Shared components

Shared components provide underlying functionality for the IBM® Software Hub control plane and services. IBM Software Hub uses two types of shared components: cluster-wide components and instance-level components.

Cluster-wide components

The cluster-wide components are installed exactly once on the cluster and are shared by all instances of IBM Software Hub on the cluster.

Shared cluster-wide components are different from end-user services, such as the Watson Studio or Data Virtualization services. Unlike services, end users do not interact directly with the shared cluster-wide components.

Instance-level components

The instance-level components are installed once in each instance of IBM Software Hub. For example, if you have 5 instances of IBM Software Hub on the cluster, you also have 5 instances of the instance-level components.

Some of the instance-level components provide features that end-users interact with directly.

Cluster-wide components

Use the following information to determine which cluster-wide components you must install on your cluster.

Component Features Required if...
IBM Certificate manager The IBM Certificate manager service, provides centralized certificate management with automatic certificate rotation.

The IBM Certificate manager is required if you upgraded from IBM Cloud Pak® for Data Version 4.8 or Version 5.0 to IBM Software Hub Version 5.2.

If you are installing IBM Software Hub Version 5.2, you must use the Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform cert-manager Operator.
License Service The License Service measures your use of IBM Software Hub. You can use the service to generate audit snapshots of your use. The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services License Service is required.

You are required to keep a record of the size of your deployments to report to IBM as requested. If you are using Container Licensing, you can use the License Service to measure your usage.
Scheduling service The scheduling service offers enhancements over the default Kubernetes scheduler, such as:
  • Advanced pod placement logic
  • Resource sharing
  • Quota logic
  • Pod co-scheduling
  • Pod prioritization
 The scheduling service is required if you plan to use:
  • The quota enforcement feature in IBM Software Hub
  • The node scoring feature for pod placement
  • Deep learning experiment builder in the Watson Machine Learning service
  • Priority scheduling and co-scheduling in the Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark service
  • Remote physical locations

    If you plan to use remote physical locations, you must install the scheduling service on the primary cluster and on the remote cluster where you plan to create the remote physical location.

If none of these scenarios applies to you, the scheduling service is optional but strongly recommended.

Instance-level components

Use the following information to determine which instance-level components you must install.

Component Features Required if...
IBM Cloud Pak foundational services The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services provide features that are used by IBM Cloud Paks, such as the Identity Management Service (Identity Management Service).

The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services also enable the IBM Software Hub instance to integrate with the cluster-wide IBM Certificate manager and License Service.

 The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services are required.
IBM Software Hub control plane The IBM Software Hub control plane provide the central user experience for IBM Software Hub users and administrators.

The control plane includes interfaces for:

  • Creating and accessing service instances
  • Managing users
  • Configuring and customizing the web client
  • Monitoring the health and resource use for the platform
  • Creating and managing storage volumes

The control plane also provides a way for users to access the services that are installed on the platform.

 The IBM Software Hub control plane is required.
Common core services The common core services provide features that are used by multiple services. The features include:
  • Connections
  • Flight service
  • Deployment management
  • Job management
  • Notifications
  • Projects
  • Search
  • Metadata repositories
 The common core services are required if you install a service that relies on the common core services.
The common core services are automatically installed by the services that require them.
  • If you install or upgrade a service that requires the common core services and the common core services are not installed or are not at the required level, the service will install or upgrade them.
  • If you install or upgrade a service that requires the common core services and the common core services are already installed at the required level, the service will use the existing installation.