How to Deploy and Run IBM FileNet Content Manager 5.7 on Red Hat OpenShift

After many years, I decided to start writing technical blogs again, especially about IBM, Red Hat, OpenText and HCL products.

My first article is about IBM FileNet Content Manager and OpenShift

IBM FileNet Content Manager provides a robust enterprise content management platform.  Additionally, FileNet provides content services, workflow integration, and security for documents stored in the system.

We deploy and run IBM FileNet Content Manager on the OpenShift Platform.

As you know, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) is a container platform based on Kubernetes.

Create Project in OpenShift

First, we need to create an OpenShift project using the following command from the Linux bastion host

oc new-project bbs-filenet

As shown in the screenshot below, you can see the project name in Linux Bastion using the “oc project” command.

We now have an OpenShift project for deploying IBM FileNet Content Manager.  Additionally, we need to deploy the FileNet Content Manager operator with the IBM FNCM catalog in the OpenShift console.

For more information, see the IBM documentation below:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/content-cortex/5.7.0?topic=operator-installing-using-openshift-console

Install Operators

As shown in the screenshot below  we make sure that the FNCM operator has the status Succeeded in our bbs-filenet namespace / project

The second operator is cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift. Make sure that the cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift operator has the status Succeeded

Note that : IBM Content Assistant (Client Managed Software) is about the watsonx. We will mention it another article.

After installing the operator, you can monitor the operator logs using the following command:

oc logs -f deployment/ibm-fncm-operator -c operator

Custom Resource Definition (CR file)

When we deploy FileNet on an OpenShift Cluster, we use a Custom Resource (CR) yaml file. The FileNet Operator uses this Custom Resource to configure and deploy the FileNet components.

A Custom Resource Definition (CRD) defines the schema and behavior of a custom resource in Kubernetes/OpenShift.

The sample CR file is shown below. I used this file to deploy FileNet on the OpenShift Container Platform. I have attached the CR file, and we will examine some of its key configuration sections.

In this deployment, we deployed only FileNet Content Manager on OCP, for this reason I set cpe to true and set the other components to false. In the future I will deploy the IBM Content Navigator and Graphql

content_optional_components:

cmis: false

css: false

es: false

tm: false

cpe: true

graphql: false

ban: false

After the deployment, we can access FileNet through the following URL:

https://filenet.bbsopenshift.com/acce

In this section, we configure the hostname filenet.bbsopenshift.com for the acce url.

Additionally I set the fncm_secret_name to ibm-fncm-secret.

ecm_configuration:

fncm_secret_name: ibm-fncm-secret

cpe:

hostname: filenet.bbsopenshift.com

replica_count: 1

I created a secret named ibm-entitlement-key.  We need to pull images from IBM repository via  ibm-entitlement-key secret.

shared_configuration:

## All FNCM components must use/share the image_pull_secrets to pull images

image_pull_secrets:

– ibm-entitlement-key

storage_configuration:

sc_slow_file_storage_classname: managed-nfs-storage

sc_medium_file_storage_classname: managed-nfs-storage

sc_fast_file_storage_classname: managed-nfs-storage

For the LDAP configuration, we need an Active Directory account and the base DN for users and groups.  as shown below there is a ldap configuration tag.

ldap_configuration tag

Note that : I set the xxxxxxxxldapxxxxxxxxx for ldap hostname. You must set the hostname for lc_ldap_server tag

We need at least two Oracle database schemas for FNCM: one schema for the GCD and one schema for the Object Store.  As you can see the datasource_configuration tag, we have 3 database schemas because I would like to use two object stores

There are a lot of configuration below the datasource_configuration tag like database_servername, database_name and dc_oracle_os_jdbc_url etc.

Note that : I set the for database server name xxxxxxxxxxxdbxxxxxxxxx and dc_oracle_os_jdbc_url  jdbc:oracle:thin:@//xxxxxxxxxxxdbxxxxxxxxx:port/service_name

You must set the server name and jdbr url in your environment.

initialize_configuration tag is crucial for creating FileNet domain and object store. You should check your environment.

In the CR file, there is a storage_configuration tag. I set the managed-nfs-storage value for the storage configuration. You need to have NFS storage and bind it to the OpenShift Container Platform before deployment. This is required for the configuration shown in this article.

storage_configuration:

sc_slow_file_storage_classname: managed-nfs-storage

sc_medium_file_storage_classname: managed-nfs-storage

sc_fast_file_storage_classname: managed-nfs-storage

As you can see the screenshot , there is  managed-nfs-storage in Storage Clas

Secrets:

Ibm-fncm-secret : The ibm-fncm-secret is a required secret that stores sensitive credentials and database login information for an IBM FileNet Content Manager (FNCM) container deployment.

For more information, see the IBM documentation below:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/content-cortex/5.7.0?topic=administering-creating-secrets-protect-sensitive-configuration-data

Ibm-entitlement-key :  You must have a key to access to the container images for IBM FileNet Content Manager from the IBM registry

For more information, see the IBM documentation below:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/content-cortex/5.7.0?topic=cluster-getting-access-images-from-public-entitled-registry

Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims (PV and PVC)

A PersistentVolume (PV) is a storage resource in the OpenShift cluster that can be backed by different storage technologies, such as NFS.

A PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) is a request for storage made by an application.

In this deployment, we didn’t create static PVs and PVCs. However, for a production environment, you should configure persistent storage according to your organization’s storage architecture and requirements.

You can see the PV and PVC for FNCM deployment on OCP .    In a future article, I will explain how to configure static PVs and PVCs and how to create the corresponding YAML files.

Finally, we apply the CR file to deploy IBM FileNet Content Manager on the OpenShift cluster using the following command from the bastion host. The deployment takes approximately 20 minutes in our environment.

oc apply -f ibm_fncm_article.yaml

When deploying the IBM FileNet Content Manager, you can see the operator,  pod, deployment and routes

Additionally FileNet Content Manager screen is below

In future articles, I will cover SSL configuration for FileNet Content Manager, static PV and PVC configuration, IBM Content Navigator deployment, and watsonx integration.

Please, click here to access the ibm_fncm_article.yaml file.

If you have any questions, please feel free to send a message or email.