#Deployment

Hi, this post was initially written for Caché. In June 2023, I finally updated it for IRIS. If you are revisiting the post since then, the only real change is substituting Caché for IRIS! I also updated the links for IRIS documentation and fixed a few typos and grammatical errors. Enjoy :)

In this post, I show strategies for backing up InterSystems IRIS using External Backup with examples of integrating with snapshot-based solutions. Most solutions I see today are deployed on Linux on VMware, so a lot of the post shows how solutions integrate VMware snapshot technology as examples.

This is the second part of my long post about package managers in operating systems and language distributions. Now, hopefully, we have managed to convince you that convenient package manager and rich 3^rd party code repository is one key factor in establishing of a vibrant and fast growing ecosystem. (Another possible reason for ecosystem success is the consistent language design, but it will be topic for another day.)

In this second part we plan to discuss the practical aspects of creating a package manager in general and their projection to the Caché database environment.

Hi Developers,

Writing a script for the application deployment can be very interesting to ensure rapid deployment without forgetting anything. config-api is a library to help developers to write configuration scripts based on a JSON document.

Implemented features :

• Set system settings.
• Set security settings.
• Enable services.
• Configure namespaces, databases, mapping.
• Export existing configuration.
• All features are exposed with a RESTful API.

This library is focused on IRIS configuration to help applications deployment.

Greetings! This article describes yet another simple way of creating installers for the solutions based on InterSystems Caché. The topic covers applications, which can be installed or completely removed from Caché with one action only. If you are still documenting installation instructions that have more than one step to do to install your application — it’s high time you automated this process. 

InterSystems supports use of the InterSystems IRIS Docker images it provides on Linux only. Rather than executing containers as native processes, as on Linux platforms, Docker for Windows creates a Linux VM running under Hyper-V, the Windows virtualizer, to host containers. These additional layers add complexity that prevents InterSystems from supporting Docker for Windows at this time.

We understand, however, that for testing and other specific purposes, you may want to run InterSystems IRIS-based containers from InterSystems under Docker for Windows.

Hi Developers

As you know it's very easy to publish a package to the Developers Community registry. 

But how to test it before publishing?  How to be sure that everything you introduced into module.xml is installed properly?

See the step-by-step instruction below!

Table of Contents

1. Purpose of the article
2. What containers are and why they make sense with IRIS
    2.1 Containers and images in a nutshell
    2.2 Why containers are useful for developers
    2.3 Why IRIS works well with Docker
3. Prerequisites
4. Installing the InterSystems IRIS image
    4.1 Using Docker Hub
    4.2 Pulling the image
5. Running the InterSystems IRIS image
    5.1 Starting an IRIS container
    5.2 Checking container status
    5.3 Executing code in the container terminal
    5.4 Accessing the IRIS Management Portal
    5.5 Connecting the container to VS Code
    5.6 Stopping or removing the container
    5.7 Setting a specific password with a bind mount
    5.8 Using durable %SYS volumes
     5.8.1 What gets stored with durable %SYS
     5.8.2 How to enable durable %SYS
6. Using Docker Compose
    6.1 Docker Compose example
    6.2 Running Docker Compose
7. Using a Dockerfile to run custom source code
    7.1 Dockerfile example
    7.2 Docker Compose example
    7.3 Understanding layers, image tagging and build vs. run time
    7.4 Source code and init script
    7.5 Building the image with Dockerfile
    7.6 Running instructions in the containerized IRIS terminal
8. Conclusion and what’s next

In this series of articles, I'd like to present and discuss several possible approaches toward software development with InterSystems technologies and GitLab. I will cover such topics as:

• Git 101
• Git flow (development process)
• GitLab installation
• GitLab Workflow
• Continuous Delivery
• GitLab installation and configuration
• GitLab CI/CD

In the first article, we covered Git basics, why a high-level understanding of Git concepts is important for modern software development, and how Git can be used to develop software.

Hi, Community!

Someday you find yourself having a wonderful class package which can be helpful in several projects. So it is a library package.

How to make the classes available for different namespaces in Caché? There are two ways (at least two ways familiar to me):

1. Start the name of the package with %, like %FantasticLib.SuperClass. Wrong way.

If you do that the class would be placed in %SYS and would be available in other namespaces.

This is wrong because of the two reasons:

1. The class will be wiped out with the next Caché update (as all the %SYS Namespace).

2.

Hi Developers,

In the previous article, we describe how to use config-api to configure IRIS.

Now, let's try to combine the library with the ZPM client.
The goal is to load a configuration document during zpm install at the configure phase.

For this exercise, a template repository is available here (this is based on objectscript-docker-template ).

We attempt to :

• Create a database MYAPPDATA.
• Set Globals mapping for dc.PackageSample.*.
• Add a user named SQLUserRO with read-only SQL role access.
• Add an SSL Configuration named SSLAppDefault.
• Create a REST application /rest/myapp.

I am often asked by customers, vendors or internal teams to explain CPU capacity planning for large production databases running on VMware vSphere.

This post was originally written in 2017, I am updating the post in February 2026. For context I have kept the original post, but highlighted changes. This post was originally written for ESXi 6.0. The core principles remain valid for vSphere 7.x and 8.x, though there have been improvements to vNUMA handling, CPU scheduling (particularly for AMD EPYC), and CPU Hot Add compatibility with vNUMA in vSphere 8.

Hi, Community!

In the second part about DeepSee Web, I’ll describe what customization options you have with DSW.  

There are two types of customizations: widget customization and dashboard panel customization.

Example of dashboard customization on Developer Community analytics.

What do you think If I will say you, that very soon you will be able to connect to IRIS from the application written in Rust.

What is Rust

Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency. Rust is syntactically similar to C++, but can guarantee memory safety by using a borrow checker to validate references. Rust achieves memory safety without garbage collection, and reference counting is optional. (c) Wikipedia

Most loved language for the last five years by the time of StackOverflow survey 2020.

What is possible right now.

The following post outlines an architectural design of intermediate complexity for DeepSee. As in the previous example, this implementation includes separate databases for storing the DeepSee cache, DeepSee implementation and settings. This post introduces two new databases: the first to store the globals needed for synchronization, the second to store fact tables and indices.

Over time, while I was working with Interoperability on the IRIS Data Platform, I developed rules for organizing a project code into packages and classes. That is what is called a Naming Convention, usually. In this topic, I want to organize and share these rules. I hope it can be helpful for somebody.

Disclaimer: This guide is a good fit for Interoperability projects. When you have integrations, data flows, when you use IRIS for ETL processes, etc. Overall, when your code is combined with Productions.

I am planning to implement Business Intelligence based on the data in my instances. What is the best way to set up my databases and environment to use DeepSee?

If you're deploying to more than one environment/region/cloud/customer, you will inevitably encounter the issue of configuration management.

While all (or just several) of your deployments can share the same source code, some parts, such as configuration (settings, passwords) differ from deployment to deployment and must be managed somehow.

In this article, I will try to offer several tips on that topic. This article talks mainly about container deployments.

This post provides useful links and an overview of best practice configuration for low latency storage IO by creating LVM Physical Extent (PE) stripes for database disks on InterSystems Data Platforms; InterSystems IRIS, Caché, and Ensemble.

Consistent low latency storage is key to getting the best database application performance. For applications running on Linux, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is often used for database disks, for example, because of the ability to grow volumes and filesystems or create snapshots for online backups.

Your may not realize it, but your InterSystems Login Account can be used to access a very wide array of InterSystems services to help you learn and use InterSystems IRIS and other InterSystems technologies more effectively.  Continue reading to learn more about how to unlock new technical knowledge and tools using your InterSystems Login account.  Also - after reading, please participate in the Poll at the bottom, so we can see how this article was useful to you!

What is an InterSystems Login Account?

Hi Developers!

Recently we released the updated version 0.1.3 of ObjectScript Package Manager (ZPM) which comes with the support of simplified ObjectScript sources folder structure.

What 'simplified' does mean?

Before 0.1.3 ZPM expected the following structure:

/src

---/cls  - for ObjectScript classes

---/cls/package_name/class_name.cls

---/cls/package_name/class_name2.cls

---/mac - or Mac ObjectScript routines

---/mac/package_name/mac_routine.mac

---/mac/package_name/mac_routine2.mac

---/inc - for ObjectScript macro include files.

---/inc/package_name/include_file.inc

The Istio Service Mesh is commonly used to monitor communication between services in applications. The "battle-tested" sidecar mode is its most common implementation. It will add a sidecar container to each pod you have in your namespace that has Istio sidecar injection enabled.

It's quite easy to get started with, just put the istioctl executable in your PATH, and label your namespace such that it tells Istio to acitvate side car injection there.

Last week saw the launch of the InterSystems IRIS Data Platform in sunny California.

For the engaging eXPerience Labs (XP-Labs) training sessions, my first customer and favourite department (Learning Services), was working hard assisting and supporting us all behind the scene.

Before the event, Learning Services set up the most complicated part of public cloud :) "credentials-for-free" for a smooth and fast experience for all our customers at the summit.

Hi, if you develop production with HealthShare, you may have noticed there is a nice tracing feature available - HS.Util.Trace.Operations. This feature allows visually tracing debug information, in structured way. It complements good old logging macros like $$$LOGINFO, $$$TRACE and alike.

I use this feature a lot. However, it has limited functionality, it works nice with classes that extend XML Adapter, streams or data types, but it doesn't work well with arbitrary objects that do no extend from XML Adapter.

I decided to implement a subclass of the trace helper class HS.Util.Trace.

Hi folks!

Often, when we develop commercial solutions, there is a necessity to deploy solutions without source code, e.g., in order to preserve the IP.

One of the ways how this can be achieved is to use InterSystems Package Manager.

Here I asked Midjourney to paint an intellectual property of software:

How this can be achieved with IPM?

In fact, this is very simple; just add the Deploy="true" clause in the Resource element in your module.xml manifest. Documentation.

I decided to provide the simplest possible example to illustrate how it works and also to give you a development environment template to let start building and deploying your own modules without source code. He we go!

In this series of articles, I'd like to present and discuss several possible approaches toward software development with InterSystems technologies and GitLab. I will cover such topics as:

• Git 101
• Git flow (development process)
• GitLab installation
• GitLab Workflow
• Continuous Delivery
• GitLab installation and configuration
• GitLab CI/CD

In the first article, we covered Git basics, why a high-level understanding of Git concepts is important for modern software development, and how Git can be used to develop software.

In the second article, we covered GitLab Workflow - a complete software life cycle process and Continuous Delivery.

I this article we'll discuss:

• GitLab installation and configuration
• Connecting your environments to GitLab

Hi Developers!

As discussed in previous parts of Package Manager stories to turn your IRIS application into a deployable package you just need to introduce the module.xml file into the root folder of the repository and describe all the resources.

I’m pleased to introduce you to a new project template on Open Exchange which contains examples of how to make different types of resources of your InterSystems IRIS application a part of the ObjectScript package and so make the deployable ObjectSctipt package.

Let's see how you can describe your application resources using this template project as an example.

See the details below.

The IKO documentation is robust. A single web page, that consists of about 50 actual pages of documentation. For beginners that can be a bit overwhelming. As the saying goes: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Let's start with the first bite: helm.

What is Helm?

Helm is to Kubernetes what the InterSystems Package Manager (IPM, formerly ObjectScript Package Manager - ZPM) is to IRIS.

It facilitates the installation of applications on the platform - in a fashion suitable for Kubernetes.

Some Usage cases

1. A deployment may consist of two high availability instances and two disaster recovery instances in a different data center.

The corresponding UAT environment could replicate this giving a total of 8 instances. How do you confirm CPF and Scheduled task alignment across ALL instances.

2. Another team (possibly in anther organization) makes changes to an IRIS instance to correct a problem, improve security, or modify shared system task configuration. Capture the CPF before and after to see what was done across instances.

Quality of Service Mirroring Timeout Configuration

           The Quality of Service (QoS) timeout determines how long a Mirror configuration of Caché will tolerate a loss of connectivity between its members. However, the exact method by which it does this and what that means for someone looking to configure this setting on their own system is not entirely obvious.