IBM Cloud Pak for Data is a comprehensive, cloud-native platform designed to help organizations accelerate their journey to AI by simplifying and automating the tasks of collecting, organizing, and analyzing data. It provides an end-to-end solution for data scientists, business analysts, and application developers to collaboratively manage and govern data, build and deploy machine learning models, and create analytical applications.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data is built on a modular and scalable architecture that allows users to easily integrate with existing systems and leverage open source technologies, such as Kubernetes and Jupyter notebooks. It includes a range of pre-built data connectors, AI tools, and analytics engines, as well as an AI-powered data catalog that automatically discovers, classifies, and governs data assets.

The platform also provides robust security and governance features, such as role-based access control, data masking, and data lineage tracking, to help ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and data privacy laws.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, providing users with the flexibility to choose the deployment option that best suits their needs.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data has a wide range of use cases and can be used by various stakeholders in an organization. Here are some examples of how it can be used:

1. Data preparation and governance: Cloud Pak for Data can help data scientists and analysts access, clean, and govern data from multiple sources, ensuring data quality and accuracy.

2. Machine learning and AI: The platform provides tools and frameworks for building and deploying machine learning models, allowing data scientists and developers to create predictive models and make data-driven decisions.

3. Business intelligence and analytics: Cloud Pak for Data offers a range of analytics and visualization tools, enabling business analysts to derive insights and create reports from data.

4. Data science collaboration: The platform includes collaboration features such as shared notebooks, project tracking, and team communication, allowing data science teams to work together effectively.

5. Application development: Developers can leverage the platform's API capabilities to build applications that access and analyze data, making it easier to create data-driven applications.

6. Compliance and security: Cloud Pak for Data includes robust security and compliance features, such as access control and data masking, helping organizations comply with data privacy regulations and protect sensitive data.

Overall, IBM Cloud Pak for Data is a comprehensive platform that can help organizations accelerate their journey to AI, simplify data management, and enable data-driven decision-making across the enterprise.

Here are the steps to install IBM Cloud Pak for Data on OpenShift:

1. Verify that you have met the prerequisites for installing Cloud Pak for Data on OpenShift. This includes having a running OpenShift cluster, a persistent storage class, and the necessary permissions to create new projects and install operators.

2. Download the Cloud Pak for Data installation files from IBM's website. The installation files include a set of YAML files and a configuration file.

3. Modify the configuration file to specify the installation parameters, such as the namespace, storage class, and node selectors.

4. Create a new project in OpenShift to host the Cloud Pak for Data installation.

5. Apply the YAML files to create the necessary objects in OpenShift, such as operators, service accounts, and deployments.

6. Monitor the installation progress using the OpenShift console or command-line tools.

Once the installation is complete, you can access the Cloud Pak for Data web console using the URL provided in the installation output.

For a detailed step-by-step guide, IBM provides documentation that can guide you through the installation process. Additionally, it is recommended to follow the official IBM Red Hat OpenShift installation guide to ensure that the installation is done correctly.

RedHat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift is a container application platform that provides developers with an integrated environment to build, deploy, and manage applications in a cloud-native way. IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019, making OpenShift a part of IBM's cloud offerings.

OpenShift uses Kubernetes as its core orchestration engine and adds a layer of developer-focused tools and services on top of it to simplify the process of building, deploying, and scaling applications. OpenShift allows developers to use a range of programming languages, frameworks, and databases and provides tools for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), security, monitoring, and logging.

OpenShift can be deployed on-premises, in public cloud environments such as IBM Cloud, AWS, and Azure, or in hybrid cloud environments. The platform provides a consistent experience across these different environments and allows developers to move applications between them with minimal effort.

In summary, Red Hat OpenShift is a powerful platform that enables developers to build and deploy applications more easily and efficiently, with support for a range of tools and services, and can be deployed on a variety of cloud environments.

RedHat OpenShift is a platform for building, deploying, and managing containerized applications. It is designed to help enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure and applications, and accelerate their digital transformation journey.

Here are some of the key usage areas of RedHat OpenShift for enterprises:

1. Cloud-native application development: OpenShift provides developers with a platform to build and deploy cloud-native applications using popular languages, frameworks, and tools. Developers can use OpenShift to create microservices-based architectures and leverage container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.

2. Container orchestration: OpenShift uses Kubernetes to orchestrate containers and provides additional capabilities such as automated scaling, monitoring, and load balancing. This makes it easier for enterprises to manage and scale their containerized applications.

3. Hybrid cloud deployment: OpenShift supports deployment across multiple cloud environments, including public, private, and hybrid clouds. This allows enterprises to build and deploy applications in the cloud that best meets their business needs.

4. Security and compliance: OpenShift provides a secure and compliant platform for enterprise applications. It includes features such as container image scanning, network isolation, and role-based access control to help enterprises meet their security and compliance requirements.

5. DevOps and automation: OpenShift integrates with popular DevOps tools such as Git, Jenkins, and Ansible to automate the build, test, and deployment of applications. This helps enterprises to accelerate their software delivery cycles and reduce time to market.

Overall, RedHat OpenShift is a powerful platform for enterprises looking to modernize their IT infrastructure and accelerate their digital transformation journey.

 What is a proxy server (forward proxy)?

A forward proxy, often called a proxy, proxy server, or web proxy, is a server that sits in front of a group of client machines. When those computers make requests to sites and services on the Internet, the proxy server intercepts those requests and then communicates with web servers on behalf of those clients, like a middleman.

For example, let’s name 3 computers involved in a typical forward proxy communication:

·        A: This is a user’s home computer

·        B: This is a forward proxy server

·        C: This is a website’s origin server (where the website data is stored)

In a standard Internet communication, computer A would reach out directly to computer C, with the client sending requests to the origin server and the origin server responding to the client. When a forward proxy is in place, A will instead send requests to B, which will then forward the request to C. C will then send a response to B, which will forward the response back to A.

Why would anyone add this extra middleman to their Internet activity? There are a few reasons one might want to use a forward proxy:

·        To avoid state or institutional browsing restrictions - Some governments, schools, and other organizations use firewalls to give their users access to a limited version of the Internet. A forward proxy can be used to get around these restrictions, as they let the user connect to the proxy rather than directly to the sites they are visiting.

·        To block access to certain content - Conversely, proxies can also be set up to block a group of users from accessing certain sites. For example, a school network might be configured to connect to the web through a proxy which enables content filtering rules, refusing to forward responses from Facebook and other social media sites.

·        To protect their identity online - In some cases, regular Internet users simply desire increased anonymity online, but in other cases, Internet users live in places where the government can impose serious consequences to political dissidents. Criticizing the government in a web forum or on social media can lead to fines or imprisonment for these users. If one of these dissidents uses a forward proxy to connect to a website where they post politically sensitive comments, the IP address used to post the comments will be harder to trace back to the dissident. Only the IP address of the proxy server will be visible.

How is a reverse proxy different?

A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of one or more web servers, intercepting requests from clients. This is different from a forward proxy, where the proxy sits in front of the clients. With a reverse proxy, when clients send requests to the origin server of a website, those requests are intercepted at the network edge by the reverse proxy server. The reverse proxy server will then send requests to and receive responses from the origin server.

The difference between a forward and reverse proxy is subtle but important. A simplified way to sum it up would be to say that a forward proxy sits in front of a client and ensures that no origin server ever communicates directly with that specific client. On the other hand, a reverse proxy sits in front of an origin server and ensures that no client ever communicates directly with that origin server.

Once again, let’s illustrate by naming the computers involved:

·        D: Any number of users’ home computers

·        E: This is a reverse proxy server

·        F: One or more origin servers

Typically, all requests from D would go directly to F, and F would send responses directly to D. With a reverse proxy, all requests from D will go directly to E, and E will send its requests to and receive responses from F. E will then pass along the appropriate responses to D.

Below we outline some of the benefits of a reverse proxy:

·        Load balancing - A popular website that gets millions of users every day may not be able to handle all its incoming site traffic with a single origin server. Instead, the site can be distributed among a pool of different servers, all handling requests for the same site. In this case, a reverse proxy can provide a load balancing solution which will distribute the incoming traffic evenly among the different servers to prevent any single server from becoming overloaded. If a server fails completely, other servers can step up to handle the traffic.

·        Protection from attacks - With a reverse proxy in place, a web site or service never needs to reveal the IP address of their origin server(s). This makes it much harder for attackers to leverage a targeted attack against them, such as a DDoS attack. Instead the attackers will only be able to target the reverse proxy, such as Cloudflare’s CDN, which will have tighter security and more resources to fend off a cyber-attack.

·        Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) - In this form of load balancing, a website can be distributed on several servers around the globe and the reverse proxy will send clients to the server that’s geographically closest to them. This decreases the distances that requests and responses need to travel, minimizing load times.

·        Caching - A reverse proxy can also cache content, resulting in faster performance. For example, if a user in Paris visits a reverse-proxied website with web servers in Los Angeles, the user might connect to a local reverse proxy server in Paris, which will then have to communicate with an origin server in L.A. The proxy server can then cache (or temporarily save) the response data. Subsequent Parisian users who browse the site will then get the locally cached version from the Parisian reverse proxy server, resulting in much faster performance.

·        SSL encryption - Encrypting and decrypting SSL (or TLS) communications for each client can be computationally expensive for an origin server. A reverse proxy can be configured to decrypt all incoming requests and encrypt all outgoing responses, freeing up valuable resources on the origin server.

How to Generate an Entity Relationship Document for Maximo

Some important Maximo system properties and their functions

1. mxe.db.fetchResultLogLimit  --> Generates an exception in the log for the specified number of objects in a single mbo set.

2. mail.smtp.host  --> inorder to send email from Maximo, administrator needs to specify the SMTP server so that users can send e-mail notifications.

3. mxe.adminEmail  --> Fro sending the e-mail notification to the administrative user.

4. mxe.doclink.doctypes.defpath -- default path for Doclinks

5. mxe.db.logSQLTimelimit  --> (Log SQL operations exceeding this time limit (milliseconds)), In order to analyze Maximo system performance, or to determine SQL statement execution time.

6.  mxe.int.globaldir --> required to export XML and flat files from a publish channel to a specific directory location.

A system property that need to be updated within Maximo, If DBA changed the password for the user maximo using a SQL command.

7. mxe.db.password  -> Native database password for Maximo connection

All three properties helps to detect and release stale database connections...

7. mxe.db.closelongrunconn --> Boolean flag to indicate if we need to close long running connection.

8. mxe.db.longruntimelimit --> Time limit in minutes to close for long running connection.

9. mxe.db.detectlongrunconninterval --> Interval in minutes to check long running connection. Default=0. Value in (0, 30] is treated as 30.

 Use of Edit mode in Maximo / ICD / MAS

In the SR, WorkOrder like applications, you may find that the first button in the toolbar is a pencil icon, this enables editing of the record. If you do have a blue pencil button, then the fields in the application will be read-only.

As an administrator, you would know if your users were trying to update the same record, because one of them would be receiving the error message – “BMXAA4200E – Record has been updated by another user”, and they would be asking you why this was happening.

Edit Mode can be enabled on an application if the same record is likely to be updated by different users at the same time. 

You can enable edit mode from the Application Designer application once the application has been loaded. The Edit Mode Enabled check box can be enabled/disabled as required.

The pencil icon in the toolbar on the Service Requests application will allow you to go into edit mode for the record. It changes the toolbar button to a green pencil with a border. Notice many of the fields can now be edited, they are no longer read-only. This remains until you use the Release Edit Mode button (pencil icon). The pencil button therefore just toggles on/off edit mode for the record. The Next Record and Previous Record buttons will also toggle off edit mode, as would returning to the List tab of the application.

From the List tab of the application there is a rather faint symbol next to the service requests which are in edit mode. If you hover over the symbol, you’ll see who is currently editing the record – “User <Manoj Gupta> is editing the record”. I am logged in as <Mohit> Redding on another browser, Mohit will not be able to go into Edit Mode for service request XXXX until <Manoj Gupta> has released it.

To see this, you have to be logged-in on a second browser session. 

Note: - Remember, returning to the List tab will release edit mode.

If you find that a record seems to have got stuck in Edit Mode, there is an application called Record Release found in the Administration module. Here you can filter for the record by the application’s main object and name of user, there should only be one record, then you can select it and use the Release Edit Mode button. The padlock button at the end of the row does this in one action. 

You cannot filter by the Service Request number (TICKETID) as the record uses the internal record number for the objects, you tend not to be able to see these in Maximo applications. 

Be careful how you use this, as if Mike Wilson was in the middle of writing War and Peace in the Details (long description) of the Service Request then when he comes to save he will be returned to the error we saw before “BMXAA8973E – Your credentials do not have rights to edit this document (SR : Class=SR Service Request=XXXX). Turn on edit mode, or contact your administrator to continue.” He might be able to copy the text he was writing, but it is likely he will lose some of the changes he was going to make. 

Note:- Save often, it does not pull you out of Edit Mode.

• Labor Rate Contracts:- Used to define labor rates to be paid to specific crafts and skills when hiring workers. 
• Lease/Rental Contracts:- Used to define the terms and conditions and payment information for lease or rental agreements for rotating assets, including information technology assets. 
• Master Contracts:- Used to define the contractual relationship with a vendor. A master contract links all contracts with the vendor, as well as containing the terms and conditions that apply to the associated contracts. 
• Purchase Contracts:- Used to create, modify, and view contracts for items or services with outside vendors. You can include detailed information about a contract's shipping and financial terms, contact information, item and service pricing, and delivery times. 
• Terms and Conditions:- Used to enter and maintain a library of terms and conditions to be used on contracts and purchasing documents. These terms can contain information such as liability concerns, shipping and handling details, or delivery time expectations. 
• Warranty Contracts:- Used to create warranty and service contracts where vendors maintain one or more assets for a fixed fee, or regularly scheduled payment over a time period; or to track warranty information for multiple assets or locations by time or meter.

Deployed Asset:- Applications to view information about deployed information technology (IT) assets. 

• Computers:- Used to view data about specific computers deployed at your company. 
• Network Devices:- Used to view information about deployed network devices such as routers, switches, and hubs. 
• Network Printers:- Used to view information about deployed network printers.