Introducing Template-Guided Deployment of Remote Gateways in API Connect Multi-Tenant SaaS on AWS

We are excited to announce Template-Guided Deployment of Remote Gateways for API Connect Multi-Tenant SaaS on AWS. This feature includes all of the benefits of Remote Gateway Registration - like control of data flows over the network, secure and reliable connections between services, facilitation of data privacy requirements, and more - with the added benefit of providing a streamlined step-by-step guide for deploying a new DataPower API Gateway in your own environment. This feature will automatically register your newly deployed DataPower API Gateway in API Connect, allowing you to seamlessly begin utilizing it for the APIs and Products in your Provider Organization.

Note that this feature is intended for those looking to deploy a new DataPower API Gateway in their environment - for the process of registering a preexisting DataPower API Gateway, please see the blog post for Remote Gateway Registration.

Prerequisites

• Template-Guided Deployment is currently only supported for OpenShift clusters.
• A Premium subscription is required to utilize this feature.
• Users must have the settings:manage permission in API Connect to utilize this feature.

Deployment Process

To begin, open the Instance settings panel in the top-right after logging in to your Service Instance.

Then select the Add button in the Remote gateway section.

On the next page, select the Deploy option.

On the next page, enter the Title, Namespace, Management endpoint, and API invocation endpoint you wish to use for the DataPower API Gateway. Note that the endpoint entries must refer to addresses that have been properly configured for subsequent use by the gateway.

The next step is to deploy the required operators. The following operators will be installed:

• IBM's API Connect operator
• IBM's DataPower operator
• IBM's Common Services operator
• RedHat OpenShift's Cert Manager operator

Copy the manifest supplied here to a file, and create the resources it defines by logging in to your OpenShift cluster via the CLI and running the following command:

oc create --filename=${OPERATORS_MANIFEST_FILE}

Once this command has been run, it will take about a minute for the required CustomResourceDefinitions to install to your cluster. Their installation can be verified with the following command:

oc get crd | grep -E 'NAME|cert-manager.io|ibm.com'

See the following screenshot for the expected CustomResourceDefinitions:

Once the required operators have been deployed, click Next to proceed with the DataPower API Gateway deployment.

As in the last step, copy the manifest supplied here to a file, and create the resources it defines by logging in to your OpenShift cluster via the CLI and running the following command:

oc create --filename=${RESOURCES_MANIFEST_FILE}

Once this command has been run, it will take about ten minutes for your DataPower API Gateway and its supporting resources to deploy, depending on your environment. You can monitor the progress of the deployment with the following command:

oc get gatewayclusters --namespace=${NAMESPACE}

And you can monitor the progress of the registration job (which is responsible for registering the DataPower API Gateway in API Connect) with the following command:

oc get jobs --namespace=${NAMESPACE}

Once the GatewayCluster has a STATUS of Running and the Job has a STATUS of Complete, your DataPower API Gateway has been successfully deployed and registered in API Connect.

You may click through the remaining page, which includes support information, and select the Finish button. After refreshing the page, your newly-deployed and registered DataPower API Gateway will appear in the Gateways table of the Instance settings panel, and is ready to use with the APIs and Products in your Provider Organization.

De-Registration Process

To de-register a remote gateway, begin by opening the Instance settings panel in the top-right after logging in to your Service Instance. Select the trashcan icon next to your remote gateway in the Gateways table.

Note that the de-registration will be blocked until all Products are removed from the gateway and it is removed from any Catalogs that use it.

Then confirm the removal by entering in the name of your remote gateway before selecting. Your remote gateway will be de-registered when you click Remove.

Note that this operation will have no effect on the resources running in your cluster - it simply de-registers the DataPower API Gateway from API Connect.

To remove the DataPower Gateway and its supporting resources from your cluster entirely, you may run the following commands:

oc delete --filename=${RESOURCES_MANIFEST_FILE}
oc delete --filename=${OPERATORS_MANIFEST_FILE}
for CRD in $(oc get crd | grep 'cert-manager.io|ibm.com' | awk '{print $1}'); do oc delete crd $CRD; done

Demonstration