Deploy to Kubernetes with Helm

Helm is an open-source packaging tool that helps you install and manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes applications. It allows you to manage Kubernetes charts, which are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources.

This article provides the steps for deploying self-hosted gateway component of Azure API Management to a Kubernetes cluster by using Helm.

Availability

Prerequisites

• Create a Kubernetes cluster, or have access to an existing one.

  Tip

  Single-node clusters work well for development and evaluation purposes. Use Kubernetes Certified multi-node clusters on-premises or in the cloud for production workloads.

• Create an Azure API Management instance.
• Provision a gateway resource in your API Management instance.
• Install Helm v3.

Adding the Helm repository

1. Add Azure API Management as a new Helm repository.

   helm repo add azure-apim-gateway https://azure.github.io/api-management-self-hosted-gateway/helm-charts/
   

2. Update repo to fetch the latest Helm charts.

   helm repo update
   

3. Verify your Helm configuration by listing all available charts.

   $ helm search repo azure-apim-gateway
   NAME                                            CHART VERSION   APP VERSION     DESCRIPTION
   azure-apim-gateway/azure-api-management-gateway 1.0.0           2.0.0           A Helm chart to deploy an Azure API Management ...
   

Deploy the self-hosted gateway to Kubernetes

1. Select Gateways from under Deployment and infrastructure.

2. Select the self-hosted gateway resource you intend to deploy.

3. Select Deployment.

4. A new token in the Token text box was autogenerated for you using the default Expiry and Secret Key values. Adjust either or both if desired and select Generate to create a new token.

5. Take note of your Token and Configuration URL

6. Install the self-hosted gateway by using the Helm chart

   helm install azure-api-management-gateway \
                --set gateway.configuration.uri='<your configuration url>' \
                --set gateway.auth.key='<your token>' \
                azure-apim-gateway/azure-api-management-gateway
   

7. Execute the command. The command instructs your Kubernetes cluster to:

   • Download the image of the self-hosted gateway from the Microsoft Container Registry and run it as a container.
   • Configure the container to expose HTTP (8080) and HTTPS (8081) ports.

   Important

   By default, the gateway is using a ClusterIP service and is only exposed inside the cluster. You can change this by specifying the type of Kubernetes service during installation.

   For example, you can expose it through a load balancer by adding --set service.type=LoadBalancer

8. Run the following command to check the gateway pod is running. Your pod name will be different.

   kubectl get pods
   NAME                                           READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   azure-api-management-gateway-59f5fb94c-s9stz   1/1       Running   0          1m
   

9. Run the following command to check the gateway service is running. Your service name and IP addresses will be different.

   kubectl get services
   NAME                           TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)               AGE
   azure-api-management-gateway   ClusterIP   10.0.229.55     <none>        8080/TCP,8081/TCP     1m
   

10. Return to the Azure portal and confirm that gateway node you deployed is reporting healthy status.

Next steps

• Learn more about the self-hosted gateway, see Azure API Management self-hosted gateway overview.
• Learn more about guidance for running the self-hosted gateway on Kubernetes in production.
• Learn more about the observability capabilities of the Azure API Management gateways.