Overview

We started to use Azure Service Bus (ASB) as an enterprise messaging solution 3 years ago. It is being used to publish and consume data between many applications in the organization. Since the data flow is complex, and one application’s data is usually needed in multi applications the “publisher” ---> ”multiple subscribers” model was a great fit. The ASB usage in the organization is dozens of millions of messages per day, while IRIS platform is having around 2-3 million messages/day.

In this article, we’ll build a highly available IRIS configuration using Kubernetes Deployments with distributed persistent storage instead of the “traditional” IRIS mirror pair. This deployment would be able to tolerate infrastructure-related failures, such as node, storage and Availability Zone failures. The described approach greatly reduces the complexity of the deployment at the expense of slightly extended RTO.

I have challenged to create a bot application using Azure Bot that can retrieve and post data to IRIS for Health.

A patient's data has already been registered in the FHIR repository of IRIS for Health.

The patient's MRN is 1001. His name is Taro Yamada. (in Japanese :山田 太郎)

This bot can post new pulse oximeter readings as an observation resource linked to the patient.

++Update: August 2, 2018

This article provides a reference architecture as a sample for providing robust performing and highly available applications based on InterSystems Technologies that are applicable to Caché, Ensemble, HealthShare, TrakCare, and associated embedded technologies such as DeepSee, iKnow, Zen and Zen Mojo.

Azure has two different deployment models for creating and working with resources: Azure Classic and Azure Resource Manager. The information detailed in this article is based on the Azure Resource Manager model (ARM).

Accessing an Azure cloud storage to upload/download blobs is quite easy using the designated %Net.Cloud.Storage.Client class API methods, or using the EnsLib.CloudStorage.* inbound/outbound adaptors.

Note that you'll need to have the %JavaServer External Language Server up and running to use the cloud storage API or adaptors, since they both use the PEX framework using the Java Server.

If you're running IRIS in a mirrored configuration for HA in Azure, the question of providing a Mirror VIP (Virtual IP) becomes relevant. Virtual IP offers a way for downstream systems to interact with IRIS using one IP address. Even when a failover happens, downstream systems can reconnect to the same IP address and continue working.

The main issue, when deploying to Azure, is that an IRIS VIP has a requirement of IRIS being essentially a network admin, per the docs.

To get HA, IRIS mirror members must be deployed to different availability zones in one subnet (which is possible in Azure as subnets can span several zones). One of the solutions might be load balancers, but they, of course, cost extra, and you need to administrate them.

In this article, I would like to provide a way to configure a Mirror VIP without the using Load Balancers suggested in most other Azure reference architectures.

Background

For a variety of reasons, users may wish to mount a persistent volume on two or more pods spanning multiple availability zones. One such use case is to make data stored outside of IRIS available to both mirror members in case of failover.

Not sure there are many that connect to MS SQL to execute queries, stored procedures, etc, but our Healthsystem has many different MS SQL based databases we use within the Interoperability environment for various reasons.

With the push to moving from on-prem to the Cloud we ran into some difficulties with our SQL Gateway connections and knowing how to config them to use Microsoft Entra for Active Directory Authentication.

There are many articles out on the web, but there was not one that could give us the full answer to what we needed to do, and Microsoft wasn’t much help.

Like hardware hosts, virtual hosts in public and private clouds can develop resource bottlenecks as workloads increase. If you are using and managing InterSystems IRIS instances deployed in public or private clouds, you may have encountered a situation in which addressing performance or other issues requires increasing the capacity of an instance's host (that is, vertically scaling).

One common reason to scale is insufficient memory.

Making a Chart using Intersystems IRIS + Python

How to use the IRIS Native API in Python to access globals and plot some charts.

Why Python?

With a large adoption and use in the world, Python have a great community and a lot of accelerators | libraries to deploy any kind of application. If you are curious (https://www.python.org/about/apps/)

Why COVID-19 Data

As the pandemy evolves in the world a lot of information are being spreaded so I decided to create an application to audit those information.

Hey Developers,

Please welcome the new session recording from the InterSystems AI+ML Summit 2021:

⏯ AI+ML Summit Convergent Analytics – Cross-Industry Stream

Hi Community!

I'm pleased to announce that InterSystems IRIS is available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace!

→ InterSystems IRIS on Azure Marketplace

This is the second public cloud offering of InterSystems IRIS after recently announced Google Cloud Platform support.

Hi Community,

Enjoy watching the new session recording from the InterSystems AI+ML Summit 2021:

⏯ AI+ML Summit Convergent Analytics – Healthcare Stream

Hi,

I have wrote an article about how to install the intersystems cache driver in a Docker container, and then deploy it using Azure Functions: 

How to run a (Python) Azure Function as a Docker container & Deploy it using Bicep | Victor Sanner
This might be useful to others, especially the dockerfile which I have copied below. This builds a debian docker container and installs the Intersystems Cache driver, which python can then use :)

To enable ssh & remote debugging on app service change the base image to the one below
# FROM mcr.microsoft.com/azure-functions/python:3.0-python3.

This article explains how to deploy InterSystems IRIS Community Edition on Azure using the Azure Marketplace and a Virtual Machine. It covers prerequisites, instance selection, authentication, SSH access, first verification steps, and how to delete resources to avoid charges. The deployment can typically be done using Azure free credits and is suitable for developers who want to quickly start working with IRIS in the cloud.

Who this guide is for. This guide is intended for developers, solution architects, and DevOps engineers who want to deploy InterSystems IRIS Community Edition on Microsoft Azure. No prior Azure automation experience is required, but basic familiarity with the Azure Portal and SSH is helpful.

After following this guide, you will be able to:

• Launch InterSystems IRIS Community Edition from the Azure Marketplace
• Configure a small, secure Azure VM
• Connect to IRIS using SSH and the Management Portal
• Reset the default IRIS password and verify that IRIS is running

Prerequisites

• An active Azure subscription (new accounts may have free credits)
• Permissions to create resource groups, VMs, and networking resources
• An SSH client and a private key (.pem) you can store securely
• Basic knowledge of Linux command line

Deployment overview

• Open the IRIS Community Edition listing in Azure Marketplace and click Get it now
• In Azure Portal, choose Start with a pre-set configuration (or Create)
• Configure Basics: subscription, resource group, VM name, region, image, and size (a small VM is usually sufficient)
• Choose SSH key authentication and generate/download the key if needed
• Review + Create, accept terms, and deploy; then Go to resource → Connect → SSH
• First SSH login: run iris password to change _SYSTEM/SYS; start a session with iris session iris
• Management Portal: http://YOUR_VM_IP:52773/csp/sys/UtilHome.csp

We’ve already considered how to run an IRIS-based application in GCP Kubernetes in Deploying InterSystems IRIS Solution into GCP Kubernetes Cluster GKE Using CircleCI. Additionally, we’ve seen how to run an IRIS-based application in AWS Kubernetes in Deploying a Simple IRIS-Based Web Application Using Amazon EKS. Now, let’s look at how to deploy an application to the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Dear community, we are building up a digital backbone for our 17 hospitals and looking for reinforcement within the team. Maybe this is something for you or someone you know?

👩‍💻 Are you an (#InterSystems) developer and would you like to join an intelligent, bright and internationally diverse team (mainly in Zurich, but also in South Africa and the Middle East)?
🤘 Are you keen to use your skills for clinically relevant use cases and to build a Group-wide value-creating platform?
😁 Are you up for mischief and humor in the workplace?

Has anyone integrated IRIS with Azure AD? Any tips or guidelines you can provide are appreciated.

David

Hello fellow community members,

I would like to offer my services as an Intersystems Professional and am available to work on projects. 

I have more than a decade experience into  Intersystems stack of technologies including IRIS, Ensemble, Healthshare, Healthconnect, Cache Objectscript, Mumps, Zen, Analytics etc. with companies spread over US and UK  involved in multiple domains.

Breaking news!

InterSystems just announced the availability of the InterSystems IRIS for Health™ Data Platform across the Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure marketplaces.

With access to InterSystems unified data platform on all three major cloud providers, developers and customers have flexibility to rapidly build and scale the digital applications driving the future of care on the platform of their choice. 

To learn more please follow this link. 

A lot of developers like to work with Studio and have been looking into source code version control such as GIT or into enabling modern development workflows like CICD or DevOps processes.

This article describe an elementary solution to get you started in CICD and DevOps, even if you are not yet ready to move to Atelier or forth coming VS Code approach which enable client side source code version control.

Client: Northwell Health

Role: Senior Developer

Location: Remote

Duration: 6+ Months

Description:

Team Overview:

The FHIR Platform team is tasked with providing the core infrastructure in providing access to Northwell HIE patient data complying with HL7 FHIR and USCDI standards.

Position Summary:

The primary purpose of this role is to provide technical design, coding, testing and documentation for multiple components in the FHIR solution.

Responsibilities:

• Develop end-to-end solutions, participate in code reviews, unit test and deploy.

I am available to engage on projects as an Iris Healthcare Consultant, leveraging over 20 years of extensive experience in IT architecture with a special focus on Intersystems IRIS and Health Share solutions.

My expertise includes leading critical NHS projects in the UK as well as  building SaaS solution designed to enhance revenue cycle management and facilitate integration between hospitals and doctors in the US.

Database systems have very specific backup requirements that in enterprise deployments require forethought and planning. For database systems, the operational goal of a backup solution is to create a copy of the data in a state that is equivalent to when application is shut down gracefully.  Application consistent backups meet these requirements and Caché provides a set of APIs that facilitate the integration with external solutions to achieve this level of backup consistency.

Hi,

Has anyone tried the  InterSystems IRIS for Health Community Edition on Azure

https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/intersystems.intersystems-iris-health-community
It seems the image is the InterSystems IRIS for Health image instead of the Community Edition.

Thanks,

Rui
 

Hello everyone,

I’m facing issues with replicating data from my Caché 2016 database to a PostgreSQL database. I need to handle around 300 data updates per minute, and whenever certain tables are modified, those changes must be reflected in other databases.

So far, I’ve tried various approaches, including:

• Setting up an intermediary API,
• Using Azure Service Bus,
• Leveraging Caché Jobs,
• All of which rely on table triggers as the entry point.

However, each of these solutions has led to performance bottlenecks and system lockups.

Anyone have any suggestions where to spin up small Cache/IRIS/Ensemble test DBs? Hopefully very low cost (or free) reliable hosting?  Obviously AWS has some options but wondering if anyone has had 12 month+ experience with very low cost Cache cloud with AWS, Azure, Google, etc?

Thanks,

Tom Fitzgibbon | gototomATG...l | 3474648531

Hi,

I am trying to use the newly introduced adapter  EnsLib.CloudStorage.InboundAdapter to pull files from azure blob container for the purpose of ECG scaling.

The ultimate goal would be-  more than one services running to pull the files from a blob container and process them further. I am not sure if there would be any concurrency issue on that. So working on a poc to pull the data from server and test it out.

For this I have created a service class which extends Ens.BusinessService and used Adapter class  EnsLib.CloudStorage.

Hi,

Does anyone have a simple code snippet to encode and upload a raw text to Azure Blob?

Hello guys! I need some assistance with these problems I have.

The first one is that I need to execute a Python file, which is at /XY path. This PY is supposed to read an excel file and create a CSV version in /XZ path.

I am quite sure that the PY file is correct, but when using this function I get nothing but this error:

SET tSC = $ZF(-100,"/ASYNC /SHELL ", "python", "/data/InterSystems/IRIS/mgr/TEST01CODE/ExcelReading/ExcelToCSV.py")

ConfigItem 'FJ EXCEL READING' (FJ.BS.ExcelReading) started in job 3164

ERROR #00: (sin descripción de error)

Any ideas or suggestions?