Supported options on Microsoft Azure

Supported installation and storage options for running IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Microsoft Azure.

Installation options

Cloud Pak for Integration runs on any OpenShift environment on Azure. This includes but is not limited to:

A cluster deployed manually, using Installer Provisioned Infrastructure or User Provisioned Infrastructure.
A managed OpenShift cluster from a cloud provider, including:
- Azure Red Hat OpenShift. See Tutorial: Create an Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster for more information.
- IBM Cloud Satellite. See Getting started with IBM Cloud Satellite for more information.

For overview information on installing an OpenShift cluster for use with an IBM Cloud Pak, see Installing OpenShift Container Platform clusters.

Storage

The following table describes each capability's compatibility with these storage options:

Azure managed disks (Azure Disk)
Azure file shares (Azure Files)
OpenShift Data Foundation (formerly OpenShift Container Storage) *
Portworx

* For OpenShift Data Foundation in a production environment, the optimal minimum deployment is 4 storage nodes, with 3 Object Storage Daemons (OSDs) on each node. This provides much greater data resiliency in the event of any OSD failures.

Important: When installing any capability, also refer to the requirements for Cloud Pak foundational services (at the end of this table), which are automatically installed when capabilities are created. Because the installation process for Cloud Pak foundational services automatically selects the default storage class for your cluster (which is set in OpenShift by an administrator), you must confirm that default storage class also matches the requirements for Cloud Pak foundational services.

Integration capability	Azure Disk	Azure Files	OpenShift Data Foundation	Portworx
Platform UI	Yes *	Yes * **	Yes	Yes
Asset sharing and reuse (Automation assets)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integration tracing and troubleshooting (Operations Dashboard)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
API management (API Connect)	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Event Endpoint Management (API Connect)	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Application integration dashboard (App Connect Dashboard)	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Application integration server (App Connect)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Application integration designer (App Connect Designer)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
High speed transfer server (Aspera HSTS)	No	Yes	Yes	No
Event streams	Yes	No	Yes, block storage only	Yes
Messaging (MQ), single-instance	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Messaging (MQ), native HA	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Messaging (MQ), multi-instance	No	No	Yes	Yes
Gateway (DataPower Gateway)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Foundational services (monitoring, licensing, managing users)	Yes	No	Yes	Yes

* Use Azure Disk for the RWO volumes only, and Azure Files NFS for the RWX volumes only. For more information on using two storate classes, see Deploying the Platform UI with two storage classes.

** Use the Azure File NFS driver, not the SMB driver. The NFS driver is available on OpenShift 4.12 and above. Configure the driver as follows:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: azurefile-csi-nfs
provisioner: file.csi.azure.com
parameters:
  protocol: nfs
  skuName: Premium_ZRS
mountOptions:
  - nconnect=4
reclaimPolicy: Delete
allowVolumeExpansion: true
volumeBindingMode: Immediate