The development and product team for IBM Cloud Pak® for Multicloud Management is excited to announce the latest version: IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management Version 2.3.0.

This release is the next step in supporting our clients challenged with managing a hybrid cloud environment. With the 2.3.0 release, you can manage your hybrid applications across containers and VMs, running on any cloud or in your own data center. The release includes numerous updates that aim to accelerate adoption for clients and more enhancements to self-service capabilities. The Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management can also be installed on Red Hat® OpenShift® on Kubernetes (ROKS), with Red Hat® Advanced Cluster Management.

The following are some of the top features and enhancements in this 2.3.0 release.

Cluster management and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes

If you need cluster management capabilities for managing multiple clusters, you need an integration with Red Hat® Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. By default, without this integration, IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management capabilities manage only your hub cluster. With the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management console and CLI tools, you can view information about your hub cluster. With Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, you can create, import, scale and delete additional managed clusters. You can use the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes console, CLI tools and cluster API to create and manage clusters.

Application management and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes

If you need application management capabilities for managing purely Kubernetes-based application resources — such as subscriptions, channels, non-hybrid deployables, placement rules or applications — an integration with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes is a must. The capabilities for managing non-hybrid application resources are no longer available within IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management. You must use Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes to create, manage and monitor any non-hybrid application resources. 

When you have an integration with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes set up, any Kubernetes-based application resources that you create in either IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management or Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes are automatically detected within the other product. However, hybrid application resources (hybrid applications, hybrid deployables, hybrid placement rules, deployers, application assembler, etc.) that are not purely Kubernetes-based resources are not detected by Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. You can create, view and manage hybrid application resources with IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management. For instance, you can only use the Hybrid Application Model within IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management to manage infrastructure as application resources.

IBM Monitoring Data Provider Management

To monitor a Kubernetes-managed cluster that is managed by the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management hub cluster, you must install Monitoring Data Provider Management, which was formerly called Cloud Native Monitoring. Monitoring Data Provider Management is now operator-based. After installing Monitoring Data Provider Management, you can monitor Kubernetes resources and events from the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management console.

Unified Agent

With this release, there is a new Prometheus Server plug-in. By deploying the Unified Agent, you can select to enable the Prometheus Server plug-in to collect metrics data from Prometheus server. 

Agent enhancements

• The CouchDB agent has added support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, 12 and 15. Support for CentOS 7 and CentOS 8 has also been added. The agent code quality improved and handled security vulnerabilities identified by SonarQube scan. Support has been added for the latest application version CouchDB 3.1.1.
• The Db2 agent now has an improved user interface and prerequisite checker to provide accurate results. The KudGrantPermissions script has been improved to cover more database objects accessed by the Db2 agent.
• The Linux KVM agent now supports Golden Signals that include the following measures: Utilization, Saturation and Errors.
• The Microsoft Active Directory agent has added support for USE case template that include the following golden signals: Utilization and Saturation. The agent has added a Latency-LDAP widget that provides information about the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) bind time for the specified period.
• The Microsoft Cluster Server agent now supports USE case template that include the following golden signals: Utilization, Saturation and Errors.
• The Microsoft Hyper-V agent now supports USE case template that include the golden signal for Saturation.
• The Microsoft IIS agent and Microsoft SharePoint agent now supports USE case template that include the following golden signals: Utilization and Saturation.
• The NetApp Storage agent includes an updated NetApp Storage data model by removing event as resource type to meet scalability objective. Event is now a sub-component of a resource. Hence, event does not form relationship with other resources on user interface (UI).
• The PostgreSQL agent now supports PostgreSQL Server version 13.
• The VMware VI agent now supports golden signals that include the following measures: Utilization, Saturation and Errors.

Security and administration

Secure Tunnel

Secure Tunnel is introduced to break the network barriers and to enable more flexible server access, service calling and infrastructure management across different cloud or on-premises deployments. You can use it to do the following:

• Access servers or services in a private network from an endpoint in the hub cluster that is on a public cloud or an on-premises network.
• Access servers or services in the hub cluster from an endpoint in a public cluster or an on-premises cluster.
• Access infrastructures in private data centers from a management platform (such as IBM Cloud Pak® for Multicloud Management, Infrastructure management) from public clusters.

Default service ibm-management-hybridgrc-core

The ibm-management-hybridgrc-core default service is now included in the foundation services that are installed in the kube-services namespace during IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management installation. 

Amazon Web Services policy controller

Use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) policy controller to monitor your AWS accounts for compliance with a list of CIS controls and report rule violations to the Governance and risk dashboard Policies tab.

Common container policies

The common container policies between IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes have changed in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. The object template is no longer used; the policy template with the child policy Configuration Policy is being used. During migration of existing IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management policies, the child policies are updated automatically. 

Infrastructure management

You can now create and run Chargeback reports for containers. Chargeback reports now support the use of multiple tags. The IBM Terraform provider has been updated to allow Chargeback reports to be based on “Configured Systems” — those created from the IBM Terraform provider.

Support for additional providers (Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Nuage, VMware NSX-t and IBM SDE Storage Automation) have been added.

Service management

You can now execute Terraform templates by using Terraform engine version 0.13.x and 0.14.x. By default, the product installs Terraform engine version 0.13.6 and 0.14.4. You can add new versions of 0.13.x and 0.14.x — for more information, see Creating a Terraform version. Terraform engine version 0.12.21 is the default version. The following pages provide more information on support added for Terraform engine version 0.13.x and 0.14.x:

• Refer to Terraform Provider Configuration to find out more about Terraform 0.13.x and 0.14.x template samples provided with the product and how to define the provider source by using the new hierarchical namespace introduced in Terraform 0.13.x and 0.14.x.
• Refer to Custom Terraform providers to find out more about how to add your custom Terraform 0.13.x and 0.14.x providers.
• Refer to Shipped Terraform providers for Terraform 0.13.x and 0.14.x to find out more about the list of Terraform 0.13.x and 0.14.x providers shipped with the product.

Starting from this version, pre-populated Terraform and service content in the Managed services Library have been shortened. While the entire content is in GitHub and can be imported into the product, only those templates listed in Supported Terraform Templates are officially supported by IBM. If the templates in GitHub do not satisfy your requirements, then you can fork the repository and change the template to suite your requirements.

How to get started and learn more

• To learn more about IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management version 2.3.0, see the documentation. 
• For more information about everything that’s new or changed in this release, see the release notes.
• To purchase the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management as a download from IBM Passport Advantage, contact your IBM sales representative at 1–844–952–5683. Use the priority code: Cloud. 
• See the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management product page for all the details.