Styra Load Introduction

Styra Load is an enterprise-grade drop-in replacement for the Open Policy Agent (OPA) that offers:

• Datasource integrations: Connect quickly to your Kafka, LDAP, S3 without needing to write or manage your own plugins.
• Secrets manager integration: Connect to HashiCorp Vault to securely use http.send.
• Logging integrations: Send your authorization decision logs to Splunk or Kafka.
• Live impact analysis: Check to see if your new policies impact production before they are merged.
• Lower costs: Use cheaper cloud infrastructure because Styra Load uses 10x less memory and 40% less CPU than OPA.

note

A trial license is required to evaluate Styra Load. Please register for a license at the Styra Load Free Trial page.

See the performance improvements for yourself

The following commands are used to try Styra Load.

1. brew install styrainc/packages/load
2. export STYRA_LOAD_LICENSE_KEY=<your license key> – (Register for a trial license)
3. load run -s https://dl.styra.com/load/bundle-load-400.tar.gz
4. curl 'http://localhost:8181/metrics/alloc_bytes?pretty=true'

The following commands compare Styra Load with OPA.

1. opa run -s -a localhost:8282 https://dl.styra.com/load/bundle-opa-400.tar.gz
2. curl 'http://localhost:8282/metrics/alloc_bytes?pretty=true'

note

Memory usage for both Styra Load and OPA peaks at launch. Wait a short time before checking the metrics to see typical operational figures.

Next steps

• Learn how to install Styra Load or deploy onto Kubernetes.
• Follow one of our tutorials
• Learn how to migrate from OPA.