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Version: 2.0.2

NATS on Hikube

Hikube's NATS clusters provide a modern, ultra-lightweight and high-performance messaging platform, designed for real-time communication between services, applications and connected devices. Built for cloud-native and microservices architectures, NATS combines simplicity, speed and resilience in a single, easy-to-operate system.

Architecture and How It Works​

NATS uses a pub/sub (publish–subscribe) architecture without a complex broker: each message is sent to a subject that other applications can listen to.

  • Publishers → publish messages to a subject (orders.created, user.login, etc.)
  • Subscribers → subscribe to these subjects to receive the corresponding messages
  • Subjects → define logical communication channels, hierarchical and dynamic
  • JetStream → adds persistence, replay and delivery guarantees

Lightweight and Performant​

NATS is known for its exceptional speed and minimal footprint, making it an ideal component for distributed architectures.

Key characteristics:

  • Startup time under one second
  • Less than 10 MB of memory consumed per instance
  • Handles millions of messages per second
  • Direct communication between services, without a heavy intermediary
  • Stateless architecture, easily horizontally scalable

NATS delivers high throughput with average latency measured in microseconds, even under heavy load.

Designed for Microservices Architectures​

Each service can publish or consume events without depending on the rest of the system, promoting strong decoupling and better resilience.

Usage examples:

  • Real-time application event broadcasting
  • Communication between distributed microservices
  • Lightweight requests between services (request/reply pattern)
  • Business event handling (order creation, notification, profile update)

Supported Protocols​

NATS is an optimized binary protocol but remains compatible with many environments and standards:

  • NATS Core → lightweight messaging (pub/sub, request/reply)
  • NATS JetStream → persistence, replay and flow control
  • NATS WebSocket → direct integration with web applications
  • NATS MQTT → IoT device support
  • NATS gRPC → interoperability with modern APIs
  • Clients available in over 40 languages: Go, Python, Node.js, Java, Rust, C#, etc.

Typical Use Cases​

Real-time Communication​

NATS excels at instant event transmission between distributed applications.

Examples:

  • Real-time notifications and status updates
  • Application monitoring and metrics collection
  • Data synchronization between microservices

Event Streaming and Persistence​

With JetStream, NATS becomes a durable streaming system:

  • Temporary or persistent message storage
  • Event replay for auditing or disaster recovery
  • Flow control to never overload consumers

Security and Reliability​

Hikube NATS clusters include advanced security mechanisms:

  • TLS/mTLS encryption
  • NKeys and JWT authentication
  • Subject-level access control (ACL)

This ensures reliable, secure and isolated communication between services, even in multi-tenant environments.

Simple Administration​

Thanks to its minimalist design and built-in tools (CLI, dashboards, Prometheus metrics), NATS is easy to operate and monitor, even at scale.

Examples:

  • Internal event bus for distributed platforms
  • Internal automation orchestration
  • Centralized, lightweight messaging system for Kubernetes