The rapid changes in the IT world have led to cloud computing services that allow resources to be distributed as services. These are grouped as Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Product as a service (PaaS), Software as a service (SaaS), and many more. APIs have provided a platform that enables the interaction of systems, tools, and applications for businesses. Azure API management is increasingly becoming popular as a PaaS and SaaS, but its functionality relies on the PaaS element.
Azure API Management
Azure API management is a cloud-based PaaS server that offers Azure for businesses and governments. Azure API management (APIM) is a comprehensive store for API systems and can create products, develop policies and maximize the extensive developer portals.
Azure infrastructure seamlessly integrates with API management and manages APIs existing on other clouds. APIM can also be found on the IL4 and IL5 environments for Azure Government which allows extension and control of public sector workers.
Azure API management entails a few key concepts to be functional to developers.
· Products
· Policies
· Developer portal
APIM provides security to leverage rate limits and abstraction and consolidates and governs API in Azure. Developers can ingest any API, and it is much simpler when the APIs use Open API Format.
Products
The layer of abstraction within Azure API management is the product. These products allow you to develop API subsets already in the solution. This results in the overlapping use of APIs and restricting the functionality of individually collected APIs.
Compartmentalization of APIM makes it easy to sort APIs and separately enforce rules on the logical buckets giving you extra control. The groups created inside the APIM allow the admins to bundle and protect their APIs, permitting them only to add users associated with the APIM into separate subsets.
Admins can ensure only the right people can access the appropriate APIs stored in their APIM instance if there are many user groups.
Policies
The azure API manager needs policies to enforce the restriction and provide subtle control. There are plenty of policies in AIPM that can be as simple as blocking the use of an API after five calls, authentication, logging, caching, and transforming requests and responses.
Policies are the most pivotal functions of an APIM and can facilitate control that every user wants and needs. XML is used to write policies that can be edited using the APIM XML editor.
Developer Portal
The Azure API Management developer portal allows developers to view APIs, products, and respective applications. The portal also displays request body samples meaning developers do not have to guess API request formats. Developer portals also incorporate various code samples in multiple languages.
Developers can also use API calls with custom request bodies and headers to see the exact type of call they are making. Considering the functionality of the developer portal, you can download your Open API Spec copy to use for the API after ingesting it into the instance.
Who should use Azure API Management?
By now, every business is using some API management system. API management allows companies to have some level of previously unavailable control. Developing an API Gateway provides an additional layer of abstraction that ensures close control of APIs. APIM gains broad functionality levels after ingesting an API.
Azure API management allows you to match the APIs to products for compartmentalization. You can include various groups to each product which can be subsets of users. APIM also facilitates the automatic generation of a robust developer portal which provides similar functionality to the Swagger portal with new features like code snippets.
Because of this SharePoint throttling effect, sometimes SharePoint sites will also become unavailable and causes poor performance to the users accessing the sites.To address these issues, Microsoft came up with separate API for migrations named O365 Migration API.
Now we will see how this can be achieved using available API commands.We can either use the CSOM version of Migration API and code in C# or use the PowerShell one.To simply explain the process, I will show you how we can migrate the Library Items from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online using SharePoint Online PowerShell cmdlets.As of now, Office 365 Migration API does not support the migration of site/list schema.
Only content like files, folders, and items can be migrated along with its metadata, unique permissions, and versions.So, to migrate the content using this API, initially, a List/library with columns should be created at the target.Steps to use PowerShell cmdlets to migrate from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint OnlineBefore you beginCreate an Azure Storage AccountInstall the SharePoint Online Management ShellStep 1: Setup your working directoryStep 2: Export your SharePoint List/Library content as a Content PackageStep 3: Generate the Manifest PackageStep 4: Submit packages to Azure Storage AccountStep 5: Start your migration jobStep 6: Monitor your migration jobStep 1: Setup your working directorySet up your working directory by creating two empty folders in SharePoint 2013 Server.Create a Temporary package folder.
So, make sure you run the code in the same PowerShell console otherwise you may end up with “Not Found” exceptions.Step 2: Export your SharePoint List/Library content as a Content PackageExport your SharePoint Library Content as a Content Package to your source-package folder in your working directory by using the Export-SPWeb cmdlet.Run SharePoint Online management Shell as admin and run the following commands substituting your values: Once the command executed successfully, a Content Package will be created at your working directory folder “source-package”.
This package consists of .dat files (pointing to your actual files) and few XML files (which holds files metadata and other information related to Source)Now let’s see how to generate a target Manifest Package based on this Content Package and target Site details.Step 3: Generate the Manifest PackageThe Manifest package is a package of XML files that define metadata, versioning information, permission information, user and groups, lookup relationships if any for your items and the settings for your import.Refer to Content migration schemas for more details about these manifest files.To simply generate the manifest package targeting your destination environment, run the following commands substituting your values:You can find this cmdlet detail here ConvertTo-SPOMigrationTargetedPackageOnce the command executed successfully, you can see your Manifest Package at your provided target-package working directory location.Step 4: Submit packages to Azure Storage AccountNow let’s submit the generated Content Package and Manifest Package to Azure Storage Account.These packages will be created as containers in Azure Storage Account.
You can get them from here.You can find this cmdlet detail here Set-SPOMigrationPackageAzureSourceOnce the command executed successfully, you can see Content Package, manifest, and queue containers with your packages in your Storage Account.Step 5: Start your migration jobNow let’s submit and start a migration job referenced to a previously uploaded package in Azure Storage Account.You can find this cmdlet detail here Submit-SPOMigrationJobStep 6: Monitor your migration jobAt this step, Azure will take care of migrating your content to the destination.
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