To meet business demands, enterprises are speeding up digital transformations, turning to a hybrid cloud strategy to not only achieve business acceleration but also enhance developer productivity. The adoption of container technology, which addresses key challenges in modern software development and deployment, is becoming a top choice across organizations.
IBM z/OS Container Platform (zOSCP) 1.1 is now available! This new product offering utilizes industry-standard open source technologies for you to build and run containerized z/OS UNIX applications natively on z/OS. It will further expand your application modernization strategy via faster development cycles and cost savings through efficient resource usage.
You might be wondering how zOSCP integrates with traditional z/OS management?
Actually, z/OS containerized applications run as z/OS address spaces, in isolated environments that can run and integrate with traditional z/OS workloads. Traditional z/OS security, resource management, and networking support are utilized.
z/OS Communications Server, the high-performance foundation of z/OS, still provides network communications and network-related services for zOSCP.
Network support for zOSCP
z/OS 2.5 and 3.1 Communications Server, with APAR PH39613, provides network support for zOSCP workloads by introducing a new type of VIPARANGE dynamic VIPA (DVIPA) called ZCONTainer. A ZCONTainer DVIPA provides network access for a Pod or a container when a container image is started on z/OS. It also enhances support for Language Environment (LE) and UNIX System Services (USS) Callable Services APIs, as well as System Resolver APIs and the Netstat application. With the APIs and Resolver support, containerized z/OS applications can now co-exist with native z/OS applications.
Container Network Interface for IBM z/OS
Among the container runtime components of zOSCP, z/OS Communications Server introduces a set of Container Network Interface for IBM z/OS plug-ins (z/OS CNI). It provides a network fabric for the containers to communicate with each other across the sysplex and for external communications.
How to enable networking for zOSCP?
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In z/OS Communications Server, configure the range of IPv4 or IPv6 DVIPAs to assign to pods in each system. See the following reference materials:
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Configure the Container Network Interface for IBM z/OS. A sample CNI configuration file is included. See z/OS CNI plug-in requirement.
Stay tuned for more exciting features
As mentioned in the zOSCP announcement letter, IBM intends to deliver Kubernetes orchestration support for the management of the IBM z/OS Container Platform. You will be able to configure a Kubernetes cluster entirely on z/OS via appliances to host control plane nodes directly on z/OS systems.