 Input"]
        yaml["service.yaml"]
    end

    subgraph Processing["⚙️ NthLayer Processing"]
        parser["Spec Parser"]
        slo_gen["SLO Generator"]
        alert_gen["Alert Generator"]
        dash_gen["Dashboard Builder"]
        pd_gen["PagerDuty Setup"]
    end

    subgraph Output["📦 Generated Artifacts"]
        slos["slos.yaml"]
        alerts["alerts.yaml"]
        dashboard["dashboard.json"]
        recording["recording-rules.yaml"]
        pd_config["pagerduty-config.json"]
    end

    yaml --> parser
    parser --> slo_gen
    parser --> alert_gen
    parser --> dash_gen
    parser --> pd_gen

    slo_gen --> slos
    slo_gen --> recording
    alert_gen --> alerts
    dash_gen --> dashboard
    pd_gen --> pd_config

Integration Architecture¶

NthLayer integrates with your existing observability stack without requiring changes to your infrastructure:

flowchart TB
    subgraph User["👤 User Environment"]
        developer["Developer"]
        cicd["CI/CD Pipeline"]
        k8s["Kubernetes"]
    end

    subgraph CLI["🖥️ NthLayer CLI"]
        apply["nthlayer apply"]
        portfolio["nthlayer portfolio"]
        setup["nthlayer setup"]
    end

    subgraph Metrics["📊 Metrics Stack"]
        prom["Prometheus"]
        grafana["Grafana Cloud"]
        loki["Loki"]
    end

    subgraph Incidents["🚨 Incident Management"]
        pagerduty["PagerDuty"]
        slack["Slack"]
    end

    developer --> apply
    cicd --> apply

    apply --> prom
    apply --> grafana
    apply --> pagerduty

    portfolio --> prom
    setup --> grafana
    setup --> pagerduty

    pagerduty --> slack
    prom --> grafana

SLO Portfolio Flow¶

The portfolio command aggregates SLO health across all services:

flowchart LR
    subgraph Services["📁 Service Definitions"]
        svc1["payment-api.yaml"]
        svc2["checkout-service.yaml"]
        svc3["notification-worker.yaml"]
    end

    subgraph Collection["⚙️ Portfolio Collection"]
        scanner["Service Scanner"]
        aggregator["SLO Aggregator"]
        health["Health Calculator"]
    end

    subgraph Output["📤 Output"]
        text["Terminal Output"]
        json["JSON Export"]
        csv["CSV Export"]
    end

    svc1 --> scanner
    svc2 --> scanner
    svc3 --> scanner

    scanner --> aggregator
    aggregator --> health

    health --> text
    health --> json
    health --> csv

Technology Support¶

NthLayer generates technology-specific monitoring for 18+ technologies:

flowchart TB
    subgraph Databases["🗄️ Databases"]
        postgres["PostgreSQL"]
        mysql["MySQL"]
        mongodb["MongoDB"]
        elasticsearch["Elasticsearch"]
    end

    subgraph Caches["⚡ Caches & Queues"]
        redis["Redis"]
        kafka["Kafka"]
        rabbitmq["RabbitMQ"]
        nats["NATS"]
    end

    subgraph Infra["🌐 Infrastructure"]
        nginx["Nginx"]
        haproxy["HAProxy"]
        traefik["Traefik"]
        k8s["Kubernetes"]
    end

Data Flow Summary¶

flowchart LR
    A["service.yaml"] --> B["nthlayer apply"]
    B --> C["Prometheus Alerts"]
    B --> D["Grafana Dashboard"]
    B --> E["PagerDuty Setup"]
    B --> F["Recording Rules"]
    B --> G["SLO Definitions"]

    H["nthlayer portfolio"] --> I["Scan services/"]
    I --> J["Aggregate SLOs"]
    J --> K["Health Report"]