Installation prerequisites

Before you install Sterling Order Management System Software on OpenShift® Container Platform, review and meet the required prerequisites.

Knowledge requirements

Read what's new for information about the supported product features or enhancements provided in the current release.
Review the Readme file for supplementary information about deploying the Sterling Order Management System Software IBM Field Sales Professional or Enterprise edition.

Hardware requirements: Ensure that you have a cluster with x86-64 bit CPU architecture or Power Systems 64-bit LE (Little Endian).

Software requirements

System requirements
For the detailed system requirements generate a Software Product Compatibility Report.
Red Hat® OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes versions
Review the supported Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes versions. The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform license must be procured separately outside of the Sterling Order Management System Software.

Important:
Sterling Order Management System Software containers run only on the supported Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes versions.

The Red Hat Universal Base Image is the operating system of the Container software. The supported version is mentioned the Software Product Compatibility Reports.
- For Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform supported version, see system requirements.
- For Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform life cycle policy, see Red Hat Customer Portal.
- For Kubernetes version and version skew policy, see Kubernetes documentation.
Download command line utilities
Ensure to download command line utilities by using the oc Command Line Tool to manage the OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

For more information about command line utilities, see Installing the CLI or Helm command line utility.
Install and configure Helm
For information about installing and configuring Helm, see Red Hat OpenShift documentation.
Install cloudctl utility
Ensure that you have installed the cloudctl utility.

For more information about installing the cloudctl utility, see Readme file.
Configure JDK
IBM JDK is already included in the container. For version specific details, see System Requirements.
Configure Databases
The Cloud database services support is dependent on the database version listed in the system requirements. For example, if you want to use Amazon RDS service for Oracle, then ensure the Oracle database version is the same as listed in the System Requirements.

Important: Ensure that your database is installed in the UTC time zone.
- Configure Db2
  Install and configure the Db2 database. The appropriate client jars are already packaged within the containers. For more information about configuring Db2, see Configuring Db2.
  
  For development purposes, you can use IBM Db2 Docker images from Docker Hub. For more information about IBM Db2 on Docker Hub, see IBM Db2 on Docker Hub.
- Configure Oracle
  - Obtain the license for the Oracle database for the versions supported in the system requirements.
  - Enable Container for Oracle. For more information, see Enabling Oracle Database.
  - Configure Oracle. For more information, see Configuring Oracle.
OpenShift CLI
Download the OpenShift CLI tool.
Configure Messaging Services
- IBM MQ

Install IBM MQ by using e-assembly provided with Sterling Order Management System Software.
- For more information about installing IBM MQ, see Installing IBM MQ.
- For IBM MQ configuration, see Configuring IBM MQ.
- For development purposes, you can use IBM MQ Docker images from Docker Hub. For more information, see IBM MQ on Docker Hub.
- For other JMS vendors, follow the vendor documentation to install and see Integrating with Messaging Services for configuring the messaging system with Sterling Order Management System Software.
  
  Note: The Sterling Order Management System SoftwareIBM Field Sales application server container runs with the default username and the agent container runs with the omsuser username. Therefore, the users must be granted with the necessary privileges in IBM MQ to ensure that Sterling Order Management System SoftwareIBM Field Sales can work with JMS resources.
  The Cloud Messaging Services support is dependent on the version of the messaging system listed in the system requirements.
Configuring Application Servers
WebSphere Liberty is the only supported application server for the Containers. The supported version is already included in the application Container. The configurations needed for the app server can be found here.
Install fix pack
The Sterling Order Management System Software certified containers are released every quarter with the latest fix pack. When installing or upgrading the Helm chart, to load the fix pack factory setup, ensure to set the datasetup.fixPack.loadFPFactoryData parameter to true in values.yaml.

In case you encounter any critical issue and expect the fix to be released in a fix pack earlier than the subsequent quarterly release, then install the fix pack into the om-base container and generate the images for deployment.

For more information about installing the fix packs for Sterling Order Management System Software containers, see Installing fix packs.
Authentication mechanism for integrations
Sterling Order Management System Software supports various ways of authentication mechanism for integrations. However, for container-based deployments it is recommended that you use either BASIC or STANDARD authentication. Read the security considerations for authentication mechanism for integrations.