THE CHALLENGE
Blue Polaris needed to deploy IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) on a highly available, multiregion AWS EKS setup. The environment had to:
- Support disaster recovery
- Integrate with Aurora RDS
- Enforce TLS via ACM
- Provide secure image pulls from IBM Container Registry
- Provision persistent storage dynamically
OUR SOLUTION
- Terraform
- Helm
- Packer
- Vault
- AWS Services
- Kubernetes Resources
As an IBM Gold Partner, we have demonstrated a longstanding ability to work closely with the IBM Sales team, ensuring we deliver exceptional service and value to our customers.
How we solved it
1. Infrastructure setup
Using Terraform, we built EKS clusters in eu-west-1 (primary) and eu-west-2 (secondary/DR), with consistent providers, aliases, and Helm values files.
2. Secrets management
IBM entitlement keys, DB passwords, and pull credentials were securely injected into the clusters from Vault, minimizing manual handling.
3. Immutable images
With Packer, we generated hardened AMIs for worker nodes, ensuring consistent OS dependencies and pre-baked tools.
4. Application deployment
Helm was used to roll out ODM with RDS endpoints, ACM certs, and ingress configs.
5. Storage and IAM
Switched to gp3 for EBS volumes and updated IAM node roles to allow ec2:CreateVolume, fixing PVC provisioning errors.
6. Troubleshooting
Iterative testing with kubectl describe, events, and rollout restarts validated connectivity, image pulls (via cp-icr-cred), and storage binding.
The Results
1. A fully automated, multi-region ODM deployment pipeline that reduces manual setup to zero.
- The system does all the technical work automatically (installing, configuring, and starting everything).
- It can roll out the product to multiple regions or data centers at once.
- No manual steps are needed, so deployments are faster, less error-prone, and repeatable.
Benefit: Faster launches, fewer mistakes, and consistent setups everywhere.
2. Secure secret management with Vault and reproducible immutable infrastructure with Packer.
- The system does all the technical work automatically (installing, configuring, and starting everything).
- It can roll out the product to multiple regions or data centers at once.
- No manual steps are needed, so deployments are faster, less error-prone, and repeatable.
Benefit: Faster launches, fewer mistakes, and consistent setups everywhere.
3. ODM pods can now authenticate to IBM Container Registry and dynamically provision storage with gp3 volumes.
- The system does all the technical work automatically (installing, configuring, and starting everything).
- It can roll out the product to multiple regions or data centers at once.
- No manual steps are needed, so deployments are faster, less error-prone, and repeatable.
Benefit: Faster launches, fewer mistakes, and consistent setups everywhere.
4. The solution provides repeatability, security, and portability, with clear next steps around ingress validation and DR failover testing.
- The system does all the technical work automatically (installing, configuring, and starting everything).
- It can roll out the product to multiple regions or data centers at once.
- No manual steps are needed, so deployments are faster, less error-prone, and repeatable.
Benefit: Faster launches, fewer mistakes, and consistent setups everywhere.
What’s included in the QuickStart Pack?
- Consultation on architecture & design
- Questionnaire to generate needed artifacts
- Process steps to execute a custom PoC
Let's get started
Drop us a mail or give us a call for a personalized demonstration of Modernized Decisioning on IBM Z