Deploying Maximo Manage with externally built images

When you configure Maximo® Manage, you can instruct the operator not to create the admin and bundle images automatically. Instead, the operator can provide the admin and bundle images directly to be deployed for Maximo Manage.

Note: This feature is available only in the feature channel. In Maximo Application Suite, customer-managed users can use the feature channel to update their nonproduction instances to preview new features. For more information, see What's new in the Maximo Application Suite feature channel
Deploying Maximo Manage with externally built images is reserved for advanced users who want to control the image build outside their production Red Hat® OpenShift® cluster environment. You can also use it in the development and test environments for a more flexible image build process and to speed up the build and deployment process.
Note: If the automatic image build process by the operator is skipped, check that the image is generated correctly and conforms to the Maximo Manage deployment standards. IBM® Support might require the image to be generated without the flag and test it to rule out any image problems caused by the external build process.

To instruct the operator to skip the build, set spec.settings.skipImageBuild to true in the manageworkspace custom resource. Instead of generating the images and updating the ImageStreams with the newly generated tag, the operator generates only a configmap with Dockerfile templates for the admin and bundle image builds. Follow the instructions in the Dockerfile template and understand the instructions to modify the Dockerfile and generate your own images.

The externally generated images can be put into external repositories if Maximo Manage can access the images during deployment with provided pull secrets.

Maximo Manage admin and bundle server deployment is put on hold until the images are provided. During the hold period, the operator reports the status to indicate that the images are not ready.

You can use two ways to provide the externally built images for Maximo Manage deployment.
  • Specify the images by using the spec.settings.usePrebuiltImages section in the manageworkspace custom resource. Explicitly specify the repository image reference and the pull secret to access the images. Using spec.settings.usePrebuiltImages is the simpler option.
  • Create ImageStream and Image Tag in the Red Hat OpenShift Maximo Manage namespace. Follow the same format and naming convention if skipImageBuild were not set to point to externally built images. Use skipImageBuild if you want to use buildTag for flexibly switching between images, especially in the test and development environments.
With either option, the images for the maxinst admin server, and all the bundles that are specified in the manageworkspace custom resource must be provided.

The steps in this section show how to set up the complete process by using Red Hat OpenShift web console and manually modifying the manageworkspace custom resource. However, to automate the process, you can use the Red Hat OpenShift command line interface and any script of your choice.