Unlocking secure Secrets Management and simplified orchestration: IBM Vault and IBM Nomad on IBM Z and LinuxONE

Following the announcement of the HashiCorp Acquisition, today we are making the IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE and IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE products generally available. This furthers the end-to-end hybrid cloud platform with standardized secrets management from IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE and a flexible container orchestration environment with IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE.

Standardized secrets management helps to ensure sensitive data, such as API keys, passwords and certificates, remain secured while being accessible to authorized applications. Centralizing machine identity management across the hybrid estate is designed to help companies proactively and consistently apply security policies in each environment. Simplified container orchestration, on the other hand, aims to streamline the deployment, scaling and management of applications without the complexity associated with traditional orchestration tools.

Balancing security and ease of use for application developers is essential for effective application runtime management. Deployment times can vary widely based on factors such as infrastructure complexity, automation maturity and team expertise. However, we have also seen that some organizations have delayed application deployments due to security concerns, emphasizing the impact of security preparedness on deployment timelines.

IBM Vault Self-Managed and IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE are designed to help IT organizations automate workflows for secrets management and container orchestration built to address their security posture and reduce deployment times.

IBM Z and LinuxONE are designed to run high-performance enterprise applications, often processing sensitive financial and business data. Organizations using Linux on IBM Z, z/OS or hybrid cloud environments can leverage IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE for:

1. Centralized and Encrypted Secrets Storage: Designed to store and manage secrets for applications running on IBM Z; and enable dynamic secret generation for databases, APIs and middleware.
2. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Defines fine-grained access policies for different users, applications or workloads; and enforce least privilege principles for accessing secrets.
3. Secrets Rotation: Engineered to address security risks by rotating credentials for IBM Z workloads to minimize human intervention and reduce operational overhead.
4. Encryption-as-a-Service: Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit using IBM Vault’s cryptographic functions; and offload encryption operations to IBM Vault instead of managing them at the application level.
5. Hybrid Cloud & Multi-Cloud Security: Built to manage secrets across IBM Z and cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or IBM Cloud; and enable seamless integration with Kubernetes environments on IBM Z.

IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE is designed to help enable efficient workload scheduling, high-performance computing, and seamless DevOps practices across hybrid cloud environments.

IBM Nomad is engineered to help organizations:

1. Unify Orchestration for Mixed Workloads: Run and manage both containerized (Docker, OCI) and selected non-containerized applications on IBM Z; and deploy workloads across Linux on IBM Z and hybrid cloud environments efficiently.
2. Batch and High-Performance Computing (HPC) Scheduling: Designed to dynamically allocate infrastructure resources to help improve performance and address idle capacity.
3. Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Deployment: Built to enable seamless workload orchestration across IBM Z, IBM Cloud and popular third-party public clouds and is designed to simplify workload portability.

When integrated with IBM Z, IBM Vault Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE is built to enhance security and automation for mission-critical workloads. IBM Vault is also engineered to help you meet your regulatory compliance obligations.  IBM Nomad Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE is designed to provide a lightweight container deployment option for orchestrating workloads on IBM Z.

To learn more, check out the IBM TechXchange Community blogs that dive deeper into each of these solutions. You can also register for IBM Z Day Special Edition on 8 April^,2025. This is a free 1-day enterprise computing virtual conference for all users. Hear the latest about IBM Z and join our lineup of global thought leaders who will highlight industry trends and innovation spanning AI, Hybrid Cloud, Quantum-Safe cryptography and more.