Prerequisites for deploying an IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit integration on Red Hat OpenShift

Before you attempt to walk through the scenarios for deploying a simple IBM® App Connect Enterprise Toolkit message flow to an integration runtime, first ensure that you have access to the main environments and tools that you'll need.


Access to a Red Hat OpenShift environment

The deployment scenarios require access to a Red Hat® OpenShift® environment. Red Hat OpenShift is one of the most widely used and mature Kubernetes platforms, and provides a consistent experience whether within a stand-alone installation on your own infrastructure, or a managed service.

To complete the scenarios, you can use a self-installed Red Hat OpenShift cluster, or a managed environment such as Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA), or Azure Red Hat OpenShift.

A Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.10 environment was used for these instructions. To check which versions are currently supported, see the latest release notes for IBM App Connect. For information about installing your own cluster, see the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

Note: You must have cluster administrator authority or the required role-based access control (RBAC) permissions to complete all the tasks in these deployment scenarios.

Access to the OpenShift Container Platform command-line interface (CLI)

To complete the deployment scenarios, the OpenShift Container Platform CLI (oc) must be installed on your local workstation. This CLI provides a way for you to manage the cluster, containers, and other resources.

If you do not already have this CLI installed, see Getting started with the OpenShift CLI in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

The oc command is the Red Hat OpenShift equivalent of the Kubernetes kubectl command, but is extended to support OpenShift Container Platform capabilities.

Access to an installation of the IBM App Connect Operator

An Operator is a Kubernetes-native application that is based on the open source Operator Framework, and offers a way to deploy containers to Kubernetes environments.

The IBM App Connect Operator is used for packaging, deploying, and managing the IBM App Connect Enterprise certified container. When you install the IBM App Connect Operator, it performs most of the underlying work to set up your containers on Red Hat OpenShift, which significantly simplifies the deployment of the IBM App Connect components.

The IBM App Connect Operator manages an increasing list of functions, in line with the Operator maturity model. Some of these functions are as follows:

  • Translates your requirements into Kubernetes constructs such as deployments, pods, routes, services, node ports, and replica sets.
  • Links your deployment with any environment-specific configurations that your container needs at run time, and watches these configurations for changes so that they can get rolled out to any reliant containers.
  • Tracks the supplied custom resource definitions (CRDs), which contain the structured data that is required to create the App Connect custom resource (CR) objects that you need.

    Each CRD defines an object type such as Dashboard, DesignerAuthoring, IntegrationRuntime, IntegrationServer, or Configuration, which is known as a kind. (In Scenarios 1 and 2, you will create the following object types as you work through the instructions: Configuration, IntegrationRuntime, and Dashboard.)

  • Identifies cluster events that are related to CR changes (for example, updates or deletions) and responds to these changes by reconciling the current CR state with the desired state.

The IBM App Connect Operator is distributed with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, but can also be independently deployed in a Red Hat OpenShift cluster.

Making the IBM App Connect Operator available in your cluster

If you are using IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, you can make the IBM App Connect Operator available in your Red Hat OpenShift cluster by adding it as a CatalogSource object. For more information, see Adding catalog sources to a cluster in the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration documentation.

If you want to independently deploy the IBM App Connect Operator, you can make the IBM Operators (including the IBM App Connect Operator) available in your cluster by adding them to the Red Hat OpenShift Operator catalog. To do so, you need to add a catalog source for the Operator as described in Adding the IBM App Connect Operator to a catalog.

Installing the IBM App Connect Operator

If you are working in an IBM Cloud Pak for Integration environment, it is assumed that the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration Operator and an instance of the Platform UI are already installed in your Red Hat OpenShift cluster. For more information about installing this Operator and deploying a Platform UI instance, see Installing in the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration documentation.

An installation of the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration Operator 7.0.0 was used with these instructions.

To install the IBM App Connect Operator in an IBM Cloud Pak for Integration environment or independently, see Installing the IBM App Connect Operator.

An installation of IBM App Connect Operator 7.0.0 was used with these instructions.

After you install the Operator, you can begin to create the objects that you need to complete the deployment scenarios.