Running Azure API Management Developer tier on Production environment

Question

I need to deploy Azure API Management at work and we also need VNET support as some of our on-cloud apps need to call on-premise API and vice versa. (My company has ExpressRoute so we can use VNET peering)

Reading through APIM price list is painful, APIM Premium tier which has VNET support costs a whopping 2800 USD per month in my region. I know there have been years of complaining and Microsoft didn't do anything.

Hence the question: Is anyone running APIM Developer tier on Production? Dev tier has all the nice features but does not offer SLA. Can I assume that Dev and Premium tiers are running on the same backend? If APIM Dev tier goes down, is Premium tier likely to go down as well and the difference would be that I will receive compensation credits for Premium tier? TBH, I don't want the credits if Dev and Premium tiers will go down together anyway.

Even I don't need VNET support, the Consumption tier which is highly affordable does not offer Developer Portal!! The Basic tier is already a bit pricey. I'm rolling my eyes here, why does Microsoft have to limit those great features??

Bonus question: if anyone can guide me a workaround how to integrate VNET for Consumption/Basic tier, that would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi @Pitawat

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A! Thanks for posting the question.

Apology for your experience with the APIM services. Developer tier is meant to be used for non-production use cases and evaluations therefore they don’t offer any SLA. Different APIM SKU's run on different backend services and according they provide different features and SLA's.

I do understand your concern and I see multiple customers voted to support VNET for Basic Tier of APIM and developer portal support for consumption tier. This is still being reviewed by the product team and they will be updating the feedback thread accordingly. You can also vote up on this feedback and also provide any feedback to the APIM service. But definitely, I will also pass your feedback to our product team.

Unfortunately, there is no way to deploy the APIM Basic Tier in a VNET. But if your requirement is similar to that you want to expose the private services then you can refer to a similar discussion.