API Connect on VMware

An overview of the analytics VM, and how to configure analytics features.

Analytics data storage

The disk size for analytics data is specified at installation when you deploy your analytics OVA file, see Deploying the analytics subsystem OVA file.

You can increase the space available for your analytics data by adding a disk, see Adding disk space to a VMware appliance.

Warning: Do not attempt to increase the size of the existing data disk. Changing the disk size corrupts your existing analytics data.

Managing the analytics subsystems VMs

Manage your analytics VMs with the apicup command from your project directory. Some analytics settings are specified directly as arguments to the apicup command, for example:

apicup subsys set <analytics subsystem> <key> <value>

Other analytics settings are configured in a YAML file that is called analytics-extra-values.yaml, see Analytics extra-values file.

Some maintenance operations require SSH access to your analytics VMs. To access you analytics VMs with SSH, follow these steps:

Use an SSH client to login as the apicadm user:
```
ssh apicadm@<analytics VM FQDN>
```
If you need root user access, sudo to root:
```
sudo -i
```

CAUTION:

Do not do any operations inside the analytics VM that are not described in the API Connect documentation or otherwise advised by IBM.

Analytics extra-values file

Create a file called analytics-extra-values.yaml to configure the following analytics features:

Logstash persistent queue
Offload to third-party systems
Customizing data with ingestion filters
Disable local storage
Note: If you want to disable local storage, you must configure it before installation. You cannot change this setting after installation.

To create and apply the analytics-extra-values.yaml file, follow these steps:

Create a file called analytics-extra-values.yaml in your project directory.

The analytics-extra-values.yaml contains a single object called spec. Set the first line of the file to:

spec:

Define your analytics features inside the spec object. Use 2 spaces for indentation. For example, to disable local storage, set your analytics-extra-values.yaml as follows:

spec:
  external:
    offload: # enable offload to third-party system
      enabled: true
      output: |
        http {
          url => "example.com"
          http_method => "post"
          codec => "json"
          content_type => "application/json"
          headers => {
            "x-acme-index" => "8"
            "x-acme-key" => "0d5d259f-b8c5-4398-9e58-77b05be67037"
          }
          id => "offload_http"
  storage:
    enabled: false # disable local storage

Note: You can define one or more analytics features in the spec object. Do not leave the analytics-extra-values.yaml with an empty spec section.

Use the apicup command to assign your analytics-extra-values.yaml file to the extra-values-file property:
```
apicup subsys set <analytics subsystem> extra-values-file analytics-extra-values.yaml
```
Note: If extra-values-file is already set to analytics-extra-values.yaml, you do not need to rerun this command every time you edit analytics-extra-values.yaml.
Apply the analytics-extra-values.yaml file to your analytics subsystem with apicup install:
```
apicup subsys install <analytics subsystem>
```
Warning: Do not apply an empty analytics-extra-values.yaml file, or one that contains just the spec: line.

Configuring management-ca for analytics subsystem

To enable engagement email destination functionality in the analytics subsystem on an OVA stack, complete the following steps to make the Management CA available:

Run the following commands to extract the required certificates:


apicup certs get <management-cluster-name> platform-api -t cert > platform-api.crt
apicup certs get <management-cluster-name> platform-api -t key > platform-api.key
apicup certs get <management-cluster-name> platform-api -t ca > platform-api-ca.crt

Run the following command to set the extracted certificates:


apicup certs set <analytics-subsystem-name> mgmt-platform-api platform-api.crt platform-api.key platform-api-ca.crt

After setting the certificates, install the Analytics subsystem:
```
apicup subsys install <analytics-subsystem-name>
```

Firewall requirements

Your analytics VMs must be reachable on the ports that are described in API Connect firewall requirements.

Analytics subsystem TLS certificates

No certificate-related sysadmin operations are normally required on your analytics VMs. The analytics subsystem has no user-facing certificates. For more information about certificates on VMware deployments, see API Connect TLS certificates best practices.