(Co-authors: Giacomo Chiarella and Carole Baden)
This post describes features that you will find in the upcoming release of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration 16.1.0, which includes two years of base support that can be extended after the initial time period. You may also have noticed that there is a new versioning scheme: the move from "Year.Quarter.Release-Fix" (as in 2022.2.1-0) to "VRMF" (Version.Release.Modification.Fix) standardizes Cloud Pak for Integration versioning to be in sync with product versions across IBM.
Since the 2022.2.1 Long Term Support (LTS) release, IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has continued to deliver features that together extend the usability and power of enterprise integrations while delivering a more cohesive experience.
A number of key enhancements have come together to form this unified vision:
- Delivering a new set of Kubernetes custom resources for managing integrations
- Making the Platform UI a "one-stop shop" for deploying integrations
- Developing a unified canvas experience for all integration products and for the new Kubernetes custom resources
- Integrating more use cases in Automation assets so users can accelerate integration sharing and development
- Deploying with a leaner architecture to reduce the footprint and simplify the day-2 administration of the Cloud Pak
Kubernetes custom resources
Users can now manage their production integrations with declarative Kubernetes custom resources that facilitate CI/CD pipelines. These custom resources can be easily source-controlled and deployed on any OpenShift cluster by using tools such as GitOps. These new custom resources are available as part of the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration operator.
The 2023.2.1 release introduced declarative APIs and declarative API Products as custom resources that can be used with IBM API Connect.
- With declarative APIs, you can create draft APIs in an API Manager, and share APIs for other integration components (for example, an Integration runtime) to consume. For more information, see Using declarative APIs.
- With declarative API Products you can create API Products in an API Manager, either from a declarative API or an IBM App Connect Integration runtime. For more information, see Using declarative API Products.
The 16.1.0 release introduces Messaging custom resources that can be used with IBM MQ:
- Messaging server - Creates a Queue manager that is tailored to work with the rest of the messaging custom resources and the Cloud Pak. It also simplifies the TLS and certificate administration for connecting to the Queue manager.
- Messaging queue - Creates queues in a Messaging server
- Messaging channel - Creates channels in a Messaging server
- Messaging users - Provides user access to queues, and seamlessly integrates the underlying Queue manager with (IBM App Connect) Integration runtimes and Integration design for authoring new integration flows that need messaging queues
Platform UI enhancements
The architecture for Platform UI was simplified in 2023.4.1 to provide improved resilience and maintenance, a substantially reduced footprint for required resources (50%-100%, depending on the metric), and installation that is 5x (!) faster.
Key improvements include:
- A greatly reduced footprint. The Platform UI, which includes the Foundational services layer, now runs on as few as 3 CPU cores (the Cloud Pak foundational services alone used to require 21 CPU cores).
- A removal of the requirement for RWX storage
- A new home page design that enables faster, simpler navigation so that developers can dive straight into their tasks
- Better search and filtering, as well as a table that displays the hierarchy of instances so that you can easily find integrations and visualize where they are being used
- A new Versions and upgrades page that provides a single pane of glass for managing versions and upgrades across your Cloud Pak installation. The Upgrade planning tab generates an upgrade plan, which includes CLI and UI guidance for each step.
- Simplified UX for identity and access management with Keycloak
- Labels to organize instances
- A theme switcher in the welcome banner
We have also developed a unified experience to manage “all things integration”. New instances that users can manage have more than doubled, and they include:
- Assemblies
- APIs and API Products
- Event Managers and Gateways
- Integration runtimes and related Configurations
- Messaging servers, channels, queues, and users
- Platform UI
- Secrets and ConfigMaps
- Policies and Policy bindings
To help you manage these new instances, we’ve created a new “assembly canvas” authoring experience in the Platform UI.
Assembly canvas
The new assembly canvas, released in 2023.4.1, is a unified graphical interface that can be used with instances and integrations. It allows you to author, connect, and deploy integrations made up of multiple Cloud Pak for integration components. The canvas is the perfect starting point for users to familiarize themselves with all the Cloud Pak Kubernetes custom resources and how they can work together to achieve a business use case.
You can easily connect custom resources together to deploy an end-to-end solution. For example, you can create an MQ queue with the Messaging queue node, and connect that to an existing IBM AppConnect Integration runtime by importing the runtime into the canvas. You can then expose the integration flow running in that runtime as an API Product in IBM API Connect.
Once the solution has been authored in the canvas view, you can switch to the YAML tab to view the declarative definition. This YAML code can then be placed in a tool such as OpenShift GitOps to deploy the same solution in multiple environments. Better still, you can export a canvas as a template to Automation assets (described in the next section) for later re-use!
You can also choose to delegate the administration of some of the custom resources to the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration operator by using “Assembly managed” nodes. Assemblies were introduced in version 2022.4.1 and they provide a wide range of IBM opinionated defaults for customer resources. For example, you can choose the availability type of all assembly-managed nodes with a single setting and let the operator ensure that all managed instances are highly available.
Assembly canvas connecting an API, a runtime, and a queue
Automation assets enhancements
With so many new custom resources and integration definitions, users need a place to store reusable artifacts and easily create integrations from pre-defined templates. This is where Automation assets comes into play. Over the past couple of years Automation assets has become leaner, and since June 2023, it supports RWO / block storage, making installation a no-brainer.
In 2023.2.1, Automation assets was integrated with the Platform UI to import and export instance templates for all the custom resources that the Platform UI manages. This means you can store all your instance templates on Git, then sync them to Automation assets so all your users in Cloud Pak for Integration have access to the instance templates that best fit your organization.
A selection of asset types that are available for deployment
With our upcoming release, 16.1.0, administrators can mark assets as "Approved" to indicate that they are endorsed according to specific criteria. You can take this even further and implement a “Validation admission policy” for a given template. The policy enforces the template criteria, and prevents any user from creating an instance (such as a Messaging queue, Integration runtime, API Product, or Kafka topic) that does not meet the validation policy as defined.
Get all the details on “What’s new”
For more information about new features, product changes, and other updates since 2022.2, see “What’s new in IBM Cloud Pak for Integration”, for the release indicated:
Summary of product changes
For your reference, the following list describes key changes to product functioning. This information is duplicated (in more detail) in the Product changes section for each “What’s new” page.
2023.2
- Removal of integration tracing (Operations Dashboard). Users who want to implement tracing should use Instana Observability. For more information, see Enabling IBM Instana monitoring.
2023.4
- Keycloak is now available for identity and access management (IAM). For more information, see Identity and access management.
- Support for installing on a cluster by using OpenShift-hosted control planes.
- Support for installing on single node OpenShift. For more information, see Installing on a single node OpenShift (SNO) cluster.
- Support for installing on IBM zCX Foundation for Red Hat OpenShift. For more information, see Operating environment.
- Removal of Grafana that is provided by IBM Cloud Pak foundational services. Users who want to implement monitoring should use Instana monitoring. For more information, see Enabling IBM Instana monitoring.
- Fine-grained control of backup and restore for your instances by using Red Hat OpenShift API for Data Protection (OADP). For more information, see Backing up and restoring IBM Cloud Pak for Integration.
- Event Endpoint Management is now a stand-alone capability included in Cloud Pak for Integration, and has its own operator and deployment options outside of API Connect. You can integrate with an API Connect deployment, or deploy stand-alone Event Gateways on different clusters.
- License Service is now installed independently of any other capability. For information on installing the License Service, see Deploying License Service.
- Experimental Flow Generator is moved to the cloud. The Experimental Flow Generator (formerly deployed as part of an AI-enabled Automation assets deployment) has moved to the cloud. To use the online version, see Experimental Flow Generator.
16.1.0
- Cloud Pak for Integration is moving to the VRMF (Version.Release.Modification.Fix) versioning scheme, which is consistent with other products across IBM. For more information, see IBM Software product versioning explained.
- Support for OpenShift odd-numbered minor releases: Cloud Pak for Integration is adding support for installation on odd-numbered minor OpenShift releases, starting with OpenShift 4.15. For more information, see Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Life Cycle Policy in the OpenShift documentation.
- Support for IBM Event Endpoint Management on s390x, in addition to amd64
- More instance types available for backup and restore by using Red Hat OpenShift API for Data Protection (OADP)