Chapter 1. Overview of Application Interconnect

Application Interconnect introduces a service network, linking services across the hybrid cloud.

A service network enables communication between services running in different network locations. It allows geographically distributed services to connect as if they were all running in the same site.

This diagram shows a 'service network' connecting two Kubernetes clusters. The Skupper site in Namespace A, in the left cluster, has a deployment which exposes a TCP service to the service network. In the right cluster two sites can use that service as if the service existed in the right cluster.

For example, you can deploy your frontend in a public OpenShift cluster and deploy your backend in a private OpenShift cluster, then connect them into a service network.

A service network provides the following features:

  • Security by default. All inter-site traffic is protected by mutual TLS using a private, dedicated certificate authority (CA).
  • Easy connections between OpenShift clusters, even private clusters.
  • A service network supports existing TCP, HTTP1 or HTTP2-based applications without requiring modification.
  • Monitor your application traffic spread across multiple OpenShift clusters using the service network console.

You deploy and manage a service network using the skupper CLI.