Maximo Application Suite Customer-managed

What's new in Maximo Application Suite 8.11

Learn more about what's new and changed in IBM® Maximo® Application Suite 8.11.

Configuration

Manage trusted certificate authorities

Maximo Application Suite comes with a built-in set of certificate authority (CA) certificates and automatically trusts a certificate by default if the certificate is issued by one of these certificate authorities.

To disable the trust in the default certificate authority (CA) certificates, you can update the custom resource (CR) file for Maximo Application Suite. For more information, see Disabling default certificate authorities.

If you disable the default trust, then you need to specifically configure certificates and certificate authorities for all external systems that Maximo Application Suite connects to. For more information, see Configuring certificate authority certificates.

Customizing the workload
As an administrator, you can manually configure workloads so that Maximo Application Suite can scale them to match demand. You can modify the supported pod's specifications, such as replicas, container resources, affinity, anti-affinity, and tolerations. For more information, see Customizing workloads.
Horizontal and vertical pod scaling

You can scale horizontally or vertically by using podTemplates by setting their resources and replicas. Depending on the requirements of your workloads, you can set the values for these replicas to less than or more than the default value.

For more information, see Customizing workload scale.

Pod scheduling with affinity and anti-affinity

Affinity is one of the key features available in Kubernetes to customize and improve control of the pod scheduling process. The Kubernetes pod and node affinity and anti-affinity rules enable administrators to control where pods are scheduled. Specifying multiple rules helps facilitate a wide range of scheduling configurations.

With affinity and anti-affinity, administrators can:

  • Define rules, including conditions with logical operators.
  • Create preferred and required rules for a greater variety of matching conditions.
  • Match the labels of pods that are running within nodes and determine the scheduling location of new pods.

For more information, see Customizing workload affinity.

Pod scheduling with tolerations

By using toleration provided by Kubernetes, you can schedule pods on a node that has a matching a key value pair that is assigned to a node.

For more information, see Customizing workload tolerations.

Suite administration

Configuring multiple login options

By configuring local, SAML, and LDAP authentication as identity providers (IdP) and associating each identity provider with user records, you can provide multiple login options for user authentication. If you configure more than one identity provider, you can also specify a default identity provider to be the primary login option for users on the suite login page.

If you specify SAML as the default identity provider, you can enable seamless login so that users authenticate to Maximo Application Suite by using the login page that uses the SAML identity provider.
Attention: If you enable seamless login, the Maximo Application Suite login page is not shown. If you need to display a security message to comply with federal regulations, ensure that seamless login is disabled. Otherwise, users do not see any system notification that might be shown on the Maximo Application Suite login page.

To configure login options, on the Suite administration page, from the side navigation menu, select Users and then click the Authentication tab.

For more information, see User authentication.

Login notification

You can create and display a system message on the login page to provide security and privacy information to users. To enable the message, on the Suite administration page, from the side navigation menu, select Users and then click the Authentication tab. In the Login notification section, enable the message and enter the information. After you save, the message is shown on the login page.

For more information, see Enabling login notification.

Activate and deactivate users

When system access for a user account is no longer needed, you can now deactivate that particular user account instead of deleting it. Deactivated users cannot log in to Maximo Application Suite. The suite administrator can activate or deactivate multiple user accounts in the user interface or by importing user details. You can deactivate a user account automatically by a date or a specified number of days of inactivity. If the user was an authorized user with permanently reserved AppPoints, then the allocated AppPoints are returned to the pool of AppPoints. When you activate an authorized user, AppPoints are reserved from the pool. If not enough AppPoint are available, then the user cannot be activated. For more information, see Setting user account status.

Enhancement to delete users
Starting in Maximo Application Suite 8.11, the system retains the details of the deleted users.

The user deletion behavior is unchanged. The deleted users do not appear in the UI and are not included in any API responses. Any reserved AppPoints are relinquished, and the users cannot login to Maximo Application Suite. The only noticeable difference is that the user IDs, usernames, and email addresses of deleted users are not available for reuse by existing or new users.

Support for roll back and version lock
Starting in 8.11, you can roll back Maximo Application Suite to an earlier version. Maximo Application Suite can be locked to use a specific version even when the operator is updated or upgraded.

For more information, see Setting version lock in Maximo Application Suite.

API keys for user management
You can generate and manage application programming interface (API) keys to use in automation processes for user management in IBM Maximo Application Suite.

For more information, see Generating and managing API keys.

Audit log generation to support the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
Maximo Application Suite and its applications now support the generation of audit logs for some controls to support the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

As a Suite administrator, you can forward all logging from Red Hat® OpenShift® into an external system so that logs can be aggregated and securely stored. For more information, see Audit logging in Maximo Application Suite.

Configuring passwords settings page moved to local authentication

Configuring passwords for local authentication was previously available by clicking Users from the side navigation menu and then clicking the Password settings tab. You can now configure passwords for local authentication on by clicking Users and then clicking the Authentication tab. In the Identity providers section, in the row for the local identity provider, click the More actions icon.

For more information, see Configuring password settings.

Maximo Application Suite enhancements on Microsoft Azure

Support for new databases
Starting in Maximo Application Suite 8.11, configure databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database for using IBM Maximo Manage. These databases can be hosted on private subnet of another VPC.

For more information see, Maximo Application Suite offering type.

Maximo Application Suite enhancements on Amazon Web Services

Support for new databases
Starting in Maximo Application Suite 8.11, configure databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database for using IBM Maximo Manage. These databases can be hosted on private subnet of another VPC. VPC peering is used to establish connection between the VPC of Amazon Web Services stack to the VPC of a database to establish database connection when the stack is deployed.

For more information, see Maximo Application Suite offering type for Amazon Web Services.

Support for selecting EBS volume type
Starting in Maximo Application Suite, support for selecting either gp3 or io1 as EBS volume type for worker nodes.

For more information, see Preparing to install Maximo Application Suite on Amazon Web Services.

FIPS and FISMA support for Maximo Application Suite on Amazon Web Services Marketplace in US GovCloud regions
A Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) supported Maximo Application Suite can now be installed in the Amazon Web Services US GovCloud regions. The BYOL option is available for installing Maximo Application Suite in private hosted zone for existing Red Hat OpenShift cluster and New Red Hat OpenShift cluster by using the User Provisioned Infrastructure (UPI).

For more information, see Installing BYOL IBM Maximo Application Suite.

User assistance improvements

Upgrading from IBM Maximo Asset Management to IBM Maximo Manage
Watch a video to understand the changes in the new documentation for upgrading from Maximo Asset Management to Maximo Manage.

Applications, industry solutions, accelerators, and add-ons

IBM Maximo IT

IBM Maximo IT is now available in Maximo Application Suite. Maximo IT provides a single point of user support and enterprise service management of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) assets and processes.

For more information, see Maximo IT in IBM Documentation.

You can deploy and activate Maximo IT as an add-on to Maximo Manage. Before you deploy Maximo IT, accept the license terms in Passport Advantage®. For more information, see Deploying Maximo Manage.

Reliability Strategies

Reliability Strategies is now available in Maximo Application Suite. By using Reliability Strategies, you can access a library of maintenance strategies that are based on reliability-centered maintenance and include both failure details and mitigation activities for each failure. The library was developed by industry and domain experts and contains hundreds of assets and tens of thousands of possible failures across all known operating contexts. For more information, see Reliability Strategies.

You can deploy and activate Reliability Strategies as an add-on to Maximo Manage. For more information, see Deploying Maximo Manage.

Before you begin using Reliability Strategies, you must complete some configuration steps. For more information, see Configuring Reliability Strategies.

New accelerators in the Maximo Application Suite catalog

Accelerators are solutions that are provided by IBM and IBM partners to complement or extend Maximo Application Suite capabilities. These accelerators are hosted on the Red Hat Marketplace, which you can integrate with Maximo Application Suite and access from the Maximo Application Suite catalog.

For more information, see Maximo Application Suite accelerators.

IBM Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution

IBM Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution provides model templates to enhance the reliability of energy and utility assets to anticipate downtime, degradation, and failures. This accelerator includes prebuilt notebooks and configuration files for several transmission and distribution asset classes, incorporating features available in IBM Maximo Health and IBM Maximo Predict. Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution replaces IBM Maximo Health and Predict - Utilities in Maximo Application Suite 8.11.

For more information, see Overview of Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution

You can purchase and download the Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution from Red Hat Marketplace and access it in the catalog in Maximo Application Suite. For more information, see Installing IBM Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution.

Maximo Manage has new function to reduce system downtime when you do an update
After you upgrade to IBM Maximo Application Suite operator version 8.11, configure a database state to reduce Maximo Manage system downtime as you upgrade to Maximo Manage 8.7. and subsequent Maximo Manage upgrades. For more information, see Updating IBM Maximo Manage and Reducing system downtime.
Removal of Maximo Health and Predict - Utilities and Parts Identifier
Starting in Maximo Application Suite 8.11, the following industry solution and add-on are no longer available:
  • Maximo Health and Predict - Utilities
  • Parts Identifier

If either of these are deployed and active in your environment and you are upgrading to Maximo Application Suite 8.11, you must deactivate and delete them before you can complete the upgrade.

The Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution accelerator replaces Maximo Health and Predict - Utilities in Maximo Application Suite 8.11.

IBM Maximo Optimizer
You can now collect and publish monitoring metrics for Maximo Optimizer. For more information, see Server-level monitoring metrics .
Maximo Optimizer includes a new integration with the new Dispatching dashboard. Also, some optimization models now use the new what-if analysis function. For more information, see What's new in Maximo Manage 8.7.
Serviceability dashboard
By using the serviceability dashboard, you can monitor the health and performance of IBM Maximo Assist, IBM Maximo Health, IBM Maximo Optimizer 8.5.0 and later, and IBM Maximo Predict. The serviceability dashboard is implemented with Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and Prometheus. For more information, see Using the serviceability dashboard.
What's new in Maximo Application Suite applications, industry solutions, and add-ons

Learn more about what’s new and changed in the following applications, industry solutions, and add-ons in Maximo Application Suite 8.11.