MCP Gateway

MCP Gateway is a reverse proxy and management layer for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling scalable, session-aware routing, authorization and lifecycle management of MCP servers in Kubernetes environments.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Key Concepts
• Architecture
• Features
• Getting Started – Local Deployment
• Getting Started – 1-Click Deploy to Azure

Overview

This project provides:

• A data gateway for routing traffic to MCP servers with session affinity.
• A control plane for managing the MCP server lifecycle (deploy, update, delete).
• Enterprise-ready integration points including telemetry, access control and observability.

Key Concepts

• MCP Server: A server implementing the Model Context Protocol, which typically a streamable HTTP endpoint.
• Adapters: Logical resources representing MCP servers in the gateway, managed under the /adapters scope. Designed to coexist with other resource types (e.g., /agents) in a unified AI development platform.
• Tools: Registered resources with MCP tool definitions that can be dynamically routed via the tool gateway router. Each tool includes metadata about its execution endpoint and input schema.
• Tool Gateway Router: An MCP server that acts as an intelligent router, directing tool execution requests to the appropriate registered tool servers based on tool definitions. Multiple router instances may run behind the gateway for session affinity.
• Session-Aware Stateful Routing: Ensures that all requests with a given session_id are consistently routed to the same MCP server instance.
• Agents & Sessions (Preview): Optional, opt-in resources for running LLM-driven agents on top of registered MCP tools. Agents are metadata (system prompt + model + allowed tool list); Sessions are individual runs that stream events over Server-Sent Events. Disabled unless FoundrySettings:Endpoint is configured.

Architecture

flowchart LR
    subgraph Clients[" "]
        direction TB
        DataClient["🔌 Agent/MCP<br>Data Client"]
        MgmtClient["⚙️ Management<br>Client"]
    end

    subgraph Gateway["MCP Gateway"]
        direction TB
        
        subgraph Auth1["Authentication & Authorization"]
            Auth["🔐 Data Plane Auth<br>Bearer Token / RBAC"]
            Auth2["🔐 Control Plane Auth<br>Bearer Token / RBAC"]
        end
        
        subgraph DataPlane["Data Plane"]
            Routing["🔀 Adapter Routing<br>/adapters/{name}/mcp"]
            ToolRouting["🔀 Tool Router Gateway<br>/mcp"]
        end

        subgraph ControlPlane["Control Plane"]
            direction LR
            AdapterMgmt["📦 Adapter Management<br>/adapters CRUD"]
            ToolMgmt["🔧 Tool Management<br>/tools CRUD"]
        end
        
        subgraph Management["Backend Services"]
            DeploymentMgmt["☸️ Deployment Manager"]
            MetadataMgmt["📋 Metadata Manager"]
        end
    end

    subgraph Cluster["Kubernetes Cluster"]
        direction TB
        
        subgraph ServerRow[" "]
            direction LR
            
            subgraph MCPServers["MCP Servers"]
                direction TB
                PodA["mcp-a-0"]
                PodA1["mcp-a-1"]
                PodB["mcp-b-0"]
            end
            
            subgraph ToolRouters["Tool Gateway Routers"]
                direction TB
                Router1["toolgateway-0"]
                Router2["toolgateway-1"]
            end
        end
        
        subgraph ToolServers["Registered Tool Servers"]
            direction LR
            Tool1["tool-1-0"]
            Tool2["tool-2-0"]
        end
    end

    Metadata[("💾 Metadata Store<br>Server & Tool Info")]

    DataClient -->|"MCP Requests"| Auth
    MgmtClient -->|"API Ca

... [View full README on GitHub](https://github.com/microsoft/mcp-gateway#readme)