Integration Native Connectors (External)

Outbound Flow (Internal Egress via Native Integration):

1. Backend Workload (Native Integration): The internal microservice uses its native integration component (e.g., a specific library, SDK or built-in connector) to send a secure HTTPS request to an external system.
2. Private Subnet (Workloads): The workload runs in a Private Subnet (Workloads) with no direct Public Internet access, so the request goes to the designated egress path.
3. Managed NAT / Egress Gateway: Traffic passes through a Managed NAT or Egress Gateway in a Public Subnet (Perimeter), which enforces FQDN/IP allow-listing, performs network address translation (NAT) and logs every egress attempt.
4. Edge Protection (Optional Egress WAF): If regulation requires it, an optional egress WAF applies deep packet inspection, DLP or advanced threat protection before traffic reaches the Public Internet.
5. External Target: The external system receives the request from a static, allow-listed egress IP address.

• Fast delivery by reusing vendor-supplied components vs tight coupling to that library's release cadence, versioning and deprecation risk.
• Simple, direct synchronous flow vs weaker fault isolation: external latency or downtime directly degrades the caller.
• Centralised egress via Managed NAT/Gateway with static IPs and allow-listing vs a shared chokepoint that adds a hop and must be scaled and monitored.
• Strong compliance through egress logging, WAF and DLP vs extra perimeter cost, inspection latency and operational overhead.
• Secure config and secrets injection vs the lifecycle burden of external credentials and endpoint rotation.

Suppose a pharmaceutical distributor's order-fulfilment microservice has to check a pharmacy's controlled-substance licence status against a national regulatory registry before each shipment is released. The service runs in a private workloads subnet with no public route to the internet. It uses the registry's official Python SDK to send a synchronous HTTPS request carrying the pharmacy's registration identifier. The request goes to a Managed NAT gateway in the perimeter subnet, which translates it to a static egress IP the registry has allow-listed, filters it by FQDN and logs it. Because dispensing data is regulated, the traffic also passes through an egress WAF for DLP inspection before it crosses the public internet. The SDK applies a circuit breaker and exponential backoff, so a registry outage holds dispatch cleanly instead of cascading through the service. OpenTelemetry traces record latency and error rates, and endpoint credentials arrive as injected secrets, never hardcoded in the code.

• Protocol & Format: Use secure synchronous protocols (e.g., HTTPS, gRPC over TLS) and standard formats (e.g., JSON, XML, Protobuf).
• Error Handling & Retry Mechanisms: Build error handling, circuit breakers and exponential backoff retries into the native component to cope with transient network issues or external outages.
• Configuration Management: Manage endpoints, credentials and parameters securely as code and inject them through environment variables or a secrets management service. Never hardcode them.
• Observability: Collect logs, metrics (latency, error rates, request volume) and distributed traces (e.g., OpenTelemetry) for the native component and the Egress Gateway, for troubleshooting and audit.
• Compliance & Auditing: Outbound connections and data exchanges must meet the relevant compliance frameworks. Capture detailed audit logs and store them securely.