Target use cases

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This reference architecture is valuable for cross industry enterprises that want to deploy a private cloud solution with programmable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Containers as a Service (CaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities.

Data gravity

A key use case where RHOCP can take advantage of the IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE platform is the co-location of containerized applications with traditional workloads (for example datalakes, databases, transactional systems, or other traditional workloads running in Linux on IBM Z or z/OS). In such a scenario the applications can be located close to the data to optimize latency, response time, deployment, security, service, and cost. In combination with Oracle databases as an example, the resulting synergy can dramatically improve the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Functional Description:

  • Bring cloud-native applications closer to systems of record and enterprise databases
    • Integrate REST services and data in z/OS with RHOCP through z/OS connect
    • Integrate RHOCP applications with core enterprise databases (for example PostgreSQL, DB2, Oracle)
    • Achieve latency advantages
    • Build secure cloud solutions
  • Digitalization & modernization
    • Introduce microservices & containers
  • Benefit from the security features provided by the IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE platform
  • Dynamic, granular resource allocation & scalability
  • Enable high flexibility through resource sharing
  • Make use of internal network capabilities using a load balancer to connect z/OS to RHOCP
  • Automate z/OS tasks via IBM Cloud Broker & Ansible® in z/OS
    • Enable CI/CD and life-cycle management
    • Total Cost of Ownership reduction

Consolidation and TCO Reduction

When consolidating a RHOCP environment from x86 platforms to IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE, customers can achieve economic and operational advantages. Most of the 3-dimension scalability (vertical, horizontal and combined) results in an high flexibility without the need for new hardware footprint. This is a key advantage for dynamic workloads and unpredicted growth.

In summary these key benefits can be achieved, when implementing this use case:

  • Fewer physical resources needed
  • Less operational endpoints to manage
  • Less security endpoints to control
  • Economic advantages due to reduced number of subscriptions needed
  • Disaster Recovery (DR) with Capacity Backup Upgrade (CBU) to save license costs

Business continuity

For business continuity consider these two aspects:

  • High availability (HA)
  • Disaster recovery (DR)

For high availability (HA), IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE provide an internal network with significantly more reliability based on a higher degree of redundancy in the hardware.

Because virtualization happens within a single hardware environment, the networking traffic is more predictable with less latency compared to x86 environments.

In an environment with z/VM you can take advantage of the management of z/VM Single System Image (SSI) and Live Guest Relocation (LGR) can reduce operational costs (requires shared ECKD dasd).

Building a disaster recovery (DR) setup with IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE is much simpler in such an environment, because you have to deal with fewer hardware units.

Most of all, you can take advantage of current Extended Disaster Recovery xDR solutions for IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE - based on Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS).

In IBM Z the hardware consolidation leads to the fact that capacity and operational analytics and analysis are simplified. This is because all results are consolidated on a single hardware machine for the entire RHOCP environment versus having a distributed environment with many physical servers. As a result, capacity planning is more predictable.

Vertical Solutions

RHOCP is intended for generic orchestration and life-cycle management of containerized workloads. While it is used widely among industries, most relevant background of RHOCP for IBM Z and IBM® LinuxONE customers is in the following industries.

Banking and insurance
Strong focus on high availability, transactions, and security
Government
Strong focus on high availability and security
Retail
Strong focus on scalability and coping with peak loads
Cloud and computing services
Strong focus on high availability and variable load / scalability

Additional industries, which can benefit include:

  • Media
  • Telecommunications
  • Education
  • Transportation
  • Pharmaceutical and medical products, healthcare
  • Hospitality & travel
  • Manufacturing
  • Utilities and energy
  • Electronics
  • Chemicals
  • Consumer products