API Gateway Sample Kubernetes Deployment Files

Products

• CA API Gateway

Issue/Introduction

Customer does not use helm utility and hopes to use Kubernetes deployment using Kubernetes yaml files directly.

Environment

CA APIM Gateway Container Form Factor

Cause

As an industrial trend, providing sample Kubernetes deployment files for a software vendor is actually taking too much effort for both the vendor and the customer to consume and manage.

Resolution

At its core, Helm is a templating tool that is meant to help address the needs of maintaining different combinations of Kubernetes files. So, ideally it is better to adapt the usage of helm in some ways. If there is a need, one can still use helm to help create the Kubernetes yaml files without actually using helm to drive the Kubernetes deployments.

There are the --dry-run and --debug options one can use when issuing a helm install or helm upgrade commands. The --dry-run only does verification to ensure the combinations of the base values.yaml and additional overlay values.yaml and settings are set correctly. The --debug will print out the Kubernetes yaml content in the mix of the debug output. As such, on a development/test environment, one can use these two options to help obtain the Kubernetes yaml files and then through further tailoring if necessary to use them to do the real Kubernetes deployment.

Additional Information

The reason why Kubernetes is because to orchestrate multiple containers without a better tool is way too complex and error prone. In this case, we are talking about orchestrating multiple Layer7 Gateway containers with auto-healing capabilities in addition to other containers that are offering value-added services to the overall deployment.

From a software vendor point of view, the reason why Helm is because we need to support different customers base on their specific needs and implementations. Helm at its core is a templating system that tightly integrate with Kubernetes. By templating, it means that it takes different values.yaml files to dynamically generate appropriate Kubernetes yaml settings and through the tight integration to trigger Kubernetes deployments.

In short, the industry as a whole started the container idea, evolved the need of an orchestration tool like Kubernetes, then the need of something likes helm was born. With the more recent development, a newer concept known as Operator has also started. Layer 7 Gateway also has included this concept in its design and implementation. It will take many of us to devote our energy and time to learn the usage of it better still.