Configuring and deploying InfoSphere MDM images on a Kubernetes cluster

This section provides instructions and guidance about how to configure and deploy InfoSphere® MDM Advanced Edition and Standard Edition images on a Kubernetes cluster. Deploying on a Kubernetes cluster is a good strategy to achieve high availability for an InfoSphere MDM Docker deployment.

Traditionally, InfoSphere MDM on IBM® WebSphere® Application Server runs on an application cluster. With the adoption of Docker technology, you can now run InfoSphere MDM on a container cluster while continuing to provide a service-oriented architecture.

Deploying InfoSphere MDM on a Kubernetes cluster reduces the cost of ownership of both management effort and hardware usage, while providing a high availability production environment. Kubernetes also provides the following additional benefits:
Auto Scaling
  • Pod scaling - The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler will automatically scale by adding more pods when, for example, the CPU is over 80% or another metric reaches its preset limit.
  • Node scaling - The Cluster Autoscaler will automatically scale nodes by looking at your total resource requests across all of your workloads, and then adding and removing nodes based on this information. For example, it can target 75% (in either memory or CPU) of node capacity at all times. Node scaling is normally managed by the Kubernetes cluster administrator.
Auto Healing
  • Liveness and readiness probe - Kubernetes monitors the life cycle status of pods to determine if a pod is ready for service or to periodically check if a pod can still be used for service.
  • Kubernetes can then automatically take action based on the result of the liveness and readiness probe to remove, recreate, or restart a pod.

Supported MDM images for Kubernetes deployment

When you are deciding which of the InfoSphere MDM Docker images to use, it is important to note that you must use installable images. The deployed images cannot be deployed on Kubernetes because they are preconfigured to work on non-Kubernetes Docker containers. The installable images have the flexibility to enable you to configure them for Kubernetes deployment.

The following InfoSphere MDM components are available for deployment within installable Docker images in a Kubernetes cluster:
  • MDM operational server
  • InfoSphere MDM user interfaces
  • IBM Stewardship Center deployed on an IBM Business Process Management (BPM) server
  • BPM database containing IBM Stewardship Center deployment information
  • InfoSphere MDM client applications: batch processor and Kafka clients

Download YAML files and scripts for deploying InfoSphere MDM on Kubernetes

See the topic YAML files and scripts for deploying InfoSphere MDM on OpenShift or Kubernetes to download an archive file containing sample YAML files and scripts to help you deploy InfoSphere MDM on Kubernetes. These files will be referenced throughout this section of the documentation.