Cloud Private IBM Installation and Configuration

[xyz-ips snippet=”jahir”]
[xyz-ips snippet=”alo”]
[xyz-ips snippet=”jahir2″]

This badge earner demonstrates knowledge on how to install and configure IBM Cloud Private. The badge earner also has demonstrated the ability to deploy applications to IBM Cloud Private and understands how to configure IBM Cloud Private to support high availability. The earner also understands how use the services available from the service catalog as part of an IBM Cloud Private solution.

Overview

Follow the instructions below to configure a MobileFirst Server instance and MobileFirst Analytics instance on IBM Cloud Private:

Setup IBM Cloud Private Kubernetes Cluster.
Setup your host computer with the required tools (Docker, IBM Cloud CLI ( bx ), IBM Cloud Private (icp) Plugin for IBM Cloud CLI (bx pr), Kubernetes CLI (kubectl)), and Helm CLI (helm)).
Download the Passport Advantage Archive (PPA Archive) of IBM Mobile Foundation for IBM Cloud Private .
Load the PPA archive in the IBM Cloud Private Cluster.
Finally, you will configure and install the MobileFirst Analytics (optional) and MobileFirst Server.
Prerequisites

You should have IBM Cloud Private account and must have set up the Kubernetes Cluster by following the documentation in IBM Cloud Private Cluster installation.

To manage containers and images, you need to install the following tools on your host machine as part of IBM Cloud Private setup:

Docker
IBM Cloud CLI (bx)
IBM Cloud Private (ICP) plugin for IBM Cloud CLI ( bx pr )
Kubernetes CLI (kubectl)
Helm (helm)

To access IBM Cloud Private Cluster using CLI, you should configure the kubectl client. Learn more.
Download the IBM Mobile Foundation Passport Advantage Archive

The Passport Advantage Archive (PPA) of IBM Mobile Foundation is available here. The PPA archive of Mobile Foundation will contain the docker images and Helm Charts of the following Mobile Foundation components:

MobileFirst Server
MobileFirst Analytics
MobileFirst Application Center

Load the IBM Mobile Foundation Passport Advantage Archive

Before you load the PPA Archive of Mobile Foundation, you must setup Docker. See the instructions here.

Follow the steps given below to load the PPA Archive into IBM Cloud Private cluster:

See the CLI Command Reference in IBM Cloud Private documentation.

For example,

bx pr login -a https://ip:port

Optionally, if you intend to skip SSL validation use the flag –skip-ssl-validation in the command above. Using this option prompts for username and password of your cluster endpoint. Proceed with the steps below, on successful login.
Load the PPA Archive of Mobile Foundation using the following command:

bx pr load-ppa-archive –archive [–clustername ] [–namespace ]

archive_name of Mobile Foundation is the name of the PPA archive downloaded from IBM Passport Advantage,

–clustername can be ignored if you had followed the previous step and made the cluster endpoint as default for bx pr.
After you load the PPA Archive, synch the repositories, which ensures the listing of Helm Charts in the Catalog. You can do this in IBM Cloud Private management console.
Select Admin > Repositories.
Click Synch Repositories.
View the Docker images and Helm Charts in the IBM Cloud Private management console. To view Docker images,
Select Platform > Images.
Helm Charts are shown in the Catalog.

On completing the above steps, you will see the uploaded version of Helm Charts appearing in the ICP Catalog. The MobileFirst Server is listed as ibm-mfpf-server-prod and MobileFirst Analytics is listed as ibm-mfpf-analytics-prod.
Install and configure IBM Mobile Foundation Helm Charts

Before you install and configure MobileFirst Server, you should have the following:

[Mandatory] a DB2 database configured and ready to use. You will need the database information to configure MobileFirst Server helm. MobileFirst Server requires schema and tables, which will be created (if it does not exist) in this database.

[Optional] a secret with your keystore and truststore. You can provide your own keystore and truststore to the deployment by creating a secret with your own keystore and truststore.

Prior to the installation, follow the steps below:

Create a secret with keystore.jks, keystore-password.txt, truststore.jks, truststore-password.txt and provide the secret name in the field keystores.keystoresSecretName.

Keep the files keystore.jks and its password in a file named keystore-password.txt and truststore.jks and its password in a file named truststore-password.jks.
Go to the command line and execute:

kubectl create secret generic mfpf-cert-secret –from-file keystore-password.txt –from-file truststore-password.txt –from-file keystore.jks –from-file truststore.jks

Note: The names of the files should be the same as mentioned i.e, keystore.jks, keystore-password.txt, truststore.jks and truststore-password.txt.

Provide the name of the secret in keystoresSecretName to override the default keystores.

For more information refer to Configuring the MobileFirst Server Keystore.