Solution Hub

Introduction

The Solution Hub is the component of IBM Financial Services Workbench that brings all the capabilities of Solution Designer together with the OpenShift projects. It is the place to create pipeline configurations that will deploy your code to the target project. It also provides tools to monitor your pipelines and the related pipeline runs.

Solution Hub is separated in two layers:

  • Environment - provides a list of all projects in the cluster
  • Project - provides information on a single project and all its deployments

Environment

The Environment layer is the top-level view on all projects. From here you can choose a project to manage.

The Projects tab on this page displays the following information for each project of IBM Financial Services Workbench.

Property Description
Name Name of the project - displayed as a link to the Project's details
Stage Name of the stage
Type Type of stage of the project
possible values are
  • DEV (for development purposes)
  • TEST (for testing purposes)
  • STAGE (e.g. for pre-production environments)
  • PROD (for production environments
OpenShift Project Related OpenShift project displayed as a link to the OpenShift Developer Portal
Created by Name of the project creator (optional column)

Project

The Project layer can be reached by clicking on a project in the Environment layer. It provides two additional tabs to manage (Deployments) and monitor (Pipeline Runs) your pipeline configurations.

Deployments

The Deployments tab on the Projects overview page displays the following information for each of the solutions deployed to the project. Per default, the deployments will be shown in all states. This can be adjusted by using the Quick Filter of the table. The table rows offer an inline capability "Delete" to delete a deployed solution.

Property Description
Name Name of the deployed solution
Pods available Ready replicas / Replicas of the deployment
Status Status of the deployment; possible values are:
  • running
  • error
  • unknown
Type Type of the solution (low-code solution or custom-code solution)
Solution Dashboard Solution acronym

(optional column to be displayed)
Description Additional information for the solution

(optional column to be displayed)
Pipeline Run Link to the pipeline run that deployed the solution.
Last Deployment Timestamp Time when the solution has been deployed.

(optional column to be displayed)

Undeploy a Solution

To undeploy a solution use the header or inline Delete capability. After confirming the action, the solution will be undeployed. All data and pipelines created in the designer will stay the same. This action will take some minutes, so refresh the page after a few minutes. Once the undeploy is done, the solution will no longer appear in the Project Overview.

Pipeline Runs

The Pipeline Runs tab shows a list of all pipeline runs related with this project. It provides the following information:
Property Description
Name Name of the pipeline run (with link to OpenShift Web Console)
Project Name of the project (with link to OpenShift Web Console)
Started Time started
Status Run status
Duration Duration of the pipeline run
Pipeline Name of the pipeline (with link to OpenShift Web Console) - this column is not visible by default

The links to the OpenShift Web Console direct to the respective sub-page and require authentication.

Custom Link from OpenShift Namespace Dashboard to Solution Hub

Sometimes it can be very helpful to have a direct link from an OpenShift project to the Solution Hub. How that link can be created is shown below. For both cases you can use the prepared YAML template and adjust it.

Prerequisites:

  • OpenShift version 4.6
  • Admin access to OpenShift cluster

Example YAML 

apiVersion: console.openshift.io/v1
                    kind: ConsoleLink
                    metadata:
                    name: <name of the console link>
                    spec:
                    href: '<URL of the solution-hub>'
                    location: NamespaceDashboard
                    text: <display name in namespace dashboard in Openshift>

Create a console link using the oc client

  1. Save console link into a YAML file (example: console-link.yaml)
  2. oc apply -f console-link.yam

Create a console link using the OpenShift Admin console

  1. Log in to the admin console of OpenShift
  2. Navigate to Administration -> Custom Resource Definition -> ConsoleLink
  3. Click on Instances -> Create Console Link
  4. Paste YAML prepared in Create Console Link step then click on Create

Delete a console link using the Open Shift Admin console

  1. Log into admin console of OpenShift
  2. Navigate to Administration -> Custom Resource Definition -> ConsoleLink
  3. Click on Instances and click on Console Link which needs to be deleted
  4. Navigate to Actions -> Delete Console Link