4.1 Deploying the Secure API Manager Appliances

You must deploy one or more appliances that will contain one or more Secure API Manager components. When you deploy the appliance, you set the time zone of the appliance, configure the network settings for the appliance, and create a password for the root user of the appliance.

Secure API Manager uses Docker containers to create the different components. After you define the appliance-specific setting, the initialization process extracts the Docker containers for each component on the appliance.

Each DNS name of the appliance must be publicly resolvable, even in test environments. The DNS name of each appliance must be publicly resolvable to allow the Docker containers access to the local /etc/hosts file of the appliance. If the DNS name is not publicly resolvable, the components cannot communicate with each other and the product does not work.

Ensure that you have determined the number of appliances you will need for your environment. For more information, see Understanding Deployment Scenarios.

After you have the appropriate number of appliances for your Secure API Manager environment, you must deploy the appropriate components on one or more of the appliances using the Deployment Manager. You must understand the Deployment Manager before trying to use it. For more information, see Understanding the Secure API Manager Deployment Manager.

Each Secure API Manager appliance uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as the operating system. During the deployment of the appliance, you set the password for the root user and define your networking settings for the appliance.

It is very important that you keep a record of the IP address, DNS name, and login information for each appliance you deploy. You configure and manage each appliance through the appliance management console. The login for the appliance management console is the IP address or DNS name of the appliance at port 9443. You log in using the root user and the password you specify during the deployment of the appliance. Each appliance has its own password.

Ensure that you have the correct network settings assigned to the appliances. If you deploy a component and want to change the network settings later, Secure API Manager does not see the changes to the network settings. The IP addresses and DNS names are stored in the Database Service component and on the file system stored on the NFS server.

If you must change the network settings on an appliance at a later time, you must delete the component from Secure API Manager, delete the appliance, then redeploy the appliance with the correct network settings.

Use the following worksheet to record your appliance login information.

The extra lines in the worksheet are for clustering the different components. For more information, see Enabling High Availability and Load Balancing.