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IBM z/OS Container Platform (zOSCP) 1.1, a new IBM product, was made available on March 15 for you to benefit from the cloud native development strategy on z/OS as part of your digital transformation strategy. Now, it is further expanded to deliver industry-standard container orchestration through Kubernetes and support to manage Highly Availability Kubernetes clusters.

z/OS Communications Server, the high-performance networking foundation of z/OS, is also enhanced to provide Kubernetes control plane nodes and high availability in support of zOSCP.

Kubernetes Control Plane Appliances

Kubernetes provides the orchestration framework to deploy, distribute, and communicate with containers. zOSCP provides support for Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes.

As a major component in the zOSCP support for Kubernetes, the IBM z/OS Control Plane Appliance (zCPA) serves as a control plane node within the Kubernetes cluster. The zCPA, an IBM-developed Linux appliance, in its role as a Kubernetes control plane node, provides the communication interface, scheduling of work, and monitoring and management of the state of the cluster.

The zCPA runs within a z/OS address space and enables one or more z/OS systems to participate as control plane nodes in a Kubernetes cluster. You can use z/OS UNIX command-line utilities, the IBM z/OS Appliance Manager for Kubernetes (kam) to manage the zCPA lifecycle, and Kubeadm for IBM z/OS (kubeadmz) to manage the lifecycle of control plane nodes and worker nodes.

For more information about the Kubernetes support for zOSCP, see the Hot Topic article Kubernetes orchestration for IBM z/OS Container Platform.

Enabling High Availability for Kubernetes Clusters

z/OS 2.5 and 3.1 Communications Server, with APAR PH49323, is enhanced to support z/OS Sysplex Distributor for non-z/OS targets that run co-located with a z/OS TCP/IP stack in a sysplex.

Sysplex Distributor can be used to provide highly available Kubernetes clusters on z/OS when multiple z/OS Control Plane Appliances are configured for the cluster. It helps you optimize workload distribution and manage the availability and scalability demands across a set of control plane nodes for the Kubernetes cluster.

To enable Sysplex Distributor support for IBM z/OS Control Plane Appliances, take the following steps:

1. Configure the VIPADISTRIBUTE statement with the new EXTTARG keyword and the dynamic VIPAs assigned to each zCPA instance on the DESTIP keyword.

2. Issue the Netstat VIPADCFG/-F report to display the dynamic VIPA configuration for the Sysplex Distributor host.

3. Use the provided z/OSMF workflows to configure the z/OS Control Plane Appliance with the Sysplex Distributor dynamic VIPA address.

4. After initializing or joining a control plane node to the cluster, issue the Netstat VDPT/-O report from the Sysplex Distributor host to view the dynamic VIPA destination port table information and confirm you have at least one ready control plane node.

For more details, see z/OS Communications Server: Sysplex Distributor support for IBM z/OS Control Plane Appliances.

If you’d like to learn more about IBM z/OS Container Platform and all these new exciting new features, visit the product page. The content solution page and Documentation will show you how to get started with zOSCP.