#apiadministration

We now provide the Apigee APIM Operator, a lightweight Application Programming Interface Management and API Gateway tool for GKE environments. This release is a critical step towards making Apigee API management available on every gateway, anywhere.

The Kubernetes-based Apigee APIM Operator allows you build and manage API offerings. Cloud-native developers benefit from its command-line interface for Kubernetes tools like kubectl. APIM resources help the operator sync your Google Kubernetes Engine cluster with Apigee.

Advantages

For your business, the APIM Operator offers:

With the APIM Operator, API producers may manage and protect their APIs using Kubernetes resource definitions. Same tools and methods for managing other Kubernetes resources can be used for APIs.

Load balancer-level API regulation streamlines networking configuration and API security and access for the operator.

Kubernetes' role-based access control (RBAC) and Apigee custom resource definitions enable fine-grained access control for platform administrators, infrastructure administrators, and API developers.

Integration with Kubernetes: The operator integrates Helm charts and Custom Resource Definitions to make cloud-native development easy.

Reduced Context Switching: The APIM Operator lets developers administer APIs from Kubernetes, eliminating the need to switch tools.

Use APIM Operator when

API producers who want Kubernetes API management should utilise APIM Operator. It's especially useful for cloud-native Kubernetes developers who want to manage their APIs using the same tools and methods. Our APIM Operator lets Apigee clients add Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)-based API management features.

limitations

The APIM Operator's Public Preview has certain restrictions:

Support is limited to REST APIs. Public Preview doesn't support GraphQL or gRPC.

The Public Preview edition supports 25 regional or global GKE Gateway resources and API management policies.

A single environment can have 25 APIM extension policies. Add extra APIM extension policies by creating a new environment.

Gateway resources can have API management policies, but not HTTPRoutes.

Public Preview does not support region extension. A setup APIM Operator cannot be moved to different regions.

Meaning for you?

With Kubernetes-like YAML, you can configure API management for many cloud-native enterprises that use CNCF-standardized tooling without switching tools.

APIM integration with Kubernetes and CNCF toolchains reduces conceptual and operational complexity for platform managers and service developers on Google Cloud.

Policy Management: RBAC administrators can create APIM template rules to let groups use different policies based on their needs. Add Apigee rules to APIM templates to give users and administrators similar capabilities as Apigee Hybrid.

Key Features and Capabilities

The GA version lets users set up a GKE cluster and GKE Gateway to use an Apigee Hybrid instance for API management via a traffic extension (ext-proc callout). It supports factory-built Day-Zero settings with workload modification and maintains API lifespan with Kubernetes/CNCF toolchain YAML rules.

Meeting Customer Needs

This functionality addresses the growing requirement for developer-friendly API management solutions. Apigee was considered less agile owing to its complexity and the necessity to shift from Kubectl to other tools. In response to this feedback, Google Cloud created the APIM Operator, which simplifies and improves API management.

Looking Ahead

It is exploring gRPC and GraphQL support to support more API types, building on current GA version's robust foundation. As features and support are added, it will notify the community. Google Cloud is also considering changing Gateway resource and policy attachment limits.