IBM Z Hardware and Operating Systems Ideas Portal


This is the public portal for all IBM Z Hardware and Operating System related offerings. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas

  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Add a new idea Subscribe
Status Future consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories Container Extensions (zCX)
Created by Guest
Created on Oct 4, 2021

RELATED IDEAS

zCX: Provide Sysplex Distributor Support for High Availability

Currently zCX only supports Dynamic VIPAs, no Sysplex Distributor support is available.

In case of a Docker Swarm, or even a Single zCX Container within one zCX, there is a timing window in that the application within the Container is not available to the clients. For example during planned maintenance (IPL, zCX upgrade workflow) or during an outage of the zCX instance itself. This is because the VIPA is unavailable after shutdown/failure of zCX ASID.

To avoid this, only a distributed load balancer could be used to distribute the requests to the application runing in a zCX container to multiple zCX ASIDs / containers within these zCX instances. The solution for this would be that Sysplex Distributor support for zCX would be added, so that the off-site distributed applications on e.g. Windows, Linux and so on could address the Sysplex Distributor instead of the zCX ASID/VIPA itself.

Idea priority Urgent
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 12, 2023

    Hi IBM,


    are there meanwhile some news available? We're in an project to establish OpenShift in zCX and the main use cases for OCP@zCX are the network latency. If we have to use an F5 load balancer or sth. like that, we would lose parts of these benefits and the workload won't move to zCX and will stay on x86.


    Regards

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 2, 2023

    This would be good for our shop as we begin further exploiting zCX Containers.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Feb 21, 2023

    Even with OpenShift Foundation for zCX and UPI installation, Sysplex Distributor support is required much more. With UPI for High Availability at least one external load balancer is currently required for API Load and Application Ingress Load Balancing. The better solution would be indeed some kind of builtin function like the Sysplex Distributor. But instead of specifying the destination IPs of the DYNXCF interface the targets have to be the zCX VIPAs, otherwise there couldn't be more than one OpenShift instance per LPAR, as each targets for API/Application load balancing require the same ports.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 25, 2023

    Hi IBM
    Any update on this item about the timeline or how far in future it will be considered?

    1 reply

By clicking the "Post Comment" or "Submit Idea" button, you are agreeing to the IBM Ideas Portal Terms of Use.
Do not place IBM confidential, company confidential, or personal information into any field.