System Requirements and Support Policy
System requirements reports for this version of IBM Sterling Control Center are available for all supported operating systems here: IBM Sterling Control Center
The support policies for container delivery models are as follows.
Support statement for IBM Sterling Control Center Director certified containers for Red Hat that are deployed using OpenShift Container Platform
IBM® Sterling Control Center Director certified containers for Red Hat are built to deploy on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The product containers and deployment model are certified by IBM to be production ready, enterprise-grade, resilient, secure and compliant in many public and private clouds which the OpenShift Container Platform supports. IBM Technical Support supports this delivery model across the lifecycle management of IBM Sterling Control Center Director certified containers, including container orchestration scripts in OpenShift Container Platform and product documentation.
Support statement for IBM Sterling Control Center Director certified containers deployed on non-OpenShift Container Platform
For users who choose to deploy the IBM certified containers on; proprietary container orchestration tools such as EKS/GKE/AKS/PCF, on public cloud such as Amazon/Azure/ Google or in their private cloud using native Kubernetes, the IBM Technical Support is limited to the base IBM Sterling Control Center Director software, certified containers, and HELM package manager. IBM provides limited support for the container editions that are deployed in proprietary renderings for Kubernetes. The non-conformant characteristics of such tools hinder the ability for IBM to assist users in all scenarios.
Support policy statement for containers that are created by users
For users who have created custom docker containers for IBM Sterling Control Center Director and have deployed in any Kubernetes platform, the IBM Technical Support is limited to the technical inquiries in the core IBM Sterling Control Center Director. IBM recommends using IBM provided certified containers and not the user created containers for IBM Sterling Control Center Director.
License Service for IBM Containerized Software
License Service is required for monitoring and measuring license usage of the IBM containerized software in accord with the pricing rule for containerized environments. Manual license measurements are not allowed. Install License Service as explained in Manually installing ibm-licensing-operator with a stand-alone IBM Containerized Software.
Virtualization support
IBM cannot maintain all possible combinations of virtualized platforms. However, IBM generally supports all enterprise class virtualization mechanisms, such as VMware ESX, VMware ESXi, VMware vSphere, Citrix Xen Hypervisor, KVM (Kernel-based virtual machine), and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
- If a specific issue is happening because the system is virtualized and the problem cannot be reproduced on the non-virtualized environment, you can demonstrate the issue in a live meeting session. IBM can also require that further troubleshooting is done jointly on your test environment, as there is not all types and versions of VM software installed in-house.
- If the issue is not able to be reproduced in-house on a non-virtualized environment, and troubleshooting together on your environment indicates that the issue is with the VM software itself, you can open a support ticket with the VM software provider. IBM is happy to meet with the provider and you to share any information, which would help the provider further troubleshoot the issue on your behalf.
- If you chose to use virtualization, you must balance the virtualization benefits against its performance impacts. IBM does not provide advice that regards configuring, administering, or tuning virtualization platforms.
Support for Oracle Linux
IBM supports this version of IBM Sterling Control Center Director on the Oracle Linux operating system version using the Red Hat Compatible Kernel corresponding to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions listed in the System Requirements.
IBM is operating with the understanding that Oracle Linux uses an identical Red Hat kernel as that distributed by RHEL. Upon investigation of any PMR opened through IBM Customer Support, if the issue is not able to be re-created on the corresponding RHEL version, then the issue cannot be resolved by IBM and the client will need to seek resolution of platform incompatibility with platform vendor.