Development environment

Make sure you have the proper environment for developing apps with the SOAR SDK.

You install the SOAR SDK on a system different than the one hosting the SOAR Platform.

The following lists the requirements for the system hosting the SOAR SDK.
  • Container tool, such as Docker or Podman
  • Operating system:
    • Apple Mac
    • Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 7.4 to 7.7, Centos Linux 7.x (where x is 4 or later) and CentOS 8.
    • Windows (Windows Enterprise Server 2016 or later is recommended)

      If using a Windows server, you also need to install the pywin32 library, which should be downloaded from here. Do not use the pypi/pip version of pywin32. Installation of the wrong version of the pywin32 library will likely result in a SOAR service that installs successfully but is unable to start.

  • Minimum of 5GB free disk space.
  • Minimum of 8 GB RAM.
  • Python enabled IDE, such as PyCharm or Microsoft Visual Studio, to edit files.
  • Access to the PyPI web site or a local Python environment such as Github.

In addition, you need access to a SOAR Platform V37.2 or later. You create those playbook components you need for your app on the SOAR Platform. IBM Security recommends that you use a SOAR Platform in a test environment to create the components needed for your app. This can be a separate SOAR Platform or an organization within your platform dedicated for testing. Once tested, you can deploy the app into any SOAR Platform that is at the same or later version as your test platform.

If the SOAR Platform is beyond a firewall, such as in a cloud configuration, configure the firewall to allow the SOAR SDK host access to the following ports. Both connections are “inbound-only” from the SOAR SDK to the SOAR Platform.
  • 443. Required for the SDK to connect to SOAR Platform data using the REST API.
  • 65001. Required to communicate with the platform using ActiveMQ OpenWire.

Download the SOAR SDK from Pypi as a Python command line package.