Request iHub API Hosting

The DS·IS DevSecOps team can take the time and stress out of hosting an API.

Hosting your API in a perfomant, highly available, and very secure environment isn't simple. That's why we offer to do it for you. Just follow these steps to get your API up and running in our iHub IPaaS.

iHub API Deployment Process Diagram

1. Document Operations

The process begins when you fill out the "API Operational Readiness" form, which provides all the information required to build, deploy, and support your API on iHub. Completing the form creates a ServiceNow ticket, which we'll use to communicate with each other until Jira issues are created (see below).

The form includes sections on: Contacts, Communication Channels, Description & Architecture, External Dependencies, Security, Testing & Monitoring, Reverse Proxy, Build & Deploy, and Operations. It's very comprehensive and may take you a while to fill out, but you can submit it as unfinished at any point, then come back and continue where you left off.

Our DevSecOps team needs to approve the API Operational Readiness documentation as complete before we can schedule deployment. We'll use the ServiceNow ticket for dealing with any questions

2. Schedule Deployment

We prefer deployments to be scheduled for weekday evenings, 5-7pm, but actual times are negotiable depending on your needs.

If the need for an emergency redeployment arises, you should contact us via Slack. We'll respond within one hour during business hours and within two hours otherwise.

We schedule our work using the campus JIRA service. We'll add you to our deployment project, "Hub Release Management" (HSRM) and ask you to create requests there for both the UAT and Production environment deployments. For complete details on creating these requests, see the Create iHub Deployment Jira Issues page.

3. Deploy to UAT & Verify

Once we've agreed on a schedule you should reassign the UAT Jira issue to "DS·IS Release Management." We'll then change its "Fix Version/s" to an actual release (named after the Monday of the week of deployment–e.g., "WS 2021-04-05").

When the time for deployment comes, one of the DevSecOps team will "take" the Jira issue and attempt to build and deploy your code (as outlined in its Operational Readiness document). Should problems arise, they'll work with you to resolve them, commicating through Jira comments to keep a complete record of activity. When the API has been successfully deployed in our UAT environment, you'll be informed via a comment and asked to verify it.

We'll repeat these steps as needed until your API is running properly in UAT.

4. Deploy to Production & Verify

All deployments to production must be reviewed by the campus Change Board during weekly meetings held Tuesdays at 3pm. To allow us to accurately represent the deployment at that meeting, you need to enter a Change Request into ServiceNow by Monday at 5pm, at least seven days prior to the planned deployment. For complete details on creating this request, see the Create a Change Request page.

We'd also prefer that someone other than the API developer (perhaps your project's release manager) enter an explicit approval into the Prod Jira issue, e.g., "Approved to migrate to prod in release 2021-04-16 Major." Then you can reassign it to "DS·IS Release Management."

Integrations will handle production deployment much the same as UAT, except that failures in build or deploy will require that we move back to the UAT environment to resolve issues.