At 50 GB in size, the Layer7 API Gateway Azure VHD Image can be very slow to download via a web browser. This how-to covers the recommended approach to download the Layer7 API Gateway Azure VHD Image.
Layer7 API Gateway on Azure
The Layer7 API Gateway supports multiple deployment form factors: container-based, VMware OVA, AWS AMI, software (RPM), and Azure VHD images. Specifically on Azure, customers can use the following deployment approaches:
- Container-based deployment
- Software install (RPM)
- VHD image
Most customers take the VHD image approach. However, the image is stored on an Azure Blob Storage, and at 50 GB in size, is very slow to download via a web browser. It can take hours to download the image.
Recommended Approach for getting API Gateway Azure VHD Image
The recommended approach to download the API Gateway Azure VHD Image is by using the command line utility AZCopy from Microsoft. There are executables for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. It uses a block-based Azure Storage API and leverages concurrent connections to speed-up the download. In addition, it supports retries in case any issues arise.
The browser-based download takes 3+ hours to download the image. AZCopy can take as little as 10 minutes to download. Therefore, AZCopy is by far the preferred and recommended approach.
After downloading the image, you follow the same steps from the documentation to deploy the VHD image on your Azure infrastructure.
AZcopy Example
Here's an example running the AZCopy command in Windows (no credentials are needed to download the VHD image):
.\azcopy.exe copy https://layer7images.blob.core.windows.net/vmdepot-images/gateway-10.0.00-10442-azure-centos7-x8664.vhd d:\images\gateway-10.0.00-10442-azure-centos7-x8664.vhd
Using the above command on a fast 1 Gigabit link, it took 11 and a half minutes (~74 MB/s) to download the 50 GB V10 VHD image (your mileage may vary):
Job df305496-5af9-7f4c-736d-7a310c128424 summary
Elapsed Time (Minutes): 11.2717
Number of File Transfers: 1
Number of Folder Property Transfers: 0
Total Number of Transfers: 1
Number of Transfers Completed: 1
Number of Transfers Failed: 0
Number of Transfers Skipped: 0
TotalBytesTransferred: 53687091712
Final Job Status: Completed
Conclusion
In conclusion, you don't need to wait hours downloading the Layer7 API Gateway Azure VHD Image. The next time you're deploying a new version of the API Gateway on Azure, look at using AZCopy to download the image. You'll be glad you did.