Maximo Application Suite Customer-managed

Deploying IBM Maximo Collaborate

By deploying and activating the Maximo Collaborate application, you make it available for use in Maximo Application Suite.

Starting in Maximo Application Suite 9.1, IBM® Maximo Assist is now named IBM Maximo Collaborate. If Maximo Assist is deployed in Maximo Application Suite 9.0 or earlier and you upgrade to Maximo Application Suite 9.1, the name is automatically changed in the user interface.
Note: In the Maximo Application Suite documentation, Maximo Assist is now referred to as Maximo Collaborate.

Before you begin

Attention:

Starting in Maximo Application Suite 9.0, Watson Discovery, which is used to support the query and diagnose functions, is no longer available as a dependency in Maximo Assist. If Maximo Assist is already deployed and activated with Watson Discovery, and you are upgrading to Maximo Application Suite 9.0, before you can complete the upgrade, you must contact IBM Support to help with the manual removal of Watson Discovery.

Before you deploy Maximo Collaborate, ensure that the following dependencies are prepared and available for use:
Watson Discovery
This configuration applicable for Maximo Collaborate deployed in Maximo Application Suite 8.11 and earlier.
S3-Compatible object storage

Choose a S3-compatible object storage solution. For more information about S3-compatible object storage, see Selecting S3-compatible object storage for IBM Maximo Collaborate

About this task

Complete the per-deployment and deployment steps before you activate the application and then complete the post-activation steps. During deployment, select your application update method. To later change from channel subscription versioning to manual versioning, you must first delete and then redeploy the application. After you activate the application, you must grant users access to it.

Starting in 8.2, CouchDB is embedded and automatically deployed.
Configuration parameters

The following parameters are configurable:

  • URL, for example, https://<mycouchdb><mydomain.com>
  • Username
  • Password
Required by
  • Maximo Collaborate at the Application scope.

Procedure

  1. In Maximo Application Suite, from the side navigation menu, click Applications and then click Collaborate.
    On the Collaborate page, verify the information. Click Continue.
    Note: If the available AppPoints are insufficient to deploy this application, you can still click Continue to complete the application configuration. The application automatically is deployed when the required number of AppPoints are available.
    For more information, see Upgrade methods.
  2. Select your application update method.
    1. Select an update method.
      To subscribe to automatic updates, set Automatic approval to On. When new application updates are available, they are added to the channel and automatically updated in your Maximo Application Suite instance.
      To subscribe to manual updates, set Automatic approval to Off. When new application updates are available, you receive a notification, and you can manually approve the updates.
    2. Subscribe to a channel by selecting a version from the list.
      For example, select channel 8.x.x, 8.x, 9.x.x, or 9.x.
    3. Click Subscribe to channel <version>
  3. On the Object storage tile, in the Dependencies section, click Configure and enter the object storage information for your object storage.
    1. Enter the object storage S3 route URL.
      For example, https://ceph-s3-rook-ceph.apps.test.os.yourcompany.com. Or, for AWS S3, https://s3.{region}.amazonaws.com
    2. Enter the username, which is the S3-compatible object storage access key ID.
    3. Enter the password, which is the S3-compatible object storage secret key.
    4. Optional: Upload a certificate. For more information, see Upload a certificate.
  4. Configure Apache CouchDB and Redis.
    1. Click Show advanced settings.
    2. Configure CouchDB by specifying the parameters for storage size, replica, and storage class.
      Specify the Apache CouchDB Storage Class that can be used from the Red Hat® OpenShift® cluster. For example, use the existing ocs-storagecluster-cephfs or portworx-couchdb-sc storage class in the cluster.
    3. Configure the Redis Server by specifying the parameters for storage size and class. Enter an expected disk size of at least 30 Gi or more. Next, enter an existing storage class from the Red Hat OpenShift cluster.
      The storage class can be used to dynamically provision a persistent volume with access mode RWO. For example, set ocs-storagecluster-cephfs as the storage class name for the embedded Redis server for Maximo Collaborate.
  5. Click Deploy and then Begin deployment. The estimated deployment time is an estimate of the time that it takes to configure and deploy the application. The time includes both processing and configuration. You can track the deployment process on the details page.
  6. On the Applications page you can monitor the deployment status for Collaborate. Deployment is complete when the Application card displays the Collaborate is ready message and the Activate button is displayed.
    You can also check the Collaborate deployment status by using the Red Hat OpenShift client command line to log in to your Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
    oc login <OCP_cluster> 

oc get collaborateapp -n {{Collaborate_project}}
NAME         VERSION            STATUS   AGE
masdev       9.1.0              Ready    73d
    The Collaborate Operator uses the Ready condition reason code of the custom resource to indicate progress. The following reason codes are used:
    Ready
    The Maximo Collaborate collaborateapp, collaborateworkspace, collaboratebackup, or collaboraterestore Operator custom resource is up-to-date and ready to use.
    InvalidConfiguration
    One or more configurations are not available or incorrect. Refer to the fail message for details.
    CollaborateTooOld
    Migration installation of the existing Maximo Collaborate application is not supported.
    CollaborateorCouchDBNotReady
    The Maximo Collaborate application is not ready or the embedded CouchDB is not available for backup or restore.
    CertificateNotReady
    The secret for the certificate is not yet available.
    Note:

    Horizontal Pod Autoscale (HPA) is enabled by default during deployment and is based on the resource utilization for Collaborate pods. Maximo Collaborate automatically scales in or out the internal components.

    If you want to manually scale in or out your pod numbers for each deployment, you need to disable Horizontal Pod Autoscale by setting settings.common.podautoscale to false in the CollaborateApp custom resource.

What to do next

Activate Maximo Collaborate. For more information, see Activating Maximo Collaborate.