Cloud Pak for Integration

 View Only

Cloud Pak for Integration - Custom Resource Templates

By Robert B Nicholson posted Wed December 23, 2020 09:14 AM

  

Ever since we started building the Cloud Pak for Integration we've been on a mission to simplify and automate the use of IBM's enterprise grade Integration Software. 

I published a short video runthrough of the install  a few days ago showing just how simple we have made installation but I wanted to go further to show one  of the innovations that  make it simple to configure and use the cloud pak.  In the development team we refer to these as 'Guardrails' because they allow us to assist and guide the user.  The first of these are our custom resource templates.

Custom Resource Templates

Cloud Pak for Integration is fully Openshift native. All of the capabilities are configured using kubernetes native APIs, provided by Custom Resources.  What we add on top of this in the cloud pak is a set of  templates which make it really easy to deploy the capabilities in particular configurations.   Although the cloud Pak is delivered as software, we're targeting an experience that feels more like Software-as-a-Service.  Lets look at the templates for the Event Streams component of the cloud pak:


Each of the templates includes the a description and the resource requirements.  Once the user selects a template, the custom resource definition form is filled out with the values for that template.  For example if the user chooses "minimal production" The result is the following form:


The configuration has been pre-set with the values for a minimal production deployment - i.e. a highly available, secure deployment. 

Of course these values can be tweaked, either in the form or in the pure YAML view.

What we hope we have achieved is a combination of ease of use that new users need together with the ability to tune and tweak that we know our clients need as they put the technology into production to support their integration projects. 

In subsequent posts I plan  to show you some of the other guard rails that we have implemented. 

I and the development team would love to hear what you think. Do you find this simple and intuitive? What would you have us improve upon? 


#IBMCloudPakforIntegration(ICP4I)

1 comment
23 views

Permalink

Comments

Wed December 23, 2020 09:33 AM

Thanks Robert;

After creating an APP connect dashboard capability, and then using it to create an integration server, why only one bar file is allowed per an integration server, I know I can create a custom image where I upload multiple bars, but why the out of the box capability was designed to allow for a single bar deployment?

Thanks in advance

Thanks