IBM Cloud Foundry 3.1.2 Enterprise Environment
IBM Cloud Private 3.1.2 marks an evolution in IBM’s Cloud Foundry strategy. This release offers the latest Cloud Foundry full stack deployment, bumping the base up to v6.2. Along with the full stack release, 3.1.2 also offers a technical preview of Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment. This platform brings the same developer experience you find in a standard Cloud Foundry deployment to the Kubernetes platform. With the Enterprise Environment, Cloud Foundry runs on IBM Cloud Private Kubernetes by using containers.
Not only does Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment accelerate installation while improving reliability and recoverability, it offers the same developer experience you expect when using IBM Cloud Foundry solutions. The Cloud Foundry CLI is available and fully functional. The Cloud Foundry management console offers a supported interface to help visualize and improve the developer experience. It configures itself during installation and is ready to go from the start.
All your applications on one platform
Having Cloud Foundry on top of Kubernetes helps solidify a complete cloud platform. Now microservices, middleware, and cloud native applications can live side by side. This means only one platform for operations to manage, while being able to host all applications in your enterprise.
New developers that just want to code can push their web apps, APIs, and microservices with minimal platform knowledge. As they mature and build complex microservice cloud native applications, they can move to the container-based deployments offered by the templates. This hybrid experience allows new and experienced developers the ability to create complex applications with a high degree of control, or simply write some code and push the app. The flexibility is now available in one platform.
Shared management tools
As the Enterprise Environment matures, it will continue to be tightly integrated with the IBM Cloud Private management plane. This means logging, monitoring, and alerts for your containers and Cloud Foundry applications will all live under one roof. By using common tools, operational efficiency is improved.
Finally, the use of Kubernetes Services within Cloud Foundry will be able to expand to a new level. With the services and applications hosted in the same platform, new application designs that improve network performance and security will be possible within the virtual environment.
Application logging to ELK
Another update with the 3.1.2 release is the ability to direct application logs to the IBM Cloud Private ELK stack. This means that both platform and application logs from Cloud Foundry can be gathered in the platform from day zero. This minimizes the time needed to create a complete application hosting solution for users that might not have application logging infrastructure already available in their data centers.
With all this new capability, I invite you to try the technical preview of IBM Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment. You can find it for download from IBM Passport Advantage for use on IBM Cloud Private. More information is available in the IBM Knowledge Center.
