Sterling B2B Integration

Setting up a remote Command Line Adapter2 (CLA2) for a Certified Container deployment

The Command Line Adapter 2 (CLA2) is a second-generation adapter that enables Sterling B2B Integrator to run a program from a command line in a business process, including executable programs, scripts, or operating system (OS) commands external to Sterling B2B Integrator. For more information on CLA2, see Command Line Adapter 2.

Deployment of the Command Line Adapter2 can be done both locally and remotely on a Certified Container environment. When deployed remotely, it can help executing programs, scripts or commands on heterogeneous environments which are not natively compatible or configurable with container based deployments or on other operating systems like Windows, different from the Linux based containers.

Deployment Pattern with a remote CLA2 server

For remote CLA2 deployment, a CLA2 server runs on an external host outside of the application containers or generally even outside of the Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift cluster. The CLA2 client adapter on each ASI node or pod can be configured to invoke the remote CLA2 server using the remote host and port. You can create a service group of CLA2 adapters to allow the client service to call the appropriate remote CLA2 server.

This diagram illustrates the process flow between the CLA2 adapter client on the ASI pod and the CLA2 servers deployed remotely on external host outside of the Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster:

Figure 1. Remote CLA2 with Certified Container deployment

Configuring remote Command Line 2 (CLA2) adapter on Certified Container

On a Certified Container deployment, the CLA2 server binary can be extracted from the ASI node or pod and setup on a remote host server. To setup and launch a remote CLA2 server on an external host, you have to perform certain additional steps on a Certified Container deployment.

Extract CLA2 Server binary

To extract the CLA2 server binary from the ASI node or pod, perform the below steps –

1.      Generate the CLA2 remote package jar by executing the below commands

oc/kubectl get pods -n <namespace> # this will list the pods in the give namespace, make a note of the asi-0 pod

oc/kubectl exec <asi-pod-name> -- ./CLA2makeJar.sh #this will generate the CLA2 remote package jar

2.      Copy the CLA2 remote package jar from the pod using the below command

oc cp <asi-pod-name>:/ibm/b2bi/install/bin/CLA2RemotePackage.jar <local-dir>/CLA2RemotePackage.jar -n <namespace> -c asi

Copy the CLA2RemotePackage.jar to the remote host and set it up. For more details refer Installing the Command Line Adapter 2 server remotely.

Setup authentication and SSL for remote CLA2 server

You must configure the CLA2 Adapter System Authentication Certificate and the CLA2 Server SSL Public CA Certificate for a secure connection between CLA2 Adapter and Server in Sterling B2B Integrator.

By default, the system generates the cla2auth and cla2ssl certificates. You need to create new certificates and not use the default ones to configure them on Certified Containers. For details, refer Setup authentication and SSL for remote CL2 server.

Custom use case using remote CLA2 to support SMB/CIFS Windows File Shares

Mounting SMB/CIFS windows file shares is straightforward when the application is installed on a windows server. But with a container deployment, it becomes unviable to keep mounting a SMB share every time a new server comes onboard. This problem can be addressed by using a remote CLA2 server deployed on an external Windows VM. The CLA2 client adapter can be configured in a business process to invoke remote CLA2 server and execute powershell scripts to push and pull files from the mounted windows share. We will cover this custom use case in detail in an upcoming blog.