setup-apigee-x

GCP Apigee X — API Gateway with Observability

Set up Apigee X as a middleware layer between clients and a GKE-hosted Spring Boot backend, with OpenTelemetry observability.

Architecture: Android App / Client -> External HTTPS LB -> Apigee X -> PSC -> GKE ILB -> Spring Boot

Estimated provisioning time: 45-90 minutes end-to-end (Apigee instance creation is the bottleneck at 30-60 min).

Prerequisites

• GCP project with billing enabled
• gcloud CLI installed and authenticated
• A running GKE cluster with a backend service (see gcp-gke plugin)
• Familiarity with Apigee concepts (API proxies, environments, deployments)

Instructions

Follow the comprehensive step-by-step guide in references/GUIDE.md. The guide covers:

1. Phase 0 — Authentication, API enablement, IAM setup
2. Phase 1 — Apigee organization provisioning (eval or paid)
3. Phase 2 — Apigee instance creation (30-60 min)
4. Phase 3 — Environment and environment group setup
5. Phase 4 — API proxy bundle creation and deployment (see references/apiproxy/)
6. Phase 5 — PSC and load balancer configuration
7. Phase 6 — Testing and traffic generation
8. Phase 7 — Cloud Trace and observability verification

Quick alternative: Apigee Emulator

For rapid proxy development without cloud provisioning:

docker run -p 8998:8998 google/apigee-emulator

The emulator starts instantly (vs 45+ min for cloud) and is free. Use it for iterating on proxy policies, then deploy to cloud for end-to-end testing.

Reference Files

• references/GUIDE.md — Complete end-to-end implementation guide
• references/apiproxy/ — API proxy bundle (proxy definition, endpoints, targets)
• references/springboot-deployment.yaml — Backend Kubernetes deployment
• references/springboot-ilb-service.yaml — Internal load balancer service

Validation

# Test the Apigee endpoint (replace with your actual hostname)
curl -v https://<APIGEE_HOSTNAME>/v1/<PROXY_BASEPATH>

# Verify API proxy is deployed
gcloud apigee apis list --organization=$PROJECT

# Check Cloud Trace for request traces
# Navigate to Trace > Trace list in the GCP Console

In the Datadog UI, verify traces appear under APM > Traces if the backend is instrumented with Datadog APM.

Troubleshooting

Apigee instance creation takes longer than expected

Cause: Apigee X instance provisioning is inherently slow (30-60 min). This is normal. Fix: Monitor progress with gcloud apigee instances list --organization=$PROJECT. Wait for status to become ACTIVE.

PSC connection fails

Cause: Private Service Connect endpoint not properly linked to the Apigee instance. Fix: Verify the service attachment and NEG configuration as described in Phase 5 of the GUIDE.md.

No traces appearing in Datadog

Cause: The backend application is not instrumented with Datadog APM, or the Datadog Agent is not deployed in the GKE cluster. Fix: Ensure the Datadog Agent is running (see gcp-gke plugin's install-dd-operator skill) and the backend app has the Datadog tracer configured.