Automation assets deployment

Deploy IBM Automation foundation assets (Automation assets), a capability in IBM Cloud Pak® for Integration that lets you store, manage, and retrieve integration assets.

Automation assets allows you to share integration assets across instances in Cloud Pak for Integration. Storing assets (such as JSON schemas) within this repository allows them to be accessed directly within the user interface of certain Integration capabilities. For example, an OpenAPI specification asset stored in the repository can be directly imported within the IBM API Connect user interface.

Assets can be located in remote repositories, such as Git. This allows users to take advantage of the versioning capability offered by the remote repository. Assets stored in a remote repository are read-only. See Using Automation assets for more information.

For information about:

Planning for deployment

Automation assets is designed to be a single place for sharing assets across your entire Cloud Pak installation. To better support this goal, users can have only one automation assets installation per instance of the Platform UI. The following considerations apply:

  • You must deploy Automation assets operator at the same scope and project as the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration operator.

  • Because you can only have a single deployed instance of the Automation assets capability, any attempt to create another instance of this capability will fail.

Four sample custom resources are available for installation, and two of these include the AI-enabled features. Updates to resource usages are also available.

Resource usage

Prerequisites

You must complete these prerequisites before you create an Automation assets instance. A Integration Specialist should carry out these tasks:

Deploying by using the Platform UI

  1. Log in to Platform UI.

  2. Click Integration instances.

  3. Click Create an instance.

  4. Click Automation assets, then click Next.

  5. Click the tile for your desired deployment option, then click Next.

  6. Set the following fields to configure Automation assets. The UI form perspective is selected by default; it opens a form that lets you view or modify the resource configuration.

    1. In the name field, enter a name for your instance of Automation assets.

    2. In the namespace dropdown, select the namespace where your Automation assets should be installed.

    3. For License accept, read through the license agreement and click the toggle if you agree.

    4. For License LI, the correct license is selected by default. For details about specific licenses, see the "Table of license versions" section in Licensing.

    5. For Asset data storage class, select one of the compatible Matching storage classes found in the dropdown.

    6. For Asset metadata storage class, select one of the Matching storage classes found in the dropdown.

    7. For Version, the optimal channel is selected by default. For more information on operator and resource version compatibility, see Operator channel versions for this release.

    If you need advanced configuration options, consult Using Automation assets. The Advanced settings toggle is not needed for most common installations.

  7. Click Create to initiate deployment. You are redirected to the "“Integration instances" page. Automation assets begins installing and is initially in the Pending state. Click Pending to check the progress of the deployment. When the deployment completes, the status changes to Ready.

    Pending state Ready state

When ready, click the name of the instance you need to access. Your Automation assets is auto-initialized with a catalog.

Initialize

Deploying with the OpenShift CLI

Operands are created with custom resources (CRs).

Creating the Automation assets operand CR

Create the basic operand definition CR:

cat <<EOF > aa-operand.yaml
apiVersion: integration.ibm.com/v1beta1
kind: AssetRepository
metadata:
  name: production
  namespace: cp4i
spec:
  designerAIFeatures:
    enabled: true
  license:
    accept: true
    license: L-RJON-CD3JKX
  replicas: 1
  storage:
    assetDataVolume:
      class: <RWX_STORAGE_CLASS>
    couchVolume:
      class: <RWO_STORAGE_CLASS>
  version: 2022.2.1-0
EOF

Editing the CR YAML

Edit the aa-operand.yaml file as follows:

  • In the metadata.name field, enter a name for the new instance or use the default.

  • In the metadata.namespace field, enter the namespace (project) for the instance. This must be the same namespace that contains your Platform UI instance.

  • In the spec.license.license field, keep the default value unless you change the value for spec.version. For details about specific version licenses, consult the "Table of license versions" section in Licensing.

  • For the spec.designerAIFeatures.enabled field, if you do not wish to have AI features enabled, set to false.

  • In the spec.storage.assetDataVolume field, change <RWX_STORAGE_CLASS> to a file storage class that supports ReadWriteMany (RWX) volumes. Supported storage providers include ibmc-file-gold-gid, OpenShift Data Foundation (formerly OpenShift Container Storage), Spectrum, and Portworx. For additional details about storage support and configuration, see Storage considerations.

  • In the spec.storage.couchVolume field, change <RWO_STORAGE_CLASS> to a block storage class that supports ReadWriteOnce (RWO) volumes. Supported storage providers include ibmc-block-gold, OpenShift Data Foundation (formerly OpenShift Container Storage), Spectrum, and Portworx.

Apply the CR to the cluster

Once you are happy with the operand definition, apply it to the cluster:

oc apply -f aa-operand.yaml