Expose the database services over your network

In order to get to this point in our path, you have installed front-end applications on your public cluster followed by the database and payment service on your private clusters and created a service network using Red Hat Service Interconnect. It's time to securely expose the services over this network.

Expose your network services

Now let's expose the database service over the service network. This will allow the front end on the public cluster to connect to the database and payment-processor as if it was a local service, while in reality, the service is a proxy for the real service running on the private cluster.

You can either do this by using the skupper expose command or by using simple kubectl annotations. In your example, you are going to use the annotations because it's super useful when making connections through your GitOps workflow.

1. Expose the database and payment processor over the service network by running the following commands in the Terminal1 tab of your private cluster:

   kubectl annotate service database skupper.io/proxy=tcp
   kubectl annotate service payment-processor skupper.io/proxy=http

2. You have now established a secure link between the two clusters, and exposed the database and payment processor as services on public cluster. This will allow the front end on the public cluster to connect to the database and payment processor services as if they were a local service, but are really proxies for the real service running on the private cluster (Figure 21).

   

   Note: You are not exposing the database and payment processor service to the internet. Only the services in the service network enabled by Service Interconnect can access them
3. After a few seconds, go back to the browser tab where you opened the patient portal front end and refresh it. You should now be able to see the the list of patients and doctors that the portal retrieved from the database. This shows that you have successfully connected our front end to the database using Red Hat Service Interconnect (Figure 22).

   

4. Click on the patient, Angela Martin (Figure 23).

   

5. Access the Bills tab to find Angela Martin's unpaid bills then select Pay (Figure 24).

   

6. Submit the payment (Figure 25).

   

7. There is now a Date Paid and Processor location value, indicating that the payment is successful. This shows that you have successfully connected your payment-processor to the application using Service Interconnect (Figure 26).

   

8. Revisit the console and click on the Components tab. All the services should now be connected (Figure 27).

   

Congratulations! You successfully used Red Hat Service Interconnect to build a secure service network between services on two different OpenShift clusters and allowed application to connect and communicate over the secure network.