Maximo Application Suite on ARO ( Azure Red Hat OpenShift )

IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS) is a set of applications for asset monitoring, management, predictive maintenance and reliability planning. When combined with Azure Red Hat OpenShift ( ARO ), this frees up your Maximo and operations team to focus on what is important to them ( Maximo ) rather than having to worry about managing and building clusters.

This document outlines how to get quickly get started with ARO and installing Maximo all through automation.

Prerequisites

• an ARO Cluster (see Deploying ARO with Terraform )
• oc cli
• ansible cli
• a Maximo License Key
  

Note: You must log into your ARO cluster via your oc cli before going through the following steps.

Prepare the Environment

Note: This guide re-uses environment variables from the Deploying ARO using azurerm Terraform Provider guide. If you have an existing cluster, you’ll need to set them appropriately for the cluster.

1. Run this these commands to set some environment variables to use throughout (Terraform commands need to be run in the directory you ran Terraform)
   

Maximo environment variables.

You do need both an IBM entitlement key and a Maximo license ID and file. These can be obtained from IBM.

export IBM_ENTITLEMENT_KEY=XYZ
export MAS_CONFIG_DIR=~/tmp/masconfig
export DRO_CONTACT_EMAIL=name@company.com
export DRO_CONTACT_FIRSTNAME=First
export DRO_CONTACT_LASTNAME=Last
export MAS_INSTANCE_ID=inst1
export SLS_LICENSE_ID=
export SLS_LICENSE_FILE=
mkdir -p $MAS_CONFIG_DIR

OpenShift Environment Variables

export CLUSTER=${TF_VAR_cluster_name}

INGRESS_SECRET_NAME=$(oc get secret -n openshift-ingress -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(.metadata.name|contains("ingress")) | .metadata.name')

az aro list --query \
    "[?name=='$CLUSTER'].{ ResourceGroup:resourceGroup,Location:location}" \
    -o tsv | read -r RESOURCEGROUP LOCATION

Prepare the Storage Accounts for MAS

1. Change the default storage class

  oc patch storageclass managed-csi -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"false"}}}'

1. Create an Azure Premium Disk for Maximo

   cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
   apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
   kind: StorageClass
   metadata:
     name: managed-premium
     annotations: 
       storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class: 'true'
   provisioner: kubernetes.io/azure-disk
   parameters:
     kind: Managed
     storageaccounttype: Premium_LRS
   reclaimPolicy: Delete
   allowVolumeExpansion: true
   volumeBiningMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
   EOF
   

2. Create an Azure Premium File Storage for Maximo

   cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
   apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
   kind: StorageClass
   metadata:
     name: azurefiles-premium
   provisioner: file.csi.azure.com
   parameters:
     protocol: nfs
     networkEndpointType: privateEndpoint
     location: $LOCATION
     resourceGroup: $RESOURCEGROUP
     skuName: Premium:LRS
   reclaimPolicy: Retain
   allowVolumeExpansion: true
   volumeBiningMode: Immediate
   EOF
   

Install IBM Maximo Application Suite with Ansible

IBM has provided an ansible playbook to automate the installation of Maximo and all the required dependencies making it very easy and repeatable to get started with Maximo.

Click here to learn more about the OneClick Install of Maximo.

1. Install the Maximo Ansible collection

ansible-galaxy collection install ibm.mas_devops

1. Run the Ansible playbook

ansible-playbook ibm.mas_devops.oneclick_core

And that’s it!! … it will take about 90 minutes for the installation to complete follow along the ansible log messages if you like.

You can also open the OpenShift web console and view the projects and resources the playbook is creating.

When the playbook finishes, you will see the following showing the installation is complete along with the MAS Admin Dashboard with username and password to use.

Open the MAS Dashboard URL in your browser and log in with the given username and password.

Note: If you are using the default aroapp.io domain that comes with ARO, the URL will show it’s insecure due to an untrusted CA. For a production level Maximo installation with ARO, the cluster should be created with a custom domain where you control the certificates. Follow these directions from IBM in manually appling the certificates for MAS.

If you see a blue spinning circle from the admin page like this:

In the browswer, change admin to api and hit enter. For example: change https://admin.inst1.apps.mobb.eastus.aroapp.io/ to https://api.inst1.apps.mobb.eastus.aroapp.io/

This will return a message like the following:

Try to load the admin screen and this time it should work.

Install Maximo Applications ( Optional )

Optionally install Maximo applications you would like to use. In this example, we will install IT and Asset Configuration Manager.

On the Admin page, click on Catalog and then under applications click on Manage.

Select both IT and Asset Configuration Manager and then click on Continue.

Keep the defaults and click on Subscribe to channel. Note that this can take 10+ minutes.

Once you see thate Manage is ready to be activated, click on Activate

Finally, click on Start activation on the next screen. Note that this step can take several hours.