Meeting the system requirements

Review the hardware, software, container runtime clusters, storage, and security considerations, when you plan for installing IBM® Sterling Intelligent Promising by using containers.

About this task

Procedure

  1. Set up either Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform 4.12 or Kubernetes 1.25 or future fix packs container runtime cluster, and do the following tasks.
    1. Define network policies. Use Kubernetes network policies to define rules for controlling the traffic between pods. You can specify the pods to communicate with each other based on labels, namespaces, or other criteria.
      • Allow all pod-to-pod communication.
      • If your middleware stack of Cassandra, Kafka, and Elasticsearch outside of the cluster, ensure that the network policies are defined so that IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising pods can reach these external services.
    2. Set up an ingress controller for external access.
  2. Review and install the following database and event streaming middleware software if you are installing IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising in the production environment. For more information, see Installing middleware services in a production environment. If you are installing IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising in the development environment, the Operator automatically installs these middleware services.
    Database:
    • Apache Cassandra 4.1.0 or future fix packs
    • Elasticsearch 7.17.9 or future fix packs
    Event streaming middleware
    • Apache Kafka 3.5.0 or future fix packs
  3. Ensure that a container registry is ready to host all the product images that are pulled from the IBM Container Registry.
  4. Do the following tasks to meet security requirements.
    1. SSL communication:
      • For production environments, set up your own custom domain and a relevant SSL certificate for the domain.
      • If your middleware stack of Cassandra, Kafka, and Elasticsearch is outside of the cluster, which typically occurs in production environments, communicate to these services over SSL and get the relevant certificates.
    2. Define the required pod security policies and cluster role bindings to enforce security policies on pods.
  5. Review the following storage considerations.
    • Determine your storage requirements, including the need for both ephemeral, or temporary, and persistent storage.
    • Set up storage classes for dynamic provisioning and manage storage resources by using persistent volume claims (PVCs).
    • Use persistent volumes for Cassandra, Kafka, and Elasticsearch, when the IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Operator deploys an instance of these middleware services.