Creating authoring and runtime environments, and other IBM App Connect resources in your Kubernetes cluster

The IBM® App Connect Operator provides a number of APIs that you can use to create authoring and runtime environments (or instances), and resources that you can use in these environments.

To create App Connect instances or resources in your Kubernetes cluster, complete the following steps:

1. Obtain and then add an entitlement key to your namespace to enable the App Connect images to be pulled from the IBM Entitled Registry.
2. From the namespace where the IBM App Connect Operator is installed, create the types of instances or resources that you need.
   • Dashboard
   • Switch Server
   • Designer Authoring
   • Integration Runtime

     See also Deploying Designer and Toolkit integrations to integration runtimes.

   • Integration Server (now deprecated)

     See also Deploying Designer and Toolkit integrations to integration servers.

   • Configuration
   • Trace
   Note:

   • Follow the instructions for creating an instance (or resource) from the Red Hat OpenShift or Kubernetes CLI.
   • Only the AppConnectEnterpriseNonProductionFREE, AppConnectEnterpriseNonProduction, and AppConnectEnterpriseProduction licenses are supported for creating instances or resources. For more information, see Licensing reference for IBM App Connect Operator.
     Exception: It is possible to use annotations to allow the use of Cloud Pak for Integration licenses when creating integration runtimes on Kubernetes. For more information, see Using Cloud Pak for Integration licenses with integration runtimes in a Kubernetes environment.
   • IBM Cloud Pak foundational services (formerly IBM Cloud Platform Common Services) is not supported for Kubernetes environments, so when creating an instance or resource, you must explicitly set the spec.useCommonServices parameter to false.
   • If you are using IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, you can use the spec.ingress.enabled parameter to enable ingress and automatically create the ingress resources that are needed to make the deployed instances publicly available. For more information, see Automatically creating ingress definitions for external access to your IBM App Connect instances on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.
3. If you are working in a Kubernetes environment other than IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, ensure that you create an ingress resource after you create each App Connect Dashboard, switch server, App Connect Designer, integration server, or integration runtime instance in your cluster. These ingress resources are needed to make the deployed instances publicly available. For more information, see Manually creating ingress definitions for external access to your IBM App Connect instances in Kubernetes environments.