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The IBM Z and LinuxONE Container Image Registry

  
Today we have released the IBM Z Container Image Registry, along with a set of common open source images that are often used as the foundation for new composite workloads. We are providing these free of charge to IBM Z clients running z/OS, Linux, and LinuxONE in order to support a viable and growing open source ecosystem on IBM Z.

You can access the web interface for the registry at https://ibm.biz/zregeap.

Why Create a New Registry?

Security.   Our primary goal for this registry is to provide a source for container image binaries that our enterprise Z clients can trust. Security is a strength of the IBM Z platform. However, it can be seriously degraded by applications that have been compromised by malicious actors, and our clients know this. They have policies in place that tightly control production workloads. This registry can be a key component of an open source environment providing container images in a way that is compatible with our clients' security best practices.

Availability.   While members of the IBM Z community have participated actively in open source for a number of years, there is no denying that x86 is the preferred platform for open source developers. A significant number of important projects do not support IBM Z, which can make finding executables for the platform difficult. One missing binary can disrupt key workflows that would otherwise run on IBM Z. With this registry, we hope to reduce or eliminate barriers to adoption like this.

Registry Details

The IBM Z ecosystem team is providing the contents of the registry as a service to clients who would otherwise have to build the container images themselves. A large majority of the Dockerfiles used to build these images are currently published at the linux-on-ibm-z dockerfiles-example github repo. Only a subset of these container images are available on the registry today, but requests for additional images are welcome.

The registry itself is hosted at the IBM Cloud Container Registry (ICR) in the ibmz namespace. Access to the web interfaces describing the hosted images will be through the IBM Cloud. However, work is currently under way to more fully integrate the registry itself and this web content. As the work on IBM Cloud proceeds, we have created an Early Access Program where you can find and research the container images available in this ICR namespace. Please see the Getting Started information at the main page of the Early Access Program for information about how to set up and use this registry.

Update: Please see our new permanent home for the IBM Z and LinuxONE Container Registry.  The Early Access Program has now been retired.

Ecosystems and Clouds

Open source ecosystems all revolve around freely available repositories of binary code that can be downloaded and deployed in a runtime environment. With the release of the IBM Z Container Image Registry we are significantly enhancing the open source capabilities of IBM Z, and the infrastructure necessary for tighter cloud integration.