IBM Multicloud Manager Architecture

IBM Multicloud Manager consists of several components, which are used to access and manage your clusters. Learn more about the following components for IBM Multicloud Manager:

IBM Multicloud Manager hub cluster

The hub cluster is the common term that is used to define the IBM Multicloud Manager controller, which is a central controller that runs in a 3.2.0 cluster, with the multicluster-hub management service configured.

The hub cluster aggregates information from multiple clusters by using an asynchronous work request model. With a graph database, the hub cluster maintains the state of clusters and applications that run on it. The hub cluster also uses etcd, a distributed key value store, to store the state of work requests and results from multiple clusters and provides a set of REST APIs for the various functions that it supports.

IBM Multicloud Manager managed cluster

The managed cluster is used to define the cluster with the IBM Multicloud Manager Klusterlet and other resources configured to initiate a connection to the hub cluster. The managed cluster receives work requests, applies work requests, then returns the results.

Run the import command to import a managed cluster and connect to various services within the cluster for operations, including the Kuberenetes API service, the Tiller service (Helm), and Weave for topology. You can also configure a hub cluster as a managed cluster.

See IBM Multicloud Manager configuration overview for configuration and import information.

IBM Multicloud Manager Application resources

After you configure an IBM Multicloud Manager hub cluster and a managed cluster, you can view and deploy applications with application resources. Your Application is used to only view your resource, while other application resource examples are for deployment. A multi-cluster application uses a Kubernetes specification, but with additional automation of the deployment and life-cycle management of resources to individual clusters. You can add PlacementPolicy to deploy application resources.

See Working with IBM Multicloud Manager applications for more application topics.

IBM Multicloud Manager Policy documents

After you configure an IBM Multicloud Manager hub cluster and a managed cluster, you can define IBM Multicloud Manager compliance and policies with templates. PlacementPolicy defines your clusters that the policy document is applied to, and PlacementBinding binds your cluster to a policy. For more details about compliance policies, see Working with IBM Multicloud Manager policies.

See Preparing for IBM Multicloud Manager to prepare your cluster and get configuration information.