System requirements

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This is a summary of system requirements for IBM® z/OS® Container Platform (zOSCP). These are described in more detail in subsequent sections.

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  • zOSCP requires an IBM z14 or later server.
  • A z/OS 2.5 or later system.
  • A single system with a subnet of dynamic VIPAs for Pods running on this system, a dynamic VIPA for each IBM z/OS Control Plane Appliance (zCPA) to be started on this system, and the TCP/IP host IP address of this system. For more information, see Requirements for IBM z/OS Container Platform IP addresses.
  • A minimum of 4 CPUs. For example, 2 could be type CP, and 2 zIIPs for the zCPA. For more information, see CPU requirements for z/OS Control Plane Appliances.
  • 16 GB of memory. For more information, see Memory requirements for z/OS Control Plane Appliances.
  • 10,000 contiguous cylinders of disk space is required. You can have separate volumes to host zOSCP, but each of the volumes must be at least 10,000 cylinders to hold some of the file systems.
  • z/OSMF for running the configuration workflows. For more information, see z/OSMF requirements.
  • Access to the IBM Cloud Container RegistryLink leaves IBM Docs.
  • Access to your own enterprise container registry, see Container image storage requirements.
  • The Language Environment SCEERUN and SCEERUN2 data sets must be made program controlled:
    RALTER PROGRAM ** UACC(READ) ADDMEM('CEE.SCEERUN'//NOPADCHK)
SETROPTS WHEN(PROGRAM) REFRESH
    RALTER PROGRAM ** UACC(READ) ADDMEM('CEE.SCEERUN2'//NOPADCHK)
SETROPTS WHEN(PROGRAM) REFRESH
  • For containers to use LE, the SCEERUN and SCEERUN2 data sets must be in LNKLST.

Considerations for z/OS UNIX Common INET (CINET)

For CINET environments, affinity to a TCP/IP stack name must be established in order for Podman for IBM z/OS (Podman) and cri-o for IBM z/OS (cri-o) to successfully run containers. The zoscp_general workflow will guide you through a typical configuration method to set the _BPKX_SETIBMOPT_TRANSPORT environment variable found in the containers.conf sample. This method allows all callers of Podman to use the designated TCP/IP stack.

Setting the _BPKX_SETIBMOPT_TRANSPORT environment variable from a user session or from /etc/profile will cause Podman to override the setting configured in /etc/containers/containers.conf. This may lead to unintentional behavior. This method could also be used to customize which TCP/IP stack is used by Podman on a case-by-case basis, but care should be taken when choosing this configuration method.