End of Sale Notice:

F5 NGINX is announcing the End of Sale (EoS) for NGINX Management Suite API Connectivity Manager Module, effective January 1, 2024.

F5 maintains generous lifecycle policies that allow customers to continue support and receive product updates. Existing API Connectivity Manager Module customers can continue to use the product past the EoS date. License renewals are not available after September 30, 2024.

See our End of Sale announcement for more details.

Install or Upgrade API Connectivity Manager

Follow the steps in this guide to install or upgrade F5 NGINX Management Suite API Connectivity Manager.

Before You Begin

Security Considerations

To ensure that your NGINX Instance Manager deployment remains secure, follow the recommendations in this section:

Install NGINX Instance Manager and its modules on a dedicated machine (bare metal, container, cloud, or VM).
Make sure that no other services are running on the same machine.
Make sure that the machine is not accessible from the Internet.
Make sure that the machine is behind a firewall.

Installation Prerequisites

Important:
Before you can install this module, you need to have NGINX and ClickHouse installed on your system. Additionally, you will need to add the NGINX Instance Manager repository. The Prerequisites topic has detailed instructions on how to fulfill these requirements.

Dependencies with Instance Manager

API Connectivity Manager depends on the platform capabilities of Instance Manager. The following table lists the minimum versions of Instance Manager required for API Connectivity Manager:

API Connectivity Manager	Instance Manager Dependency
1.9.0 - 1.9.3	2.13.0 and later
1.8.0	2.12.0 and later
1.6.0 - 1.7.0	2.10.0 and later
1.5.0	2.9.0 and later
1.4.0 - 1.4.1	2.7.0 and later
1.3.0 - 1.3.1	2.6.0 and later
1.1.0 - 1.2.0	2.4.0 and later
1.0.0	2.3.0 and later

To ensure API Connectivity Manager’s new features work correctly, you may need to install or upgrade Instance Manager to the minimum version specified. If Instance Manager is not installed, API Connectivity Manager will install the latest version. If the installed version is below the minimum required version, API Connectivity Manager will upgrade Instance Manager to the latest version. Otherwise, API Connectivity Manager will leave Instance Manager unchanged.

To install the latest version of API Connectivity Manager, run the following command:
```
sudo yum install -y nms-api-connectivity-manager
```

To install the latest version of API Connectivity Manager, run the following commands:
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nms-api-connectivity-manager
```

Enable and start the F5 NGINX Management Suite services:
```
sudo systemctl enable nms nms-core nms-dpm nms-ingestion nms-integrations nms-acm --now
```
NGINX Management Suite components started this way run by default as the non-root nms user inside the nms group, both of which are created during installation.
Restart the NGINX web server:
```
sudo systemctl restart nginx
```

Post-Installation Steps

The following steps may be necessary depending on your installation configuration.

If you used a custom address, username, or password, or enabled TLS when installing ClickHouse, follow the steps in the Configure ClickHouse guide to update the /etc/nms/nms.conf file. If you don’t do so, NGINX Instance Manager won’t be able to connect to ClickHouse.
If you use Vault, follow the steps in the Configure Vault guide to update the /etc/nms/nms.conf file. If you don’t do so, NGINX Instance Manager won’t be able to connect to Vault.
If you use SELinux, follow the steps in the Configure SELinux guide to restore SELinux contexts (restorecon) for the files and directories related to NGINX Instance Manager.

Accessing the Web Interface

To access the NGINX Instance Manager web interface, open a web browser and go to https://<NMS_FQDN>, replacing <NMS_FQDN> with the Fully Qualified Domain Name of your NGINX Instance Manager host.

The default administrator username is admin, and the generated password was displayed in the terminal during installation. If you’d like to change this password, refer to the “Set or Change User Passwords section in the Basic Authentication topic.

Add License

A valid license is required to make full use of all the features in API Connectivity Manager.

Refer to the Add a License topic for instructions on how to download and apply a trial license, subscription license, or Flexible Consumption Program license.

Upgrade API Connectivity Manager

Note:
When you confirm the upgrade, the upgrade process will automatically upgrade dependent packages as needed, including Instance Manager. If you prefer to back up NGINX Management Suite before upgrading, you can cancel the upgrade when prompted.

CentOS, RHEL, RPM-Based
Debian, Ubuntu, Deb-Based

To upgrade to the latest version of API Connectivity Manager, run the following command:
```
sudo yum update -y nms-api-connectivity-manager
```

To upgrade to the latest version of the API Connectivity Manager, run the following command:
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y --only-upgrade nms-api-connectivity-manager
```

Restart the NGINX Management Suite platform services:
```
sudo systemctl restart nms
```
NGINX Management Suite components started this way run by default as the non-root nms user inside the nms group, both of which are created during installation.
Restart the API Connectivity Manager service:
```
sudo systemctl restart nms-acm
```
Restart the NGINX web server:
```
sudo systemctl restart nginx
```
(Optional) If you use SELinux, follow the steps in the Configure SELinux guide to restore the default SELinux labels (restorecon) for the files and directories related to NGINX Management Suite.

What’s Next

Set Up the Data Plane

API Connectivity Manager requires one or more data plane hosts for the API Gateway.

Complete the following steps for each data plane instance you want to use with API Connectivity Manager:

Install NGINX Plus R24 or later
Install NGINX njs module
Install the NGINX Agent on your data plane instances to register them with NGINX Management Suite.