[Technical Preview] Using Config Sync to replicate consumer-side catalog data

This feature is provided as a Technical Preview

As such, the feature might not be fully functional in your environment and support is limited. In addition, the feature’s appearance and functionality are subject to change both in this release and in later releases of API Connect. For more information, see https://ibm.biz/api-connect-config-sync.

Requirements

For API Connect Config Sync to run successfully, the following requirements that must be satisfied:

• You are responsible for configuring the API Connect the target deployment to appropriately match the source deployment, so that replication of consumer-side data can take place:
  • The target API Connect deployment must be configured correctly including topology setup, provider organization creation, and catalog creation.
  • The APIs and Products in the source catalog must be replicated in the target catalog using either CI/CD or manual procedures.
  • The target catalog settings (including any spaces if they are enabled in the source catalog) must be configured to match the configuration of the source catalog. This includes compatible gateways and any extensions, user registries, and any other relevant catalog settings (such as lifecycle approvals, application lifecycle, and so on).
  • Compatible onboarding User Registries must be configured in the target catalog (the user registry name and type must match that of the corresponding source user registry, that is, the source and target catalog names must match if you are using the default user registry).
  • All OAuth providers must be configured on the target catalog and spaces.
  • All API User Registries must be configured on the target catalog and spaces.
  • All TLS client profiles must be configured on the target catalog and spaces.
• The Config Sync utility makes use of the API Connect Provider REST API, so you must have connectivity (into both the source and target clusters) with sufficient provider organization user permissions.
• The metadata.source_id key is reserved for use by Config Sync.
  • Because the underlying creation of resources in the target catalog uses the API Connect Provider REST API, the IDs and URLs associated with resources in the target catalog will be different from their corresponding resources in the source catalog (only the cluster-agnostic data of a resource is synchronized).
  • To track which resources in the source catalog map to which resources in the target catalog, Config Sync uses the metadata field of a particular resource. When a new resource is created in the target catalog, the metadata field of that resource is set to contain a key named source_id with a value equal to the ID of the corresponding resource in the source catalog that is being synchronized.
• API Connect Config Sync also uses the name field of some resources to determine a match. This is typically done for resources that are not synchronized by the utility but are needed in the target catalog for the synchronization to be successful; for example, User Registries, Consumer Org Groups, Roles, and published Products (the name and version fields are used for product matching).

Limitations

API Connect Config Sync has the following limitations:

• Config Sync does not back up data; it merely replicates the contents of a source catalog to a target catalog. You must still perform periodic backups to ensure the safety of your data.
• The target catalog is a read-only replica: only unidirectional synchronization of data from the source catalog to the target catalog is supported. Subsequent changes made in the target catalog cannot be synchronized back to the source.
• Source and target deployments operate independently of each other:
  • API rate limiting on Plans is counted independently in the source catalog and the target catalog.
  • OIDC tokens are not replicated. OIDC tokens generated in the source cluster are not valid within the target cluster.
  • Local User Registry (LUR) passwords are not replicated. Consumer organization members belonging to a Local User Registry (LUR) must reset their password in the target cluster.
  • Analytics data is tracked independently in the source cluster and the target cluster. Analytics data is not replicated or aggregated across clusters.
  • Developer portal configuration is not replicated. If you want to enable consumer organization access in the target catalog, you must replicate your Developer Portal site for consistency (restore the site with UUID/URL update where needed).
• Config Sync operates on a single source-target catalog pair at a time.

  If you want to sync multiple different source-target catalog pairs, create a separate cronjob for each pair.

Supported versions of API Connect

Config Sync can synchronize consumer-side resources across different versions of API Connect clusters. The target API Connect cluster version must always be greater or equal to the source API Connect cluster version. Table 1 shows the supported version combinations: