What is Red Hat OpenShift API Management?

Application Programming Interface (API) management refers to the processes of distributing, controlling, and analyzing the APIs that connect applications and data across cloud environments. As a developer, once you have built your APIs, you may have to allow controlled access to these APIs to both internal and external customers. API management helps you to share, secure, distribute, control, and monetize APIs. 

Red Hat OpenShift API Management is a cloud service for creating, securing, and publishing your APIs. It is based on  Red Hat 3Scale API Management, with Red Hat’s single sign-on (SSO) technology built in, running as an add-on for Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated and Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS. OpenShift API Management gives organizations the option of managing their own APIs for large-scale deployments, without having to run a solution for this purpose themselves.

OpenShift API Management helps you to define, deploy, consume, or publish your APIs for use by other developers and partners. You can implement  proxies, security policies, rate limiting, logging, metrics, and an API developer portal for sign-up and documentation. 

The main OpenShift API Management components (Figure 1) include:

  • APIcast: The API gateway
  • Admin portal: The console that API providers work in
  • Developer portal: The interface for API consumers
  • Red Hat’s single sign-on technology: Authentication for access to the developer portal as well as to APIs
Architecture overview of Red Hat OpenShift API Management
Figure 1: Architecture overview of Red Hat OpenShift API Management