Component Pack installation roadmap and requirements

Review the installation process plus the required hardware and software for the IBM Connections Component Pack.

Installation roadmap

Important: The installation instructions are intended for use with the 6.0.0.5 release or higher. Do not use these instructions to install an older release.
Your installation roadmap depends on the type of installation that you are performing:

Installation and component overview

The orchestration of the various components is managed using Kubernetes technology for managing distributed application deployments.

For information on the components and architecture of the Component Pack for IBM Connections, see Component Pack overview

General requirements

Refer to the Detailed System Requirements for complete information on supported software.

  • The recommended browser is Microsoft Edge; Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 is not a supported browser.

  • These servers must all be on the same network as the dedicated IBM® WebSphere® Application Server Deployment Manager used by IBM Connections. If they are on a different network from the Deployment Manager, then you will need to perform some additional configuration steps to communicate between the ICp servers and the Deployment Manager. Additionally, all host names must be lowercase.

  • Only the following combinations of operating system and Docker are supported:
    • Docker Enterprise Edition:
      • RHEL 7.4 and later
      • CentOS 7.4 and later
    • Docker Community Edition:
      • CentOS 7.4 and later

Requirements for an "all on one machine" proof-of-concept deployment

It is possible to install the Component Pack all on one machine (can be bare metal or Virtual Machine) as a proof of concept (POC). The following lists specify the minimum system requirements for the different types of POC installations.

Attention: The proof-of-concept system requirements are not recommended for production systems.
All services on one machine

  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy + Worker: 12 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 40GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment).

    Storage (can be on same machine as master for POC) - for ElasticSearch, Customizer, MongoDB and Solr indexes, 100GB disk

Orient Me on one machine

  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy + Worker: 10 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 32GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    Storage (can be on same machine as master for POC) - for MongoDB and Solr indexes, 100GB disk

Elasticsearch on one machine

  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy + Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 24GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    Storage (can be on same machine as master for POC) - for Elasticsearch, 100GB disk

Customizer on one machine

  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy + Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 24GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    Storage (can be on same machine as master for POC) - for Customizer, 100GB disk

Requirements for a standard (non-high-availability) deployment

The following lists specify the requirements for a standard Component Pack deployment that does not provide high-availability features.

All services as a standard deployment

The minimum requirement for installing all services for a standard non-HA deployment is three machines.

The following base machine is required to deploy ICp:
  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

The following base machines are needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 1 - Generic Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 24GB memory, and 100GB disk
  • 1 - Infrastructure Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 24GB memory, and 100GB disk

Storage (can be on same machine as master for a standard deployment) - for ElasticSearch, Customizer, MongoDB and Solr indexes, 100GB disk

Orient Me as a standard deployment

The minimum requirement for installing only Orient Me for a standard deployment, is two machines (these can be bare metal or Virtual Machines):

The following base machine is needed to deploy ICp:
  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

The following base machine is needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 1 - Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 24GB memory, and 100GB disk

Storage (can be on same machine as master for a standard deployment) - for MongoDB and Solr indexes, 100GB disk

Elasticsearch as a standard deployment

The minimum requirement for installing only ElasticSearch for a standard deployment is two machines (these can be bare metal or Virtual Machines):

The following base machine is needed to deploy ICp:
  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

The following base machine is needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 1 - Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 24GB memory, and 100GB disk

Storage (can be on same machine as master for a standard deployment) - for Elasticsearch, 100GB disk

Customizer as a standard deployment

The minimum requirement for installing only Customizer for a standard deployment is two machines (these can be bare metal or Virtual Machines):

The following base machine is needed to deploy ICp:
  • 1 - ICp Master + Boot + Proxy: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

The following base machine is needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 1 - Worker: 8 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 20GB memory, and 100GB disk

Storage (can be on same machine as master for a standard deployment) - for Customizer, 100GB disk

Requirements for a high-availability (HA) deployment

The following lists specify the requirements for a standard Component Pack deployment that provides high-availability features.

All services as a high-availability deployment
The following base machines are needed to deploy ICp HA (all services):
  • 3 - ICp Masters + a Boot node: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    One of the three master nodes acts as a boot node

The following base machines are needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 3 - Generic Workers: 6 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and 100GB disk

    Co-located ICp Proxy on each Worker Node

  • 3 - Infrastructure Workers: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and 100GB disk

The following base machine is needed to store Persistent Storage and the Image Repositories across all ICp Masters:
  • 1 - Storage: for ElasticSearch, Customizer, MongoDB, and Solr indexes and for the Image Repositories - 150GB disk

Orient Me as a high-availability deployment
The following base machines are needed to deploy ICp HA (Orient Me only):
  • 3 - ICp Masters + a Boot node: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    One of the three master nodes acts as a boot node

The following base machines are needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 3 - Workers: 6 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and 100GB disk

    Co-located ICp Proxy on each Worker Node

The following base machine is needed to store Persistent Storage and the Image Repositories across all ICp Masters:
  • 1 - Storage: for MongoDB, Solr indexes, and Image Repositories - 150GB disk

Elasticsearch as a high-availability deployment
The following base machines are needed to deploy ICp HA (ElasticSearch only):
  • 3 - ICp Masters + a Boot node: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    One of the three master nodes acts as a boot node

The following base machines are needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 3 - Workers: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and 100GB disk

    Co-located ICp Proxy on each Worker Node

The following base machine is needed to store Persistent Storage and the Image Repositories across all ICp Masters:
  • 1 - Storage: for Elasticsearch and for the Image Repositories - 150GB disk

Customizer as a high-availability deployment
The following base machines are needed to deploy ICp HA (Customizer only):
  • 3 - ICp Masters + a Boot node: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and at least 100GB disk (includes space to maintain logs for the deployment)

    One of the three master nodes acts as a boot node

The following base machines are needed to deploy Component Pack services and infrastructure:
  • 3 - Workers: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 16GB memory, and 100GB disk

    Co-located ICp Proxy on each Worker Node

The following base machine is needed to store Persistent Storage and the Image Repositories across all ICp Masters:
  • 1 - Storage: for Customizer and for the Image Repositories - 150GB disk

Additional requirements for Customizer

If you are deploying Connections Customizer, then depending on the approach you choose, you might need an additional stand-alone machine to server as the reverse proxy server:
  • 1 - Reverse proxy: for Customizer: 4 CPU, 2.x GHZ, 4GB memory - 100GB disk
For more information, see Configuring the NGINX proxy server for Customizer.

Security requirements

  • It is assumed that your network is secure.
  • Ensure that IBM Connections and Component Pack runs in a trusted network environment and limit the interfaces on which they listen for incoming connections. Allow only trusted clients to access the network interfaces and ports used in the deployment.

Firewall requirements

In the 6.0.0.4 release and later, you are no longer required to disable your firewall before installing. However, during the installation of IBM® Cloud private, the firewall will be automatically disabled and then re-enabled again after a successful install.

There is an optional flag (--configure_firewall) that will open the required ports (4001,8001,8443,8500) during install. However, if you want to manually configure your firewall, refer to the IBM Private Cloud article Default ports, which lists the default ports that must be available for installation and configuration of an IBM® Cloud private cluster.

Note: If you plan to use the Kibana data visualization plug-in (which is deployed as part of the installation), you will need to open ports 5601 (Kibana) and 9200 (Elasticsearch).