Planning the analytics profile, storage class, and storage type

Begin planning your IBM® API Connect analytics deployment by choosing a deployment profile, a Kubernetes storage class, and an OpenSearch storage type.

Deployment profile

Decide which deployment profile you want to use, the available profiles are listed on Analytics component deployment profile limits.

Kubernetes storage class

Before you install analytics, you must choose a storage class. Ceph, Block, and Local Volume are all supported; however, Local Volume is most suitable for analytics. The analytics subsystem provides internal data replication and HA support, so the additional HA capabilities that Ceph or Block storage might give you are not needed. In addition, analytics requires a high throughput of disk I/O operations to successfully handle the analytics data load from the gateway. Local Volume is the best-performing option in this area.

Note: GlusterFS storage is not supported for analytics. If you use this option, you might encounter severe performance degradation, and possibly loss of data.

OpenSearch storage type

Note: Storage type selection is available on three replica deployments only. On a one replica deployment, only shared storage is available.
API Connect provides two OpenSearch storage types:
  • Shared storage

    A single pod provides data storage and OpenSearch cluster management. Shared storage is the default option, and the only option on a one replica deployment.

  • Dedicated storage
    OpenSearch data storage and cluster management functions are split, and run in separate pods on each worker node:
    • storage-os-master - Runs an OpenSearch manager eligible node that manages the OpenSearch cluster, but does not store any API event data.
    • storage - Runs an OpenSearch data node that stores API event data.
Dedicated storage facilitates horizontal scaling to support greater analytics data storage and throughput. Add worker nodes and increase the number of storage pod replicas in order to scale horizontally (you do not need to increase the number of storage-os-master replicas). Dedicated storage also provides greater stability and allows some OpenSearch configuration changes to be made without downtime.

You can change storage type after installation, see Changing storage type between shared and dedicated.