Many IBM Connect:Direct users are moving to the cloud and are exploring the best way to take the first step. We’re now offering significant support to help you to get started.

1. Container support for Connect:Direct. A container is a lightweight, standalone, executable pack of software that offers a new way to deliver applications. IBM’s preferred provider for containerization is Docker. One of the biggest benefits of Docker container support for Connect:Direct is the reduction of dependencies. The Docker container includes the application and everything it needs to operate, saving you time and reducing costs to deploy, update and maintain. You can deploy anywhere without being concerned about the destination server where you want the application to run. To apply a fix, you simply take down the previous Docker image and replace it with the new one.
2. Kubernetes documentation. In addition to Docker container support, we are providing documentation for how to use Kubernetes container orchestration software to manage your Docker image environment. Kubernetes container orchestration simplifies management at scale. Whether you have 10, 1,000 or 10,000 nodes, container orchestration allows you to manage your entire environment much more easily, rather than managing nodes one by one.

What else you need to know.

• Connect:Direct is not a stateless application so you need a shared file system to store the state information. This is important because Docker images are shutdown and launched by Kubernetes, typically in response to a problem. However, if you are in the middle of a file transfer and an image is shutdown you will lose the transfer, unless you are storing the state information externally. Longer term, you may decide to store state information in a database, but using a shared file system is the place to start when you’re exploring Docker containers.
• If you’re in the exploratory phase of your cloud journey, you may consider starting with a QA or development instance. This provides an opportunity for you to establish your own best practices and gain expertise before moving your production environment to the cloud.
• Adopting a hybrid cloud approach is another way to begin to reap the agility, scalability and cost benefits of the cloud with minimal risk to the business. In a hybrid environment you might have valuable data in a private cloud on-premise and other applications in the public cloud.

3. Broader S3 object store support. Companies are generating colossal amounts of data, much of it unstructured, and they are finding that traditional storage solutions like file systems can’t keep up. An object store is an alternative that scales and holds unstructured data well. As storage requirements have continued to grow, we now see object stores as the default cloud storage medium. Last year we announced support for Amazon S3 cloud object storage. Some clients would like to have the option to use other S3-compatible object stores as well, so we have added support for MinIO, Dell EMC ECS, and Red Hat Ceph. Simply point Connect:Direct to your object store with minimal configuration effort and you’re ready to go.

How to get started
Connect:Direct version 6.0.0.1 is available now as a preview release for customers who are interested in trying out expanded S3 support and providing us with feedback. Please contact Chris Sanders, chrissanders@us.ibm.com, or Alex Krikos, alex.krikos@aricent.com, to request information.

If you would like to start taking advantage of Amazon S3, MinIO, Dell EMC ECS or Red Hat Ceph object stores, simply download the appropriate version of IBM Connect:Direct. For Amazon S3 it is version 5.3 or later. S3-compatible object stores require version 6.0.0.1 or later.

As always, we ask that you post your questions or feedback to the discussion forum and we’ll reply promptly.