Install the Apigee APIM Operator for Kubernetes

This page applies to Apigee, but not to Apigee hybrid.

View Apigee Edge documentation.

Preview — Apigee APIM Operator for Kubernetes

This feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

This page describes the steps required to install and configure the Apigee APIM Operator for Kubernetes (Preview). To learn more about the benefits of using the APIM Operator, see Apigee APIM Operator for Kubernetes overview.

Before you begin

Before you begin installing the APIM Operator, make sure that you have the required roles and permissions required to complete the steps and that you have completed the prerequisite tasks described in APIM Operator: Before you begin.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to install the APIM Operator, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the organization:

• Create and manage the GKE cluster: Container Admin (roles/container.admin)
• Create and manage service accounts: Service Account Admin (roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin)
• Create and manage service extensions: Service Extensions Admin (roles/networkservices.serviceExtensionsAdmin)
• Create and manage network endpoint groups (NEGs): Compute Instance Admin (roles/compute.instanceAdmin)
• Create and manage backend services: Compute Load Balancer Admin (roles/compute.loadBalancerAdmin)
• Create and manage Apigee resources: Apigee Admin (roles/apigee.admin)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Install and configure the APIM Operator

The following sections describe the steps required to install and configure the APIM Operator:

1. Set environment variables.
2. Enable the required APIs.
3. Retrieve and configure credentials.
4. Install the APIM Operator.
5. Create a workload identity.
6. Optional: Create an Apigee environment.
7. Verify GKE Gateway set up.

Set environment variables

In the Google Cloud project that contains your Apigee instance, use the following command to set environment variables:

export PROJECT_ID=PROJECT_ID
export CLUSTER_NAME=CLUSTER_NAME
export REGION=REGION
export APIGEE_ORG=APIGEE_ORG

Where:

• PROJECT_ID is the ID of the project with your Apigee instance.
• CLUSTER_NAME is the name of your GKE cluster.
• REGION is the region of your GKE cluster.
• APIGEE_ORG is set to the same value as PROJECT_ID.

To confirm that the environment variables are set correctly, run the following command:

echo $PROJECT_ID $CLUSTER_NAME $REGION $APIGEE_ORG

Enable required APIs

APIM Operator requires access to the following APIs:

Name	Title
apigee.googleapis.com	Apigee API
compute.googleapis.com	Compute Engine API
networkservices.googleapis.com	Network Services API
container.googleapis.com	Google Kubernetes Engine API

Use the following command to confirm that the required APIs are enabled:

gcloud services list --project=${PROJECT_ID}

If you don't see the required APIs listed in the command output, enable them:

gcloud services enable apigee.googleapis.com --project=${PROJECT_ID}
gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com --project=${PROJECT_ID}
gcloud services enable networkservices.googleapis.com --project=${PROJECT_ID}
gcloud services enable container.googleapis.com --project=${PROJECT_ID}

Retrieve and configure credentials

Retrieve your cluster credentials and create a service account to connect to Google Cloud services:

1. Get cluster credentials using the following command:

   gcloud container clusters get-credentials ${CLUSTER_NAME} --location=${REGION} --project=${PROJECT_ID}

   These credentials are used to communicate with the GKE cluster created in the prerequisite steps.

2. Set up Service Account Credentials to connect to Google Cloud services:

   gcloud iam service-accounts create apigee-apim-gsa

3. Grant the required roles and permissions to the service account you created using the following commands:
   • Apigee Admin role: Required to create and manage Apigee resources.

     gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${PROJECT_ID} \
         --member "serviceAccount:apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
         --role "roles/apigee.admin"

   • Service extension admin role: Required to create and manage service extensions.

     gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${PROJECT_ID} \
         --member "serviceAccount:apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
         --role "roles/networkservices.serviceExtensionsAdmin"

   • Networking admin role: Required to manage access to Apigee using service extensions.

     gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${PROJECT_ID} \
         --member "serviceAccount:apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
         --role "roles/compute.networkAdmin"

   • Load balancer admin role: Required to manage access between network endpoint groups (NEGs) and backend services.

     gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${PROJECT_ID} \
         --member "serviceAccount:apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
         --role "roles/compute.loadBalancerAdmin"

     gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${PROJECT_ID} \
         --member "serviceAccount:apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
         --role "roles/iam.workloadIdentityUser"

Install Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) and APIM Operator

Install the Kubernetes custom resources definitions (CRDs) and APIM Operator:

1. Create a namespace for the APIM Operator:

   kubectl create ns apim

2. Install the APIM Operator custom resource definitions (CRDs):

   helm install apigee-apim-crds oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/apigee-release/apigee-k8s-tooling-helm-charts/apigee-apim-operator-crds --version 0.6.0 -n apim --atomic

3. Install the APIM Operator:

   helm install apigee-apim-operator oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/apigee-release/apigee-k8s-tooling-helm-charts/apigee-apim-operator-helm --version 0.6.0 --set project_id=${PROJECT_ID} --set serviceAccount=apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com --set apigeeOrg=${PROJECT_ID} --set generateEnv=TRUE --set apigeeMgmtUrl="https://apigee.googleapis.com" -n apim --atomic

Use the following command to confirm that the installation completed successfully:

helm list -n apim

The output should look similar to the following:

NAME                	NAMESPACE	REVISION	UPDATED                                	STATUS  	CHART                          	APP VERSION
apigee-apim-crds    	apim     	1       	2025-02-01 00:17:03.399810627 +0000 UTC	deployed	apigee-apim-operator-crds-0.6.0	0.6.0      
apigee-apim-operator	apim     	1       	2025-02-01 00:15:00.362829981 +0000 UTC	deployed	apigee-apim-operator-helm-0.6.0	0.6.0   

The helm installation creates a required Kubernetes service account (KSA) named apim-ksa in the apim namespace. The KSA contains the annotation required to associate with the workload identity created in the next step.

Done

To confirm that the KSA was created with the required annotation, run the following command:

kubectl describe serviceaccounts apim-ksa -n apim

The output should appear similar to the following:

Name:                apim-ksa
Namespace:           apim
...
Annotations:         iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account: [e-mail]

Create a workload identity

To create the workload identity used by the APIM Operator to access required Apigee and Service Networking resources, bind the KSA with the Google service account you created in Retrieve and configure credentials and assign the workloadIdentityUser role:

gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding apigee-apim-gsa@${PROJECT_ID}.iam.gserviceaccount.com --role roles/iam.workloadIdentityUser --member "serviceAccount:${PROJECT_ID}.svc.id.goog[apim/apim-ksa]"

Optional: Create an Apigee environment

This step is optional. If you don't want to create an Apigee environment, the APIM Operator will create the environment. The new environment's name will have the prefix: apim-enabled-dep-env.

Create an Apigee environment:

1. Set the TOKEN required for the curl command:

   export TOKEN=$(gcloud auth print-access-token)

2. Create the environment using one of the following commands:
   • For Subscription 2021 organizations:

     curl -X POST "https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$ORG_NAME/environments" -H \
        "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -H "content-type:application/json" \
         -d '{
           "name": "ENV_NAME",
           "properties": {
               "apigee-service-extension-enabled":"true"
         }
       }'

     Where ENV_NAME is the name of the environment to create.

   • For Subscription 2024 and Pay-as-you-go orgs:

     curl -i -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"  "https://apigee.googleapis.com/v1/organizations/$APIGEE_ORG/environments" -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d '{
       "name": ENV_NAME,
       "displayName": ENV_NAME,
       "state": "ACTIVE",
       "deploymentType": "PROXY",
       "apiProxyType": "PROGRAMMABLE",
       "type" : ENV_TYPE,
       "properties": {
         "property": [
           {
             "name": "apigee-service-extension-enabled", 
             "value": "true"  
           }
         ]
       }
     }'

     Where:

     • ENV_NAME is the name of the environment to create.
     • ENV_TYPE is the type of the environment to create. For example, INTERMEDIATE or COMPREHENSIVE.
     Note: The environment created in this step, or created by the APIM Operator, is either an Intermediate or Comprehensive environment, to support the use of Extensible proxies. This feature cannot be used with Base environments.

Troubleshoot

If you encounter issues when installing APIM Operator, see Troubleshoot the APIM Operator for solutions to common errors.

What's next

• Use Apigee policies with the APIM Operator.
• Add Apigee policies to the GKE Gateway.