IBM Wazi as a Service: Automate, Accelerate and Manage Your zOS Dev Test Cloud Infrastructure

With IBM Wazi as a Service, you can spin up a new, on-demand virtual server instance (VSI) on IBM Cloud that runs z/OS on actual IBM Z (s390x) hardware in just minutes. This is perfect for your z/OS application development and testing workflows or for ramping up skills in your z/OS practice.

IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces 2.3 is a development environment that provides an in-browser IDE that you can use to code, build, test, debug and run applications from any machine. It comes out of the box with z/OS dev/debug tools and rich language support for COBOL, JCL, Assembler (HLASM), REXX, and PL/I. It’s built on top of Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces and can be deployed to any OpenShift 4.9+ cluster, on any cloud.

In the past, there were a couple of manual ways for you to get started with these tools:

• First, you could head over to IBM Cloud and create a virtual server instance. Just be sure to select the IBM Z, LinuxONE (s390x) architecture, and the IBM z/OS operating system. Don’t forget to set up the Virtual Private Cloud environment before doing this.
• You could also deploy IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces onto any OpenShift 4.9 (or newer) cluster using the Deploying and configuring IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces documentation. Just be sure to check the prerequisites. You can also get in-depth detail about Wazi as a Service and Wazi for Dev Spaces in the Hybrid Cloud with IBM Z Redbook, specifically Chapter 5.5.

We are on a mission to make things easier, so we have automated this.

Now, using this Terraform automation (link resides outside ibm.com), we easily spin up an entire isolated z/OS Wazi as a Service development environment on IBM Cloud, with the option to deploy Wazi for Dev Spaces on any existing OpenShift cluster. It creates a virtual private cloud, creates a Wazi as a Service VSI in that VPC, creates and configures a VPN for accessing resources within that VPC, optionally creates a new OpenShift cluster and automatically deploys Wazi for Dev Spaces for you, and configures your environment with appropriate logging and monitoring services.

With this automation, you’ll have a turnkey environment that is configured with everything you need to advance your Wazi as a Service and z/OS development skills, available in less than an hour with no manual configuration. Learn more and get started here (link resides outside ibm.com).

Explore more about IBM Wazi as a Service and IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces 2.3.