What's new in IBM Cloud Pak for Integration 2023.2.1

Find out about new features and improvements in IBM Cloud Pak® for Integration.

New features

Cloud Pak for Integration version 2023.2.1 adds the following enhancements and new capabilities:

  • New component types can be deployed with an integration assembly

    The integration assembly capability now also allows you to deploy multiple instances of integration runtimes, declarative APIs, and Products with a single configuration file. This includes support for declarative APIs in API management deployments. For more information, see Integration assembly deployment.

  • Integration assemblies allow users to control the availability type of all the components with a single setting

    The integration assembly capability introduces the `spec.availability.type` setting, which can be set as `HA` or `SingleInstance`. This allows you to control the availability of all components and deployments from one location. For more information, see Using an integration assembly.

  • Assemblies can be managed from the Platform UI

    Management options include showing the hierarchy, upgrade lifecycle, and logging and monitoring links. For more information, see Using the Platform UI.

  • Share and reuse custom resources templates in the Platform UI.

    Users can share and reuse templates to create integration assemblies. These templates are managed from Automation assets.

  • Automation assets deployment supports RWO storage

    Users can create the Automation assets instance with only a block storage class by configuring the custom resource.

  • Improved performance and logging in the Platform UI

    The Platform UI is faster and more responsive. In addition, container logs for user actions in the Platform UI are now assigned a unique prefix (`[USER-LOG]`) so that these logs can be captured and audited.

  • Deploy the independent API Connect subsystems alongside Cloud Pak for Integration

    The API Connect subsystems can now be installed by creating individual subsystem custom resources (CRs), instead of using an API Connect cluster.

  • Enhancements to the upgrade planning tool

    The upgrade planning tool in the Platform UI now provides suggested CLI commands for each upgrade step. For more information, see Managing versions and upgrades by using the Platform UI.

  • New ability to configure and manage the Platform UI lifecycle from the instances page

    The Platform UI instances page now also lists the Platform UI instance itself. This enables users to configure, upgrade, and track the status of the Platform UI in the same way as other integration instances.

  • Enhancements to observability dashboards, including support for IBM Instana to provide tracing for API management and Event Streams deployments

    Enhancements have been made to support the use of IBM Instana for tracing of integration components in Cloud Pak for Integration. IBM Instana can show tracing of API management and Event Streams alongside the currently available tracing support for messaging and application integration. For more information, see Enabling IBM Instana monitoring.

Product changes

Deprecation of Grafana provided by IBM Cloud Pak foundational services

Effective with Cloud Pak for Integration 2023.2.1, the Grafana monitoring operators installed by Cloud Pak foundational services is deprecated. This capability will be removed in a future release. No further updates will be provided. No new uses of this capability should be started.

Users who want to implement monitoring should use Instana monitoring. For more information, see Enabling IBM Instana monitoring.

Users who want to implement Grafana need to install the community operator. Confirm that you have sufficient unrestricted OpenShift entitlement to install community software. Entitlement from the OpenShift 'restricted' licenses that are included with [product-short] cannot be used for this purpose.

Removal of integration tracing (Operations Dashboard)

Effective with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration 2023.2.1, the integration tracing capability (Cloud Pak for Integration Operations Dashboard) is removed. No further updates will be provided. No new uses of the Cloud Pak for Integration Operations Dashboard can be started.

Users who want to implement tracing should use Instana observability. For more information, see Enabling IBM Instana monitoring.

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. Customers can expect faster updates and more relevant results, and resource reduction on the workload running on the cluster. Additional benefits are:
  • A reduced footprint, because you don't need to install the Experimental Flow Generator locally.
  • Any flows that you generate on the cloud are fully importable and can be edited in the application integration Designer (on premise).
To use the online version, see Experimental Flow Generator.

Event Endpoint Management is now a stand-alone capability

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. It still provides the features to describe and catalog your Kafka topics as event sources, and to share the details of the topics with others to facilitate self-service access to the message content from the event stream. You can also integrate with an API Connect deployment, or deploy stand-alone Event Gateways on different clusters.

License Service is now installed independently

The License Service capability must now be installed by users independently of any other capability. Depending on how you previously installed the License Service, it might have been uninstalled during the upgrade to this version.

To install the License Service, follow the instructions in Deploying License Service.

Documentation updates

This release includes a number of improvements to the Cloud Pak for Integration documentation, including:

New releases of Cloud Pak for Integration capabilities

This release of Cloud Pak for Integration includes the following updates to capabilities:

For information about previous releases, see the Cloud Pak for Integration documentation.

System requirements

Known issues

For known issues and workarounds, see IBM Cloud Pak for Integration - Known Limitations.