Installing and uninstalling IBM App Connect in a Kubernetes environment

Kubernetes-only contentYou can install IBM® App Connect on a Kubernetes cluster with internet access or within an air-gapped environment (that is, a restricted or disconnected network with no connection to the internet). The installation of the Operator is managed by Helm and is command-line based. This installation provides an Operator-based release of the IBM App Connect Enterprise certified container.

Note: These instructions apply only if you are installing IBM App Connect Operator 11.6.0 or later. For instructions about installing and uninstalling IBM App Connect Operator 11.5.1 or earlier, see the PDF documentation.

About this task

Before you install the IBM App Connect Operator into your cluster, you must set up the environment with automated certificate management.

A Helm chart is supplied for the Operator in the IBM Helm Chart Repository on GitHub, and you use this chart to install the Operator by running helm commands. In an online environment, you typically pull the IBM App Connect container images, which are needed to deploy the Operator, directly from the IBM Entitled Registry. In an air-gapped environment, you need to first mirror the images to a private or local registry in your cluster to make the images available for deployment.

When you install the IBM App Connect Operator, custom resources for the App Connect components are provided as APIs that can be used to create instances. To make each instance that you create accessible from the internet, you will need to create an ingress resource to route external traffic to the internal service in the cluster.

Use the following information to prepare your Kubernetes environment and install App Connect.