Enabling the Premium feature in containers

Learn how to enable the Premium feature in your containerized environment to unlock advanced capabilities such as predictive artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

The Premium feature for containers is available as an add-on through the IBM® Sterling Intelligent Promising Hybrid container package. This feature offers a hybrid architecture, where core functionalities run within containers while AI workloads run on IBM Cloud. For more information, see Sterling Intelligent Promising Premium and Deployment architecture.

Before you begin

- If you are installing Sterling Intelligent Promising fresh, complete the prerequisites for Standard installation and then continue to step 2. For more information about prerequisites for Standard installation, see Preparing to install IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising by using containers.
- If you are already an existing Sterling Intelligent Promising user and your SIPEnvironment is set up in production, skip this step and go to step 2.
Ensure that the following prerequisites that are additionally required to enable the Premium feature are met.
1. Verify that the Sterling Intelligent Promising containers are deployed and running in production environment.
2. Any of the following S3-compatible object storage platforms.
  - IBM Cloud Object Storage
  - Google Storage
  - Amazon Web Services S3
  - Microsoft Azure Blob
3. Log a case with IBM Support and include the storage details to enable configuration of the premium capabilities.
4. Review the guidance for data ingestion process. For more information, see Data ingestion.

Procedure

Depending on whether it is a fresh installation or an existing user setup, take the following action.
- For fresh installation, follow the Standard installation guide and then continue to step 2 to enable the Premium feature. For more information about Standard installation, see Installing IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising by using containers.
- For an existing setup and if your SIPEnvironment is set up in the production mode, skip this step and go to step 2.
Configure and activate the FileX service to enable Premium features in your container deployment.
FileX is a storage platform that enhances data operations with predictive artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities.
1. Create the necessary Kafka topics for the FileX service. For more information, see Kafka topics for the FileX service.
2. Create a keyspace <cassandra.filex_keyspace> for FileX in your Cassandra database. Update the keyspace name in the SIPEnvironment custom resource and save it. For more information, see cassandra parameter.
3. Activate the FileX component service in the UtilityServiceGroup.
  1. Update the UtilityServiceGroup custom resource with the following configuration.
```
filexService:
active: true
```
  2. Apply the changes to the UtilityServiceGroup.
  3. Wait for all the FileX-related deployments to trigger automatically.
4. Create and configure direct Kafka publishers for the following event types to enable FileX to consume events directly from Kafka topics.
```
productAvailability.v2
productAvailabilitySnapshots
supplyChange.v2
supplySnapshot
```
  1. Use the following API endpoint and input to create the direct Kafka publishers.
    API endpoint
```
PUT https://{{hostname}}/inventory/{tenantId}/v1/configuration/events/{event_id}/publishers
```
    For more information, see API access for containers deployment.
    Input
    { "type": "DirectKafka" }
  2. Ensure that all API calls return successful HTTP status codes: 200 or 201.
From the IBM SST Downloads page, download the latest SIP Premium Hybrid Configurations Utility. It includes pre‑configured schemas, rules, automation scripts, and a guide named Enabling SIP-Premium support in SIP Containers.pdf with execution instructions for configuring FileX Event‑to‑File (E2F) and File‑to‑Event (F2E) flows.