Using Red Hat Service Interconnect

Use the Red Hat® Service Interconnect architecture to connect gateways into isolated sets of interconnected gateways.

Red Hat Service Interconnect simplifies application connectivity across the hybrid cloud and enables your applications to span multiple cloud providers, data centers, and regions. Unlike traditional means of interconnectivity, such as VPNs combined with complex firewall rules, development teams can easily create interconnections without elevated privileges and deliver protected links without compromising the organization's security or data.

Applications and services across your environment can communicate with each other using Red Hat Service Interconnect as if they are all running in the same site.

The primary use case for Red Hat Service Interconnect is to connect Kubernetes namespaces across distributed Kubernetes deployments. The Red Hat Service Interconnect router is deployed in the same namespace as the applications and service and provides networking services just for the namespace that it lives in.

Use the Red Hat Service Interconnect architecture to connect gateways into isolated sets of interconnected gateways. Then, publish an application service to all the namespaces that belong to a single interconnected gateway set. You must create a Kubernetes service for every application service that you want to publish.

For more information about Red Hat Service Interconnect, see Red Hat Service Interconnect overview.

Network segments in IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh

IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh ( Mesh) provides a management layer for Red Hat Service Interconnect to give customers access to Red Hat Service Interconnect technology.

In Mesh, the sets of interconnected gateways are called network segments. A network segment supports the creation of gateway interconnects and prevents interconnections with Red Hat Service Interconnect gateways that are not in the same network segment.

When you define namespaces, applications, and policies, including their child resources, you assign them to a specific network segment. When a service in a network segment is exposed, any application in the network segment can communicate with that service.

To enable the applications in a network segment to communicate with a service in the same network segment, you create a Mesh policy. The from side of the policy is set to the network segment that contains the applications and the to side is set to a service in the same network segment.

What to do next

Complete the following steps to get started with Red Hat Service Interconnect:
  1. Install an Open Horizon agent. See Installing an Open Horizon agent.
  2. Deploy your Red Hat Service Interconnect gateways by using the Mesh console or the CLI:
    1. Create a network segment.
    2. Create your Service Interconnect edge gateways and connect the gateways by using a remote connection.
    3. Create connection policies so that service requests can flow over your Service Interconnect edge gateways.

    See Deploying Service Interconnect edge gateways with the Mesh console and Deploying Service Interconnect edge gateways with the CLI.