NATS Messaging Fabric

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NATS Messaging Fabric.

NATS is the message bus we reach for when latency matters and operations must stay boring. JetStream persistence, KV, and object store for event-driven systems.

Scope

What we do

  • Design event-driven architectures on NATS JetStream.
  • Use NATS KV and object store as primary state for micro-services.
  • Operate leaf nodes and multi-cluster topologies.
  • Integrate NATS as a service-mesh data-plane alternative.

Practical

Exercises we run

Small, repeatable drills we use on engagements and teach in workshops. Each has a lab setup, step-by-step outline, and measurable output.

Event-driven micro-services on JetStreamProducer / consumer with idempotent replay, KV for state, object store for payload offloading.
NATS as service-mesh data planeNATS micro framework + leaf nodes + leaf-cluster topology for inter-service communication.
Disaster-recovery replayReplay a day's worth of events from JetStream to a fresh consumer.

Topology

Hub, regional clusters, and leaf nodes

A NATS deployment scales down to a single process and up to a global mesh. The pattern we reach for most often is a three-tier topology: a durable hub for global state, regional clusters for local low-latency workloads, and leaf nodes pushed to the edge.

HUB — GLOBAL, DURABLE JETSTREAMREGIONAL CLUSTERS — 3-NODE JETSTREAMLEAF NODES — EDGE / DMZ / OFFLINE-TOLERANT
  • Hub (global)3-node JetStream cluster (full-mesh) holding durable streams, KV, and object stores that need global visibility. Runs in one central region; other tiers fan out from it.
  • Gateway connectionsDashed lines between hub and regions — bi-directional, multiplexed over a single TLS connection per pair. Used for subject federation and global stream replication.
  • Regional clusters3-node JetStream per region, each holding region-local state. Low-latency for co-located services; falls back to hub for globally-replicated subjects.
  • Leaf nodesOne-way outbound connection to a parent cluster. Run in edge, DMZ, or offline-tolerant environments. Queue groups, subject filtering, and JetStream mirrors all work through leaf links.

Further reading

More on NATS.

Workshops we teach + field notes we're writing, all linked back to what you just read. See all workshops → See all field notes →

Workshop

Hands-on: NATS for event-driven systems — 1-day workshop

Document-ingest pipeline on JetStream with idempotent replay, KV state, and the failure-drill playbook end-to-end.

Scheduling soon →

Field note

Event-driven microservices on NATS JetStream

Document-ingest + OCR + KV + object-store pipeline with idempotent replay drill and single-node-kill failure test.

Draft →

Field note

NATS as a service-mesh data plane alternative

5-service demo using NATS `micro` framework + per-service accounts + leaf-node locality. Honest trade-off vs Envoy.

Draft →

Engagement

Hands-on: NATS for event-driven systems — 1-day workshop

Packaged engagement — we scope, build, and hand over with runbooks, against a specific SLA. Add to cart to request delivery; no price is billed up-front.

Add to engagement →

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AI Infrastructure · Platform Engineering · London.
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