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From IBM Integration Bus to IBM App Connect Enterprise in Containers (Part 3)

In Scenarios 2a and 2b, we showed different ways of deploying an App Connect flow onto containers on OpenShift – via the command line, and via the dashboard. We eventually saw a response from our deployed integration, but so what! We haven’t yet really seen what Kubernetes is bringing to the table. We will now explore some of the things that Kubernetes significantly simplifies and extends compared to traditional deployments. In this scenario, we’ll specifically look at load balancing and autoscaling.

If you feel you already understand basic load balancing and autoscaling in Kubernetes, perhaps take a look at the Advanced Scaling Topics section at the end of this post.

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Migration of Microservice Applications From WebLogic to Openshift

The need for an environment to put software applications into service is a concept that is contemporary with the history of software development. While the software dimension of the business changes, there are also changes and improvements in technology, CI/CD practices, usage scenarios, and operational expectations — the environmental practices that allow the software to serve.

In this article, we will discuss our experiences with the seamless migration of Spring Boot (version 2.5.6) microservice applications from Oracle WebLogic to the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Also, the practices to ease and ensure the parallel running of applications in both platforms will be discussed.

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How to Move IBM App Connect Enterprise to Containers: Part 2(b)

Scenario 2b: Deploy a Simple Flow Onto Red Hat OpenShift Using the App Connect Dashboard

In Scenario 2a we introduced the App Connect 'operator'. This works as a sort of digital assistant to help us look after App Connect containers. In that scenario, we used the operator to deploy a container via the Kubernetes command line. In this scenario, we're going to do exactly the same deployment but instead through a user interface known as the App Connect Dashboard. 

What is the App Connect Dashboard?

The App Connect Dashboard is a user interface that provides a simplified way to deploy BAR files within App Connect containers and administer them once live. Some of the facilities it provides are:

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How To Move IBM App Connect Enterprise to Containers – Part 2(a)

Scenario 2(a): Deploy a Simple Toolkit Message Flow Onto Red Hat OpenShift Using the Command Line Interface (CLI)

In Scenario 1 we took a simple flow from IBM Integration Bus and demonstrated we could get it running in IBM App Connect Enterprise on an isolated Docker container. This was a good start, but of course, in a real production environment, we would need more than just an isolated container. We would want to be able to create multiple copies of the container in order to provide high availability and to scale up when the incoming workload increases. We would also need to be able to automatically spread the workload across all those container replicas. 

This and much more is what is provided by a container orchestration platform, and the most commonly used platform today is of course Kubernetes. In this scenario, we’re going to take that same simple flow and deploy it onto Kubernetes and demonstrate some of these orchestration platform features.