Chris Phillips’ Blog - API, Integration and Governance

When deploying API Connect in OpenShift you can deploy the API Connect Cluster Object. Sometimes this is referred to as the TopLevelCR. This will deploy a management, analytics, portal, and gateway. If you are using CP4I it will also auto configure it as well.

However, there are times that all subcomponents are not required.

A few years ago I was playing around with jmeter-on-ocp. https://github.com/ChrisPhillips-cminion/jmeter-on-ocp. Please note this is my fork, I am unsure what is happening to the original but credit must go to https://github.com/alvarolop for the start of this.

As an API Connect platform management team being able to confirm the API Manager and Gateway are working as expected is critical. The API Manager and the Gateway both have key endpoints that should be monitored to determine platform health.

Geraint is one of the Senior Engineers in the API Connect Analytics Squad. He has written a great article on how Rollover and Retention is handled in APIC V10.0.5.

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/integration/blogs/geraint-jones/2023/09/07/analytics-rollover-and-retention-in-v1005

This is a great article by Rashid on handling API errors! https://rashidaljohani.github.io/API-error-handling-why-should-you-care/

API Connect sends DataPower the certifcate it needs to present to end users. This needs to be replaced manually during certificate rotation.

Today someone asked me once again how we can filter calls so that we are able to have an allow list or deny list of APIs for API Calls.

Today is the day I first learnt about OPA…. I am unsure how this has never come to my attention before. For those of you who are not aware OPA is a OpenPolicyAgent that provides a standardised ways to enforce policies, at Kubernetes, Envoys or Application level. Please go to https://openpolicyagent.org/ for more details.

Protecting APIs inside of your business so external consumers can be policed is a recognised and well understood pattern. However, what about APIs from outside of your business that that are consumed by your internal developers.

I take a bit of pride in my one-line shell commands. However, I always end up starting from first principles each time. This article will be a living document that will contain the useful commands that I use. These will start simple and get more complex towards the end.