About IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5

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Important: You are not looking at the latest product documentation. It is strongly suggested that you upgrade to the latest version of the product as soon as possible. Upgrading ensures that you are using the latest product features and fixes, such as improved product stability, automated certificate renewal, and current security patches. Security patches are not applied to older versions of the product that are no longer supported. The supported environments described in documentation for earlier releases, such as a previously supported Kubernetes version, are not updated and may no longer be accurate—do not rely upon support for any versions listed in earlier releases of the product.

The IBM® Blockchain Platform 2.5 enables a consortium of organizations to easily build and join a blockchain network on-prem, or on any private, public, or hybrid multicloud that uses Kubernetes. Customers can deploy their nodes on the cloud platform of their choice and connect to any IBM Blockchain Platform network, whether it is deployed on your own Kubernetes cluster or with the IBM Blockchain Platform for IBM Cloud. The IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 leverages Hyperledger Fabric v1.4.7 and v2.x and supports deployment on multiple Kubernetes distributions.

IBM Blockchain Platform is based on Hyperledger Fabric v1.4.7 and v2.x and is IBM's commercial distribution of Hyperledger Fabric. A key benefit of the platform is that IBM tests the open source code for security vulnerabilities daily and provides 24x7x365 support with SLAs appropriate for production environments.

Watch the following video for an introduction to blockchain and the IBM® Blockchain Platform:

Video transcript

By now you’ve probably heard of the IBM Blockchain Platform, the leading permissioned enterprise blockchain solution in the world. But what is a permissioned blockchain? And what is the IBM Blockchain Platform? The modern world is interwoven and interactive place.

But under the surface it’s still following some pretty old rules.

Jerry here on the left uses a different record keeping system than Door2Door Logistics on the right, which means they have to spend a lot of time figuring out what the truth is before they can make a deal.

This process is not just slow, it’s vulnerable. A successful hack or other problem can mean records are lost forever. As a result, businesses sacrifice efficiency for security and lock their records away.

But what if businesses shared their records, and shared the burden of protecting them? What if Jerry’s Modern Fabrics and Door2Door Logistics and their business partners never had to spend time arguing over who’s right because every time an asset moves from one to the other everyone’s records updated at the same time? And what if those records, once written, could never been changed?

This network, leveraging what’s called Distributed Ledger Technology, already exists. It’s an open blockchain network like Bitcoin. But there’s a problem. Businesses don’t necessarily want the records of their transactions shared with everyone, especially in a network like Bitcoin where users are unknown. In some industries, it’s actually illegal to share data that way.

What Jerry’s Modern Fabrics and Door2Door Logistics need is a permissioned blockchain like IBM Blockchain Platform, where businesses can form networks with known, established partners and still take advantage of the robustness and efficiency of blockchains. But this too creates a problem. Who owns this network? Who runs it? The answer is: no one does.

Once an IBM Blockchain network has been established, its rules and practices are managed collectively, mimicking the kind of consensus process that governs the way transactions themselves are approved and written to the ledgers in the network.

But the IBM Blockchain Platform doesn’t just stop with permissions and identities, users also have the ability to create channels where a few members of a network can get together and transact privately.

Additionally, private data collections can be established, which allows a few channel members to share certain transactions just with each other, without needing a whole separate channel.

Because components are hosted in clusters that are owned and controlled by users, the IBM Blockchain Platform is naturally compliant with data residency rules.

All of these processes are managed through an award winning UI we call the console, which, along with custom APIs, makes the powerful open-source Hyperledger Fabric blockchain painless to use.

The console integrates seamlessly with the rest of the IBM Blockchain Platform suite, including a powerful VS Code extension which allows users to create and test smart contracts and applications and then package and install them on production networks.

Because the console can run on both IBM Cloud and any cloud supported by Red Hat’s Open Shift, the console can run nearly everywhere and consoles in different clouds can connect to each other and to nodes deployed on Hyperledger Fabric.

But how many CAs, which create identities and define organizations, do I need?

How many peers, which host ledgers and have smart contracts installed on them, should I deploy on a channel to make sure I have no downtime?

Because you only pay for the compute you use, it’s painless to transition from pilot programs to full production networks using the IBM Blockchain Platform. The IBM Garage is here to help assist you in finding the right configuration for every use case.

The world is moving too fast to keep doing things the old way. Go to cloud dot IBM dot com today and check out the IBM blockchain platform.

What IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 offers

The IBM Blockchain Platform provides a flexible management platform that runs on Kubernetes. The offering includes an award-winning management console that allows you to easily deploy blockchain components, build a multicloud blockchain network, and perform network management and maintenance.

This offering includes two deployment options:

Full platform

Includes the operator, management console, peer, CA, orderer, and smart contract container images. The IBM Blockchain Platform management console can be used to create all of the fundamental components of a Hyperledger Fabric network: a Certificate Authority (CA), an ordering service, and peers, on your local cluster. You can also use your console to operate a distributed multicloud network by importing nodes that were deployed by using other consoles. For more information about the building blocks of Hyperledger Fabric networks, see the blockchain component overview.

IBM Blockchain images

For experienced Hyperledger Fabric customers, a purchase of IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 includes an entitlement to the peer, CA, orderer, and smart contract container images that are signed and supported by IBM. These images are based on the open source Hyperledger Fabric code base and contain a number of enhancements for stability and serviceability. The images are bundled with support from IBM. The IBM Blockchain Platform management console and operator are not among the images that are included in this entitlement. For more information, see IBM Blockchain images for Hyperledger Fabric.

The IBM Blockchain Platform includes the following key features:

BUILD ---- Integrated developer experience

Deploy easily. Use Ansible Playbooks to deploy networks quicker than ever before.
Easily code your smart contracts in Node.js, Golang, Java, or JavaScript. Use the IBM Blockchain Platform Developer Tools to easily develop smart contracts locally or use Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces to develop them in the cloud. Leverage SDK integration with the console, and learn from our rich tutorials and samples.
Simplified DevOps allows you to move from development to test to production in a single environment by scaling up your Kubernetes resources to add more components.
Up-to-date Fabric key features. Choose which version of Hyperledger Fabric you want to use when deploying peers or ordering nodes. Leverage the latest features of Hyperledger Fabric v1.4.7 and v2.x:
- Raft ordering service
- Private data collections that provide increased data privacy by ensuring that ledger data is shared to only authorized peers via the gossip protocol.
- Fabric Node OUs
- Service discovery, allowing you to dynamically discover and update how your application interacts with your network.
- Channel access control lists that allow you additional control of the governance of your channels and smart contracts.

OPERATE --- Total control of your deployments

Host or join a network. Deploy peers that are hosted in your cluster to multiple channels on multiple clouds, or invite other organizations to join your consortium or channels while the organizations manage their nodes independently across infrastructures.
Maintain complete control of your identities. Store and manage the keys that are used to administer your nodes. Optionally, use an Hardware Security Module (HSM) to generate and store the private key of your nodes.
Run Anywhere. Thanks to the unified codebase of the IBM Blockchain Platform console, it is possible to run your components on any Kubernetes v1.15 - v1.18 container platform on x86_64 or s390x.
Unified operation. The IBM Blockchain Platform console allows you to deploy and manage all of your organizations and nodes in one console. You can also add or remove members from a blockchain consortium, create and join channels, and install and instantiate smart contracts from your console.
Dynamic signature collection that allows better control over collaborative governance over channel configurations.
Elimination of Docker-in-Docker for smart contracts allows smart contract pods to be run more securely, without peers needing privileged access.
Manage access of the users who can administer or monitor your nodes.
Interact directly with your pods using your Kubernetes service.
Direct access to the logs of your nodes from your Kubernetes service. Use any supported third-party service to extract and analyze your logs.
Kubernetes service integration. Leverage services such as IBM Log Analysis for logging and Prometheus and IBM Cloud Monitoring for monitoring.

GROW --- Scalability and flexibility

Choose your compute. You have the flexibility to decide the amount of CPU, memory, and storage you want to provision in your Kubernetes cluster. For more information, see Allocating resources.
Scale up and down the resources in your Kubernetes cluster, paying for only what you need. For more information, see Pricing.
Disaster recovery and multi-region high availability (HA). This option duplicates your Kubernetes deployment across regions, enabling high availability (HA) of your components and disaster recovery (DR).
Connect to other Fabric networks: Join IBM Blockchain Platform peers to any network running Hyperledger Fabric components. Similarly, you can invite Fabric peers to join channels hosted on an ordering service deployed on the IBM Blockchain Platform. Note that you will need to use Hyperledger Fabric APIs or the CLI.

Check out this blog on how blockchain is creating the new era of multi-party systems.

Have questions and want to speak to an IBM Blockchain Platform expert? Schedule a consult now to learn more about how blockchain can transform your business.

Supported Platforms

The IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 can be deployed with the Kubernetes distributions on the following Platforms:

Table 1. Supported platforms
Kubernetes distribution	Version	Hardware	Tested configuration
OpenShift Container Platform	4.3	x86_64
OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Cloud	4.3	x86_64
OpenShift Container Platform on LinuxONE	4.3	s390x
Kubernetes *	v1.15 - v1.18	x86_64	v1.15, v1.16, v1.17

* If you want to use IBM Kubernetes Service, we recommend that you check out the IBM Blockchain Platform for IBM Cloud offering unless you specifically require this offering. See Is IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 suitable for you.

If you are running on Azure Kubernetes Service, Amazon Web Services, Rancher, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, or Google Kubernetes Engine, then you need to set up the NGINX Ingress controller and it needs to be running in SSL passthrough mode. For more information, see Considerations when using Kubernetes distributions.

License and pricing

Your IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 entitlement includes both the full platform and the IBM Blockchain images.

The entitlement does not include a Kubernetes distribution. You must procure that separately.

After you purchase an entitlement, you can access your My IBM dashboard to obtain your entitlement key for the offering. This key is required to deploy the release. When you choose this option, you are responsible for provisioning your own Kubernetes cluster.

For more information, see Pricing.

Considerations and limitations

This offering does not include an entitlement to Red Hat OpenShift.
You are responsible for the management of health monitoring, logging, and resource usage of your blockchain components.
Users of this offering must manage their own security and infrastructure. The IBM Blockchain Platform does not provision or provide those services.
Persistent storage is required. Host-local storage volumes are not supported.
You must have the cluster admin role in order to deploy the product.
The console creates nodes based on the Hyperledger Fabric v1.4.7 and v2.x node images.
You can deploy only one IBM Blockchain Platform console per Kubernetes namespace or OpenShift project. If you plan to create multiple blockchain networks, for example to create different environments for development, staging, and production, you should create a unique project or namespace for each environment.
You cannot upgrade a deployed network from IBM Blockchain Platform for Multicloud to IBM Blockchain Platform v2.5.
IBM Blockchain Platform is not supported on OpenShift Online.
OpenShift customers can preview the IBM Blockchain Platform at no charge for 30 days when you select the free trial version available from the Red Hat Marketplace.

Installing IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5

The IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 uses a Kubernetes Operator to install the IBM Blockchain Platform console on your cluster and manage the deployment of your nodes. When you purchase the IBM Blockchain Platform license from Passport Advantage Online, you receive a token that provides access to IBM Entitlement registry. You can use your token with the commands and files that are provided in the installation guide to automatically download the Docker images and start the operator and console on your cluster. When you are ready to get started, see Deploying IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 on the OpenShift Container Platform. If you are deploying the platform on other Kubernetes distributions, see Deploying IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 on Kubernetes.

It is also possible to deploy the IBM Blockchain Platform behind a firewall, without having access to the public internet. For more information, see Deploying IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 on the OpenShift Container Platform behind a firewall. Otherwise, for other Kubernetes distributions see Deploying IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5 on Kubernetes behind a firewall.

Looking for a way to script the deployment of the service? Check out the Ansible playbooks, a powerful tool for scripting the deployment of components in your blockchain network.

Security Considerations

Because these components are deployed on your own infrastructure, you are responsible for managing their security. This includes important areas of security, such as Identity and Access Management, key management, and data encryption. Review the following topic on Security for the list of considerations.

Getting support

For more information about how to get support on IBM Blockchain Platform, in addition to free blockchain developer resources and support forums that you can use to troubleshoot problems, see Getting support.

Next steps

When you are ready to learn how to deploy an instance of the IBM Blockchain Platform to your Kubernetes cluster see Getting started with IBM Blockchain Platform 2.5.