Release notes for the IBM Cloud platform

12 November 2024

The AI assistant is generally available

The AI assistant is available to help answer your questions about working in IBM Cloud. In addition to being able to launch the AI assistant in the IBM Cloud console, you can also ask questions from the IBM Cloud CLI. For more information, see Getting help from the AI assistant.

17 October 2024

Consolidated and simplified IBM Cloud platform

IBM Cloud is bringing simplification to your door. The IBM Cloud platform recently consolidated and simplified services and features. Services and areas of the console are now unified into the following hubs: Infrastructure, Containers, Automation, Databases, Observability, and Security with the goal to bundle together related services to make it easier to find, deploy, and use them. Users can now easily search for new services to accelerate business-critical workloads and better manage what is already running to help ensure their business stays on top of its velocity. For more information, see Navigating the IBM Cloud console.

Improving the account and enterprise documentation experience

Easily navigate enterprise information with the latest update to IBM Cloud docs. Now, you can browse key information about enterprises in one location. The documentation that supports enterprise accounts is moved to enterprise management. This includes everything you need to successfully create and manage enterprise accounts, including billing and usage and getting support.

A simplified account documentation experience is now available. You can find all information related to your account in the updated account documentation, including billing and usage and getting support.

03 October 2024

Project widget updates

From the Overview tab in a project, you can now view the resource summary and configuration usage widgets to quickly get an overview of the resources and usage in your project. These widgets provide a snapshot of key metrics, such as cost and counts of resources by category, simplifying the process of monitoring and managing resources within a project.

07 August 2024

Experimental: Access resources from the Resources tab

A link to resources is now available from the Resources tab in a project. If the resource exists in a different account, the console automatically switches to that account if you have access to it. If you don't have access to that account, the console displays an error message.

View counts for all resources in the resource summary widget

The resource summary widget for a project now shows resource counts for all resources in a project by default. The All resources option in the widget's menu is selected by default. To view resource counts for a specific configuration, select that configuration from the menu.

17 June 2024

Experimental: Using AI to answer your questions about IBM Cloud

Wherever you are working in the IBM Cloud console, you can launch the AI assistant to help answer your questions about working in IBM Cloud. The AI assistant is designed as a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) implementation that is running against IBM® large language models using IBM's watsonx. For more information, see Getting help from the AI assistant.

Changes to IBM Cloud projects API method to list all deployed resources

A change was made to the project.config.retrieve-resources API method to improve its performance. This change can cause some of the resources to temporarily disappear from the Resources tab in your configurations. The resources were not destroyed. Redeploy the configurations to see the resources again.

Experimental: Project Resources tab

Manage the resources in your project in the new Resources tab. You can add existing resources to your project without using a configuration. To get started, see Adding existing resources to a project.

31 May 2024

Onboarding software with usage-based pricing plans

In addition to free and bring your own license plans, you can now add usage-based pricing plans to software onboarded with the virtual server image delivery method, offering it as a paid integrated product in the IBM Cloud catalog. For more information, see Adding a usage-based plan and Onboarding a virtual server image for VPC with a plan.

After adding a plan to your software in Partner Center, you can also manage it in your private catalog. This includes adding features, changing the plan’s state, deprecating it, or updating plan details. For more information, see Managing software plans in catalogs.

18 May 2024

Google login and registration

Google is now available for IBM Cloud login and IBM Cloud registration. As a non-federated user, you can use your existing Google credentials to securely log in to IBM Cloud or create a new IBM Cloud account. Learn more.

06 May 2024

Experimental: Stack deployable architectures by using the console

Create more complex end-to-end solutions, without editing Terraform, by stacking deployable architectures. To get started, see Stacking deployable architectures.

10 April 2024

Discover your software resources by category

Software resources that are deployed in your account are now able to be discovered in their associated catalog category. To quickly find your product, you can still take advantage of the console's filtering capabilities.

03 April 2024

Projects API v1.0.0

Version 1.0.0 of the projects API is now available. To learn more about the changes that are included in this release, see the Projects API change log.

Experimental: Stacking deployable architectures

You can now stack deployable architectures together to create more complex end-to-end scenarios by using either the API or the CLI. To learn more about stacking deployable architectures, see What is a deployable architecture?

21 March 2024

Increased limits for enterprises

Easily scale your organization and workloads with increased limits on the number of accounts and account groups that you can have in your enterprise. You can have a maximum of 1000 accounts and 500 account groups. For more information, see Enterprise limitations.

05 March 2024

Upgrade your Pay-As-You-Go account

You can now create an enterprise from Pay-As-You-Go accounts that signed up with a credit card on cloud.ibm.com. For more information, see Billing FAQs.

20 February 2024

Organize existing resources in your project

Now, you can use a project to organize resources across accounts. By doing so, your resources remain deployed in their respective accounts, but you gain an at-a-glance view of those resources in your project. Organizing resources is experimental and might change without notice. For more information, see Organizing existing resources by using a project.

06 February 2024

Automatically detect drift in your project

You can now run a daily scan to detect any changes between your configured architecture and the actual state of your deployed resources. To fix drift, you can override the changes or adopt them. Automatic drift detection is an experimental feature and might change without notice. For more information, see Managing Drift.

Add references in your project

It's now easier to link architectures to one another by adding references to inputs or outputs. Add the reference as an input in an architecture that you're configuring, and the value is automatically used for deployment. For more information, see referencing values.

Duplicate configurations in your project

Now, you can duplicate an architecture configuration from the Configurations tab in a project. By doing so, you can quickly create a second version of your configuration with all of the input values that were provided in the original configuration. From the Configurations tab, select the Actions icon for the configuration you want to duplicate and click Duplicate.

07 December 2023

Limit access with resource attribute-based conditions

IBM Cloud IAM is excited to give customers the ability to grant access based on multiple resource attribute-based conditions. With this ability, you can create a single policy with various conditions instead of individual access policies. For more information, see Limiting access with resource attribute-based conditions.

17 November 2023

Protect your private catalog and private products

Add an extra layer of protection to your private catalogs with context-based restrictions. Users can view the catalogs that you protect only if they satisfy your rule.

14 November 2023

Move deployed software into a deployable architecture and manage it by using a project

Use the IBM Cloud Catalogs management CLI plugin and the Project CLI plugin to convert deployed software or an existing Schematics workspace and its resources into a format that is compatible with using projects to manage future deployments. For more information, see Moving resources from a Schematics workspace into a project and the white paper on Moving to the enterprise architecture.

09 November 2023

Onboarding virtual server images with Terraform is deprecated

As of 9 November 2023, the option to onboard virtual server images with Terraform is deprecated. If you onboarded software by using this delivery method before this date, your customers can still install the VSIs, but you can't provide any version updates. After 29 March 2024, onboarding virtual server images with Terraform is no longer supported as a delivery method, which means that no new virtual server images with Terraform can be onboarded. Existing VSIs in the IBM Cloud catalog will be available to use, but to take advantage of version updates and ensure continued support, onboard virtual server images for Virtual Private Cloud directly. For more information, see Onboarding a virtual server image for VPC.

06 November 2023

Introducing environments and general improvements to projects API and CLI

You can now group configurations together within a project by using environments. Environments can also contain properties like input values that are automatically added to configurations. This release also includes updates to the projects API and CLI. The commands are normalized so they follow a regular pattern, and terminology is now aligned across our UI, CLI, and API.

For more information on environments, see Controlling deployments by using environments. For more information on updates to the projects API, see the projects API change log. For more information on updates to the projects CLI, see the projects CLI change log.

30 October 2023

Selecting currency

The option to select local currency and USD is now available during IBM Cloud registration for users in Canada, United Kingdom/Ireland, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand.

26 October 2023

Symantec VIP 2FA is deprecated

If you are currently using Symantec VIP as your external authentication method, you can continue to use it and add subscribers as needed until 26 October 2024. If you are not already using Symantec VIP, then you can't purchase Symantec VIP to use as your external authentication method as of 26 October 2023.

All customers currently using Symantec VIP must migrate to IBM Cloud MFA by 26 October 2024. For more information about how easy is it to migrate to this no-cost MFA option, see Migrating to IBM Cloud MFA.

19 October 2023

Partner Center Build & Grow is deprecated

As of 19 October 2023, Partner Center Build and Grow is no longer supported. The new simplified and unified build experience has moved to the IBM Partner Plus website, where you can start enrolling. For more information, go to the Partner Plus website and enroll by clicking Join IBM Partner Plus.

20 September 2023

Support for onboarding third-party deployable architectures in Partner Center

You can now onboard deployable architectures in Partner Center and publish them to the IBM Cloud catalog. A deployable architecture is cloud automation for deploying a common architectural pattern that combines one or more cloud resources that are designed for easy deployment, scalability, and modularity that solves a customer-defined problem. For more information, see Getting set up to sell deployable architectures.

6 September 2023

Cross-account product sharing

You can now share products from your private catalog with other accounts without publishing them to the IBM Cloud catalog. For more information, see Sharing private catalog offerings. The administrator of the account that you want to share your product with must accept the share request to opt in to accessing the offerings that you share. For more information, see Accepting share requests for private catalog offerings.

New CLI commands for cross-account product sharing

New ibmcloud catalog account commands are available for cross-account product sharing. For more information, see the Catalogs management CLI plug-in documentation.

Expanded integration between catalogs and projects

You can now link a catalog with a project. A successful validation of a linked project will validate the associated version as well. For more information, see the new section Setting up a target account in the docs.

Catalog and onboarding support for IBM Z® when deploying VSI images

Partners and IBM Cloud users can now onboard Virtual Server Images with IBM Z deployment support. Navigate to your private catalog to get started adding this image. For more information, see Onboarding software to your account.

5 September 2023

Centrally administer your multi-account environment

IBM Cloud is excited to announce that you can now centrally administer access and security settings in your organization with Enterprise-managed IAM. By using enterprise IAM templates, you can quickly create and manage access groups and trusted profiles across accounts and easily ensure that all new accounts inherit the same settings. Leveraging Enterprise-managed IAM can help your organization save time and effort, reduce the risk of unauthorized access, stay compliant with industry regulations and better protect your data. For more information, see Best practices for assigning access in an enterprise.

1 September 2023

IBM Cloud January 2024 price changes

Effective 1 January 2024, prices for some services will be increasing. For more information, see January 2024 price changes.

25 July 2023

Projects integration with IBM Cloud Schematics and general improvements

Projects are integrated more seamlessly with Schematics, as users can now view the Schematics logs directly from their project during validation and deployment. This release also includes system improvements to deleting a project. A recent update to the Code Risk Analyzer might result in fewer validation errors for deployable architectures that include Event Streams resources.

11 July 2023

New multizone region (MZR) available in Madrid

Resources can be deployed to a new MZR in Madrid, Spain. There are three data centers available in the eu-es region: MAD02, MAD04, and MAD05. For more information about location availability, see Locations for resource deployment.

6 July 2023

Projects API response models update

The response models for all methods now enforce a lower snake case format in state values. This format needs to be expected in the response when you are calling the project and configuration endpoints. This update is a breaking change. For more information, see the change log.

6 June 2023

New event notifications for projects

You can now send out notifications when a deployment is complete or when resources are successfully destroyed. For more information, see the available events for projects.

Support for access management tags in the projects UI

You can now add, edit, and delete access management tags directly in the projects UI. Previously, you could manage these tags only by using the command-line interface (CLI) or API.

25 April 2023

Customized compliance validation

In addition to using default controls, you can specify a Security and Compliance Center attachment to validate deployable architectures that you're configuring in a project. For more information, see Configuring the architecture.

Support for deployable architectures onboarded from private or public GitHub repositories

You can now deploy architectures that are onboarded to the catalog from either a private or public GitHub repository. Previously, only deployable architectures onboarded from a public GitHub repository were supported.

17 April 2023

Check out deployable architectures in the catalog

IBM Cloud provides deployable architectures in the catalog, which are products that provide automation for the deployment of common architectural patterns that combine one or more cloud resources and are designed for scalability and modularity. Go to the catalog, and filter by Deployable architectures to review the growing catalog of options. For more information, see Identifying the right infrastructure architecture.

IBM Cloud projects for automated IaC deployments

You can now configure, deploy, and monitor deployments by using DevOps best practices with projects. By using projects, you can manage Infrastructure as Code (IaC) at scale and across accounts to ensure that the configuration is always valid, secure, and compliant. Learn more about IaC deployments with projects.

Onboard customized deployable architectures for your enterprise users

You can customize IBM Cloud deployable architectures to meet your enterprise’s needs, and then leverage private catalogs to make only approved and compliant architectures available for your enterprise developers to deploy. For more information, see Customizing an IBM Cloud deployable architecture.

12 April 2023

Specify language support for community-supported products

If you offer a third-party product that is supported by open source communities, you can select the languages in which support is provided when you're onboarding or managing your product in Partner Center. By providing support in multiple languages, your customers can communicate their issues in their preferred language and get support more efficiently. For more information, see Defining your support experience.

10 April 2023

View email notification history

You can use the Communication history page in the console to check the status of all email notifications that are sent you to verify if the emails are being delivered successfully. You can also view the last 90 days of IBM Cloud email history, which can help save you time troubleshooting any delivery issues without needing to contact IBM support. For more information, see Checking the delivery status of email notifications and viewing email history.

04 April 2023

Customize the look and feel of your private catalog

You can enhance the appearance of your private catalog to match your brand by adding a custom banner image to your private catalogs. For more information about personalizing your private catalog, see Branding your private catalog with a custom banner.

Add a custom provider name for your private products

You can make it easier for users to search for your products added to a private catalog by specifying a custom provider name. Adding a custom provider name for your private products can help users find them quickly by using the Provider filter in the catalog. For more information, see Providing catalog entry details.

29 March 2023

Generate a report on the MFA status of account users

Users that don't meet MFA requirements leave your account vulnerable. You can now identify the users in your account that don't satisfy your MFA requirements. For more information, see Identifying a user's MFA status.

An extra layer of security for users that don't use MFA

IBM Cloud recommends enabling multifactor authentication (MFA) for all users in your account, but some automation scenarios might require you to exclude specific users from your MFA requirement. For users that are excluded from MFA, you can make access more secure by disabling CLI logins with only a username and password. This way, you require an API key to log in to the CLI or users can log in with --sso. For more information, see Disabling MFA.

22 February 2023

User-specific MFA

You can now enforce user-specific multifactor authentication (MFA) requirements that differ from the account default MFA setting. After you update the MFA requirement for an individual user, view a list of users that have unique MFA requirements in the account by going to Manage > Access (IAM) > Settings > Authentication. For more information, see Enabling MFA for an individual user.

20 February 2023

Download and read IBM Cloud docs offline

While digital is still the primary delivery target for IBM Cloud docs, you can now print or download and read a doc set offline. Go to the menu next to the doc set title in the navigation and click View as PDF.

27 January 2023

New services integrating with context-based restriction

Services continue to integrate with the IBM Cloud platform's context-based restrictions feature, including IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Infrastructure Services. To see a full list of services that can use context-based restrictions to define and enforce access restrictions on their resources, see Services integrated with context-based restrictions.

25 January 2023

Time-based conditions in IAM access policies

IBM Cloud IAM is excited to give customers the ability to set access controls based on a specified time and date. You can now create policies that grant employees access to a resource during only their working hours, or grant automated processes temporary access for a specified duration. Implementing such limitations helps you to apply the principle of least privilege for assigning access and reduces the opportunity for attack in the event of a security breach. For more information, see Limiting access with time-based conditions.

IAM Policy Management API V2 release

A new version (v2) of the IAM Policy Management API is now available. This version adds a new JSON schema to support a conditional policy construct and several time-based comparison operators. These operators provide the capability to restrict access based on time and date. With time-based access control, customers can establish granular policy enforcement based on a specified time period. For more information, see the IAM Policy Management API change log

09 January 2023

Save and share multiple estimates by using the IBM Cloud Cost Estimator

The IBM Cloud Cost Estimator now allows a customer to save multiple estimates to their account and share those estimates with users that belong to the same account. For more information, see Estimating your costs.

15 December 2022

Checklist for getting started on IBM Cloud

A new checklist is now available in the IBM Cloud docs for Getting started on IBM Cloud. This checklist outlines the tasks for you to complete to accelerate your journey to cloud by guiding you through your account setup and organization of resources.

10 October 2022

A new way to provide the IBM Cloud docs team your feedback

We want to hear from you! Let us know about your experience with the IBM Cloud docs or API docs by submitting your feedback from the Feedback button. You can tell us what you love and even what you’d like to see improved, so we can work together to ensure that you always enjoy the IBM Cloud documentation.

07 October 2022

Setting an alternative account owner

As the owner of an account with classic infrastructure, you can set a trusted profile as the alternative account owner. An alternative account owner ensures that you always have a secure way to manage account ownership if your account owner leaves your organization or isn't available.

04 October 2022

Catalog integration with Virtual Private Cloud custom images

ISV Partners and IBM Cloud customers can now import custom VPC images directly to their account or enterprise, or sell on the IBM Cloud catalog without depending on Terraform. For more information, see Onboarding a virtual server image for VPC.

29 September 2022

Enabling IBM Cloud Event Notifications for the notification distribution list

You can now easily add Event Notifications instances to the notification distribution list and receive account-wide IBM Cloud notifications. With Event Notifications, you can choose to deliver your notifications to different destinations, including email, SMS, or webhooks. When an event of interest occurs on the IBM Cloud platform and an event is generated, the notification distribution list communicates with a connected Event Notifications instance to forward a notification to the supported destination.

For more information, see Enabling Event Notifications for the notification distribution list.

26 September 2022

Identifying inactive policies

To reduce the number of policies in your account and keep only the minimum access that is necessary for each user, you can now identify the infrequently used access policies on the Inactive policies page in the console. You can determine whether to remove the inactive policies, or in some cases, you might expect an infrequently used policy. For more information, see Managing inactive policies.

Exporting user access reports

Make sure that users have only the access that they need. Export an access policy report for any user in your account to view all of the access policies that they are assigned. For more information, see Exporting user access policy reports.

22 September 2022

A new way to provide IBM Cloud your feedback

We want to hear from you! Let us know about your experience with the IBM Cloud console by submitting your feedback from the Help > Send feedback option in the console menu bar. You can tell us what you love and even what you’d like to see improved, so we can work together to ensure that you always enjoy developing on IBM Cloud.

21 September 2022

Getting help in the console

You can now find the documentation and Support Center help options from a single menu item in the IBM Cloud console menu bar. Check out the new Help option from the console menu bar that now includes your links for Docs, the Support Center, a form to give us feedback, and available guided tours.

16 September 2022

Attaching tags on service IDs

In addition to tagging resources, you can now attach user tags and access management tags on service IDs. User tags help you group service IDs for usage reports, and you can use access management tags to control access to your service IDs. For more information, see Working with tags.

Specifying a user onboarding strategy

If you’re Enabling and connecting your identity provider, you can now specify how you want to onboard users to the account upon first-time login. This way, you can add each user to your account when they log in the first time, add users to your account only if they log in and don't select a trusted profile, or never add users to your account and provide access only by using trusted profiles. For more information about trusted profiles, see Creating trusted profiles.

02 September 2022

Increased policy limit

The shared limit for IAM policies and context-based restrictions has increased from 2010 to 4020 so that you don't need to request an increase to the limit in your account as you grow your organizational capacity. For more information, see Known issues and limitations.

31 August 2022

Choose from dark or light themes in the console

Enjoy a customized experience in the console that matches your preferences. By default, the console uses the mode that you already have set for your device. We'd like you to be able to experience IBM Cloud using a theme of your choosing. Use the Avatar icon from the console menu bar to find the options for changing your theme.

21 July 2022

Monitoring context-based restrictions

To help you predict how context-based restrictions might affect users, applications, and workflows, IBM Cloud is excited to release report-only mode for rules. You can enable context-based restrictions during creation, or choose to set the rule to report-only mode. Using Activity Tracker, you can monitor the impact of enabled rules, or view report-only rules to see how they will affect your users, applications, and workflows without enforcing the rule. For more information, see Monitoring context-based restrictions.

08 July 2022

Streamlined process for updating published support information in Partner Center

You can update support information for your published products by editing your already approved support information and then requesting an approval. After your changes are approved, you can publish the updates. For more information, see Updating your product's support information.

23 June 2022

Onboarding software to sell on IBM Cloud by using the API

To sell your products on IBM Cloud, you can now onboard and publish by using the Partner Center Sell API, in addition to using the Partner Center experience in the console.

22 June 2022

Identify inactive identities

You can create a report in the IBM Cloud console to identify which users, service IDs, trusted profiles, and API keys in your account are inactive. Removing access for inactive identities can reduce the risk of unauthorized access to your IBM Cloud® resources and help you manage access more efficiently. For more information, see Identifying inactive identities.

Updated process for assigning access

Assigning IAM, Classic Infrastructure, and IBM Cloud Foundry access just got more streamlined. When assigning access, each service that you select has an in-context description. You can also find all IAM access policy and access group information for an identity under a single tab. Check out the updated process by assigning access to any user, service ID, or trusted profile.

Assign a policy for All IAM Account Management services

You can now assign an access policy for All IAM Account Management services, which includes the IAM Identity service, IAM Access Management service, IAM User Management service, IAM Access Groups service, and future IAM services. By assigning an access policy for a group of services, you decrease the number of policies in your account and reduce the time and effort to manage access.

13 June 2022

Updated process for onboarding services in Partner Center

Partner Center has made it easier to provide required support information. The process has improved the approval process for publishing your product, and it has added consistency to all third-party product information which helps customers find the help that they need.

For more information, see Defining your support experience.

04 May 2022

Required access to view service credentials

When the credential level access can't be determined by comparing the access of the user and the credential, the credential is redacted. Services that support access control on resources that are allocated in the context of a service instance, such as Cloud Object Storage buckets, now require the user to have the resource-controller.credential.retrieve_all action to view service credentials.

To determine if your service is affected, review your service's documentation. For more information about the required access to view service credentials, see Viewing a credential.

5 April 2022

Onboarding virtual server images for Power Virtual Server

You can now onboard virtual server images for Power Virtual Server to private catalogs and the IBM Cloud catalog. For more information about onboarding to the IBM Cloud, see Registering a virtual server image for Power Systems in IBM Cloud Partner Center. For more information about onboarding to your private catalog, see Onboarding a virtual server image for Power Systems to a private catalog.

Upload translations of your software by using the CLI

You can now download and upload translations of your software by using the CLI. For more information, see Translating product details by using the CLI.

4 April 2022

Adding custom service parameters for your service

If the provisioning process of your product requires additional information from your customers, you can now add custom input fields for your product in IBM Cloud Partner Center. For more information, see Adding custom service parameters for your service in Partner Center.

25 March 2022

Trusted profiles are now members of access groups

You can now add trusted profiles as members of access groups like other IAM identities, such as users and service IDs. For more information, see Creating trusted profiles and Setting up access groups.

1 March 2022

Use feature and subscription codes to create new accounts

When you register for a new IBM Cloud account, you can use a feature code that you received from participating in a special event or a subscription code that you received by email. Instead of verifying your identity by entering your credit card information, click the option to Register with a code to complete the set up of your new account.

28 February 2022

365 days of status history is now available

You can now easily view events that were completed in the past year on the IBM Cloud Status page. Previously, you could view only the history of completed events from the past month. For more information about the IBM Cloud Status page, see Viewing cloud status.

7 February 2022

Support for onboarding third-party services in Partner Center

Onboarding new services in the resource management console is no longer supported. You must use Partner Center to onboard new services to the IBM Cloud console. You can continue to manage existing services in the resource management console.

17 December 2021

Restricting domains for account invitations

You can now restrict membership to your account based on the domain of the users by creating an allowlist. This way, only users with a specific domain or domains can be invited to the account. For more information, see Restricting domains for account invitations.

8 November 2021

Data centers closed in 2021

The following list shows the locations with the associated data centers and specific PODs that were closed by 08 November 2021.

• Dallas: DAL05 – POD2
• Houston: HOU02
• Melbourne: MEL01
• Oslo: OSL01
• Washington DC: WDC01 – POD3 and POD4

For more information about upcoming data center closures, see Data center consolidations.

1 November 2021

Accessing Partner Center from the IBM Cloud catalog

As a third-party provider, you can now click Sell on IBM Cloud to access Partner Center directly from the IBM Cloud catalog. For more information, see the catalog.

25 October 2021

Securing IBM Cloud accounts

Our focus is to provide the most secure public cloud. That's why we will be verifying user identities and securing accounts through credit card verification when creating new accounts starting 25 October 2021. Don't worry, we won't charge you for signing up, and you can still try IBM Cloud for free. For more information, see Securing IBM Cloud accounts.

05 October 2021

Suspending and deprecating private products

As a private catalog owner, you can now suspend or deprecate software that's in your private catalogs. When you suspend a version of software, it's immediately removed from your private catalog. When you deprecate software, it remains available to users with access to the private catalog for 90 days. After 90 days, it's permanently removed.

For more information, see Deprecating a private product and Suspending a version of a private product.

Suspending and deprecating third-party software

As a third-party provider, you can now suspend and deprecate published software from the IBM Cloud catalog to meet the needs of your product's lifecycle. When you suspend a product or version, it is immediately removed from the catalog. When you deprecate a product or version, it remains available for use in the catalog for 90 days. After 90 days, it's permanently removed.

For more information, see Deprecating software from the IBM Cloud catalog and Suspending your product from the IBM Cloud catalog.

Filtering the IBM Cloud catalog by specific providers

The latest enhancements to IBM Cloud catalog include support for filtering products by provider name. If you're looking for a specific provider's products or curious about how many products that a provider offers, you can use the Provider filter to narrow down your search. To explore the filter updates, see the catalog.

27 September 2021

Securing your resources with context-based restrictions

You can now use context-based restrictions to configure and enforce access restrictions for IBM Cloud resources. The access restrictions are based on the network location where an access request is created. These restrictions work in tandem with traditional IAM access policies, which are based on identity, to provide an extra layer of protection. Since both IAM access and context-based restrictions must enforce access, context-based restrictions offer protection even in the face of compromised or mismanaged credentials.

You can create context-based restrictions by defining one or more network zones, which contain allowed network locations, and then associating the zones with the cloud resource through a context-based restrictions rule. Network zones can be defined in terms of IP address constructs, VPCs, and service references, which grant access to a resource from another cloud service.

For more information, see What are content-based restrictions?

24 September 2021

Assigning access policies based on resource location

For supporting services, like Container Registry, you can now scope access to more granular locations in your policies, such as geography, country, metro, satellite location.

20 September 2021

Checking the root cause of an incident

You can now visit the IBM Cloud Incident reports page to check the health of an IBM Cloud service. You can find Customer Incident Reports (CIR) on the page, which provide Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for past major outages. You are able to view and download the incident reports from the page about any events that affect IBM Cloud availability. These reports are in PDF file formats and available for 5 years starting from the date when the event happened.

For more information, see Checking Incident reports.

01 September 2021

Update to the latest CLI version

The IBM Cloud CLI team is deprecating the current CLI plugin repo infrastructure for downloading and updating the CLI binary files and plugins. The CLI is migrating to a new infrastructure that works with IBM Cloud CLI version 2.0.0 or newer. Ensure that you update all instances of the IBM Cloud CLI before 1 October 2021 to avoid disruptions for downloading or updating the plugins. No impact is expected for users who don't need to update any plugins or the CLI.

05 August 2021

Delivering notifications by using Microsoft Teams webhooks

Adding Microsoft Teams webhooks to your distribution list is available for receiving account-related IBM Cloud notifications. To create a webhook, you need to add an incoming webhook to a Teams channel and a unique URL that maps to the selected channel. With this webhook integration, you can easily receive the notifications in a selected Microsoft Teams channel in which you added the incoming webhook.

For more information, see Adding Microsoft Teams webhooks to a distribution list.

04 August 2021

Support for third-party Operator bundles from GitHub

Third-party providers can now onboard Operator bundles from GitHub repositories to IBM Cloud by using TGZ files. Previously, the ability to onboard Operator bundles was limited to Operator bundles in Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud registries. This capability is supported by the beta release of IBM Cloud Partner Center and our general availability release of private catalog capabilities.

Software onboarding enhancements: progress indicators

When you onboard software to the IBM Cloud catalog or private catalogs in your account, you'll find new indicators in the console that you can use to track your progress with configuring and validating your product. For more information, see Onboarding software to your account.

03 August 2021

Filtering the IBM Cloud catalog by product type

When you navigate to the IBM Cloud catalog, your view by default includes all types of products: services, software, and professional services. To help you quickly find the product that you're looking for, you can now filter the products to view services only, software only, or professional services only. For more information, see IBM Cloud catalog.

27 July 2021

Assigning access to federated users and compute resources by using trusted profiles

You can use trusted profiles to automatically grant federated users in your account access to resources with conditions based on SAML attributes from your corporate directory. You can also use trusted profiles to manage the authorization of applications that are running in compute resources, such as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, to access other IBM Cloud services without the need for service IDs or API keys. For more information, see Creating trusted profiles.

15 July 2021

Scoping support cases to what matters to you

When you create a case in the IBM Cloud Support Center, you now have options to narrow the subject of your case to a specific topic that's most closely related to the issue you're experiencing. As a result, you can ensure that your support case gets routed to the appropriate support engineer and resolved as efficiently as possible. For more information, see Creating support cases.

14 July 2021

Delivering notifications by using Slack webhooks

In addition to generic webhooks, you can now add Slack webhooks to your distribution list and receive account-wide IBM Cloud notifications through them. To create a webhook, you need to set up an app in Slack and a unique URL. With this new webhook integration, you can easily receive the notifications in a selected Slack channel in which you installed your app.

For more information on Slack webhooks, see Adding Slack webhooks to a distribution list.

07 July 2021

Service-level discounts for accounts with the Pay as you go with Committed Use billing model

If you have an account with the Pay as you go with Committed Use billing model, you might be eligible to receive service-level discounts. You can apply service-level discounts to commitments in addition to the platform-level discount.

Service-level discounts are provided by IBM Cloud Sales to customers with the Pay as you go with Committed Use billing model.

Support for third-party Operator bundles from Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud registries

Third-party providers can now onboard Operator bundles from Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud registries to IBM Cloud. The Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud registries include Certified Operators, Marketplace Operators, and community Operators. This capability is supported by the beta release of IBM Cloud Partner Center and our general availability release of private catalog capabilities. For more information, see Onboarding a Certified Operator bundle from a Red Hat registry.

01 June 2021

New invitation flow for existing IBM Cloud users

To enhance security and user protection, IBM Cloud® now requires all users to accept an invitation in order to become an active user within a new account. The new invitation flow has an impact only on inviting existing IBM Cloud® users. Previously, existing users were being automatically onboarded to each new account as they were invited. After this change, these users need to accept an invitation in their notifications, by email, or by using the CLI to onboard to a new account.

To accept invitations in the CLI, existing members of IBM Cloud® must use the ibmcloud login command. They need to target the account that they are invited to join and use the new --accept flag.

As an account administrator, you might want to remind your users to accept these invitations.

07 May 2021

Support for third-party virtual server images with Terraform

Third-party providers can now offer virtual server images deployed by using Terraform in IBM Cloud. This capability is supported by the beta release of IBM Cloud Partner Center and our previously general availability release of private catalog capabilities. For more information, see Onboarding a virtual server image with Terraform.

21 April 2021

Delivering notifications by using webhooks

You can now easily add webhooks to the notification distribution list in addition to adding email addresses. You can register a webhook with your account on the Notification distribution list page to receive all account notifications. Administrators can use webhooks to configure an application to receive asynchronous notifications whenever an event occurs on the IBM Cloud platform. Any registered webhook must support HTTP POST requests and accept the notification as a JSON.

For more information, see Adding webhooks to a distribution list.

19 April 2021

Upcoming changes to the user invitation flow

Starting June 01 2021, to enhance security and user protection, all users will be required to accept an invitation to become an active user within a new account. The new invitation flow will have an impact only on inviting existing IBM Cloud® users. Existing users are currently being automatically onboarded to each new account as they are invited. After this change, these users will need to accept an invitation in their notifications, by email, or by using the CLI to onboard to a new account.

Concerned about how this change will impact your automation? To avoid any disruption to on-going workflows, you need to check your scripts:

• To accept invitations in the CLI, existing members of IBM Cloud® must use the ibmcloud login command. They need to target the account that they are invited to join and use the new --accept flag.

As an account administrator, you may want to remind your users to accept these invitations upon initial change of this behavior.

31 March 2021

Support for third-party Operators deployed on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

Third-party providers can now offer Operators in IBM Cloud. This capability is supported by the beta release of IBM Cloud Partner Center and our previously general availability release of private catalog capabilities. For more information, see Onboarding a Node-Red Operator.

New catalog filter for Financial Services Validated services

You can now search the IBM Cloud catalog for services that are designated as Financial Services Validated. Services with this designation leverage the industry’s highest levels of encryption certification, provide preventive and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support and proactive, and automated security. See IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services for more information.

26 March 2021

IBM Cloud Code Engine is supported as an app deployment type

IBM Cloud® Code Engine is now supported as an application deployment type when you use a starter kit in the IBM Cloud console.

Code Engine is a fully managed, serverless platform that runs your containerized workloads, including web apps, micro-services, event-driven functions, or batch jobs. Code Engine even builds container images for you from your source code. Because these workloads are all hosted within the same Kubernetes infrastructure, all of them can seamlessly work together. The Code Engine experience is designed so that you can focus on writing code and not on the infrastructure that is needed to host it.

Duplicate access group names

Access groups must use unique names. You can't create or update IAM access groups to use the same name.

26 February 2021

Managing user login sessions

You can customize the duration of working sessions for user's on your account. Customize the duration of users active settings and select the amount of time a user can be inactive before they are signed out and need to enter their credentials again. Update your accounts Identity and Access (IAM) log in sessions from Settings page. For more information, see Managing user's log in session durations.

25 February 2021

Controlling access to resources by using tags

You can now create tags to control access to your resources and your team's projects can grow without requiring updates to your IAM policies. Incorporating tags into access policies gives you the ability to share a resource across multiple projects and you can change access by simply changing the tags on a resource. For more information, see Controlling access to resources by using tags.

08 February 2021

New notifications experience

A more detailed Notification preferences page is now available for you to customize your preferences for receiving email notifications. You receive only one email per event unless you subscribe to them, or you can subscribe to specific incidents from the Status page on an ad hoc basis. For more information, see Setting email preferences for notifications.

Based on which preferences the account owner or administrator sets, users in the account can view all IBM Cloud incidents, maintenance, announcements, and security bulletins on the Notifications page. They can filter the list by selecting a specific type of event, or by using keyword searches. For more information, see Viewing notifications.

01 February 2021

Managing product availability in catalogs by location

As the account owner or administrator, you can manage access to products in both the IBM Cloud catalog and the private catalogs in your account based on the location in which the products are deployed. For instance, if you want to limit access to products that are deployed in the Dallas 1 (us-south-1) zone, you can set a filter to include only those products. For more information, see Managing catalog settings.

11 January 2021

Pay as you go with Committed Use pricing model

Customers with a Subscription account can use the new pricing model, IBM Cloud Pay as you go with Committed Use. The new pricing model provides you with additional benefits as you navigate and build on IBM Cloud.

With this pricing model, you commit to spend a certain amount and receive discounts across the entire platform. You are billed monthly based on your usage, and unlike a subscription, you continue to receive a discount even after you reach your committed amount. For more information, see Pay as you go with Committed Use pricing model.

18 December 2020

Managing features and other updates to IBM Cloud Shell

Account owners or users with Cloud Shell administrator access can enable or disable Cloud Shell features for an account. The available features in this release are File upload and download and Web preview. The feature settings apply only to the enabled Cloud Shell locations. For more information, see Enabling or disabling Cloud Shell features for an account.

An account administrator can grant specific users access to Cloud Shell and its features, even if Cloud Shell settings are disabled at the account level. For more information, see Assigning access to Cloud Shell and its features at a user level.

The following new service roles are available:

• Cloud Operator
• Cloud Developer
• File Manager

For more information, see IAM roles and actions.

IBM Cloud Shell now uses a Red Hat™ Linux™ bash shell instead of a x86-64 Ubuntu Linux™ bash shell.

For a complete list of changes, see the Cloud Shell release notes.

17 December 2020

IBM Cloud CLI Version 1.3.0 is now available

The 1.3.0 release of the IBM Cloud CLI includes:

• Initial support of private endpoints in two regions: us-east and us-south.
• Anonymous usage statistics are no longer collected for those that had previously opted in to usage statistics collection. The --usage-stats-collect flag is removed from the config command.
• Improved performance of several commands involving resource groups.
• New command to toggle the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) on and off: sl hardware toggle-ipmi.
• The add --output flag is added to the resource service-key-create command.
• For the iam access-groups command, Public Access is included in the output.
• Upgrade to Go language Golang 1.15.5.

For more details about Version 1.3.0, see the IBM Cloud CLI release notes.

For more information about the CLI, see Getting started with the IBM Cloud CLI.

10 December 2020

Enhanced payments & invoicing for new US-based Pay-As-You-Go accounts with credit card billing

We are excited to announce our latest unification project for new US-based IBM Cloud Pay-As-You-Go accounts with credit card billing. For increased clarification and consistency, the unified experience includes the following enhancements:

• A single invoice that includes comprehensive usage details for all your products
• The ability to download the invoice directly from the console
• The ability to update a credit card in the console without being redirected to a different website
• A one-to-one mapping between your invoice and your usage dashboard in the console

For more details, including a video walk-through of the enhancements, see The Enhanced Unified Billing and Payment Experience in IBM Cloud.

04 December 2020

Enhancements to the IBM Cloud Status page

You can now experience an enhanced version of the Status page in the IBM Cloud console that offers reduced time to visibility of issues, as well as more detailed and up-to-date status information. For more information, see Viewing cloud status.

30 November 2020

Data centers closed in 2020

The following list shows the locations with the associated data centers and specific PODs that were closed by 30 November 2020.

• Dallas: DAL07
• Seattle: SEA01
• Legacy Planet: D2 (colocation in Dallas), D6 and D7 (Dallas), H2 (Houston)

For more information about upcoming data center closures, see Data center consolidations.

25 November 2020

Support for U2F MFA and other MFA factors

By default, users in your account authenticate themselves by logging in with a username and password. To require users to use more secure authentication factors, the following MFA options are now available.

• MFA for users with an IBMid: Users authenticate by using an IBMid, password, and time-based one-time passcode (TOTP). This option applies to all users or just non-federated users.
• MFA for all users: This option applies to users who are using either an IBMid or an external identity provider (IdP). Users authenticate by using email-based MFA, TOTP MFA, or U2F MFA. The U2F MFA factor is based on the FIDO U2F standard, and it offers the highest level of security.

For more details, see Enabling MFA for your account.

28 October 2020

Enhanced Support Center

The Support Center is now updated to help improve your experience with creating and managing your support cases. You can refine the scope of your cases by routing them to a specfic resource and provide feedback on your cases. You will also find popular FAQs that are featured based on your specific issue. For more details, see Announcing the Release of Our New Support Center Enhancements.

18 September 2020

Managing IBM Cloud Shell settings and other updates to IBM Cloud Shell

Account owners or users with Cloud Shell administrator access can manage Cloud Shell settings from the IBM Cloud console. For more information, see Updating Cloud Shell settings.

For a complete list of changes, see the Cloud Shell release notes.

Restricting account access by using IAM account settings

For increased control over which users can access your account and work with API keys and service IDs, leverage the three new settings that are available on the Manage > Access (IAM) > Settings page in the console.

• Restrict access to your account to only users coming from a specified IP address or range that you set. For more information, see Allowing specific IP addresses.
• Block all users from creating API keys in the account except for those that you give explicit access. For more information, see Restricting users from creating API keys.
• Block all users from creating service IDs in the account except for those that you give explicit access. For more information, see Restricting users from creating service IDs.

31 August 2020

Introducing Security and Compliance Center

For highly regulated industries, such as financial or healthcare services, achieving a continuously secure and compliant cloud environment is an important first step toward protecting customer and application data. But, we understand that historically this has been a difficult and manual process, potentially placing your organization at risk, which is why, we're excited to introduce the Security and Compliance Center - built directly into the IBM Cloud platform.

With the Security and Compliance Center, you can embed checkpoints into your everyday workflows hat not only help to monitor for security and compliance but enforce configuration standardization across our accounts. By ensuring you have automation in place that monitors for risk, you can identify security vulnerabilities quickly and work to mitigate the impact that they have to your business.

For more information, see Getting started with Security and Compliance Center.

20 August 2020

IBM Cloud CLI Version 1.2.0 is now available

The 1.2.0 release of the IBM Cloud CLI includes:

• New commands under sl loadbal namespace to support the IBM Cloud® Load Balancer service.
• Output CSV support for billing commands.
• Validation of service instance ID input in policy commands under iam namespace.
• Additional deployment capabilities with the ibmcloud dev command, including manual deployment to Knative and deployment to Red Hat® OpenShift® on IBM Cloud® containers.
• Deprecation of the cfee namespace.

For more information about the IBM Cloud CLI, see Getting started with the IBM Cloud CLI.

12 August 2020

Increased usage quota and other updates to IBM Cloud Shell

With this update to IBM Cloud Shell, the weekly usage quota was increased from 30 hours a week to 50 hours a week so that you can use Cloud Shell even more. Also, Cloud Shell was changed to have separate workspaces for each user and account, whereas previously each user's workspace was shared across all of their accounts. In your sessions, you'll also now have access to more command-line tools with the addition of the Operator SDK for Kubernetes, the Mercurial source content management tool, and the Bazaar version control system, as well as updates to existing tools.

For a complete list of changes, see the Cloud Shell release notes.

10 August 2020

Customizing scoped dashboards

Create and manage customized dashboards that can be used to offer an organized and relevant workspace. You can share the dashboards with different users in your account or as a way to group resources for specific projects or teams. When you create a new dashboard, you can start from scratch with a blank template or choose one of the other available templates. For more information, see Working with scoped dashboards.

04 August 2020

Audit logs for private catalogs

View recorded changes to your private catalogs with the new audit logs feature. Audit logs are recorded when you create, delete, or update your private catalog. Visit your Audit logs page in the IBM Cloud console by going to Manage > Catalogs, and selecting Audit logs. For more information, see Viewing changes to your private catalogs.

07 July 2020

Notification distribution list

You can now create a list of up to 10 email addresses that receive account-wide notifications in the IBM Cloud console by going to Account > Notification distribution list. Users that are added to the distribution list are notified about any event that's affecting the account. For more information, see Adding users to a distribution list.

CLI support for catalog filtering in IBM Cloud enterprises

You can now use the following commands to set and manage filters in accounts within an enterprise hierarchy:

• ibmcloud catalog filter get
• ibmcloud catalog filter create
• ibmcloud catalog filter offering
• ibmcloud catalog filter delete

Each command operates the same at the enterprise level by default. You can also apply the commands to specific account groups in an enterprise. For more information, see the Catalogs management CLI plug-in.

Professional services are available in the IBM Cloud catalog

We now offer professional services that aim to help guide you in transforming your business. This strategy combines expertise, tools, and methodologies to develop cloud strategies and implementation plans that align with your business goals.

To explore what's available, go to the catalog, and click Professional services.

Catalog management SDKs

Four new Software Development Kits (SDKs) for the catalog management service, which includes private catalogs and software products, are now available.

• The IBM Cloud Platform Services Java SDK
• The IBM Cloud Platform Services Node.js SDK
• The IBM Cloud Platform Services Python SDK
• The IBM Cloud Platform Services Go SDK

For more information, see the Catalog Management API reference.

OVA images are available in the IBM Cloud catalog

With the deployment power of the IBM Cloud Schematics service, support for third-party OVA images targeting VMware vCenter Server deployments is now available. To quickly find the available products in the catalog, click Software, and select OVA Images from the Software list.

24 June 2020

IBM Cloud Shell is generally available

IBM Cloud Shell, the browser-based shell environment, is now generally available (GA)! This release includes greater region support with the addition of the Tokyo (jp-tok) region. Cloud Shell sessions now also support inputting and viewing double-byte characters on the command line, so you can work in languages such as Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and more. The server image was also updated to include updates to several command line tools, in addition to the regular updates for the IBM Cloud CLI and plug-ins.

To try out IBM Cloud Shell, see Getting started with IBM Cloud Shell.

21 May 2020

Connect to an external identity provider for authentication

You can now connect your external identity provider to an IBM Cloud App ID instance, and then configure that App ID to connect directly to IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) to federate authentication for users in your enterprise to your IBM Cloud account.

By using this new integration between App ID and IBM Cloud IAM, you can simplify the log in experience for users in your enterprise and automatically add users to your account through their login, instead of having to invite or federate each user individually with IBMid. For more information, see Enabling authentication from an external identity provider.

01 May 2020

Support for catalog filtering in IBM Cloud enterprises

You can now use filters to customize which products in the IBM Cloud catalog are available in accounts within an enterprise hierarchy. Filters that are set at a parent account level apply to all child account groups and accounts. For more information, see Managing products for an IBM Cloud enterprise.

21 April 2020

Unified notifications experience

Viewing your notifications is now easier than ever with the new unified notifications experience. The notifications page is the centralized place to view and manage all incidents, maintenance, and announcements that might affect your account. In the IBM Cloud console, click the Notifications icon on the console menu bar to view your notifications.

Additionally, you can find all infrastructure notifications on the new notifications page. To learn more about the new notifications experience, see Viewing notifications.

18 April 2020

New features and multi-region support for IBM Cloud Shell (Beta)

This update to IBM Cloud Shell (Beta) includes several new features to help you work from the command line in IBM Cloud:

• You can now preview web apps within Cloud Shell. By running apps on an available port, you can open a preview at a URL that only you can see, similar to a cloud version of localhost.
• You can now use Cloud Shell within the Frankfurt region in addition to the existing Dallas region.
• Usage timeouts were changed to extend how long you can leave your sessions idle before they're closed. And, there's no longer a time limit on continuous usage.
• An update to the server image adds the GNU Automake (automake) and GNU Compiler Collection (gcc, gcov, and gcov-tool) tools to your sessions.

For a complete list of changes, see the Cloud Shell release notes.

31 March 2020

IBM Cloud CLI Version 1.0.0 is now available

The 1.0.0 release of the IBM Cloud CLI includes two new global options to help you more easily automate command-line scripting tasks. The new --output json option provides command output in a parsable JSON format, and the --quiet option suppresses some extra messages such as progress indicators simplify automated processing. The IBM Cloud CLI now also includes the IBM Cloud Developer Tools (ibmcloud dev) commands, so you can work with apps, pipelines, toolchains, and more without needing to install a separate plug-in. The Cloud Foundry CLI (ibmcloud cf) is no longer bundled but can still be installed separately.

For more information about the IBM Cloud CLI, see Getting started with the IBM Cloud CLI and Developer Tools.

18 March 2020

Customizing how access is assigned by using custom roles

Until now, you assigned access by using the available platform and service roles that have specific actions that are mapped by individual services. Sometimes, you must assign multiple roles to achieve the required access for your users. With the latest IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management feature, you can now customize how access is assigned within individual services by creating custom roles. You can choose to organize any number of actions available for a specific service into a new role with a name of your choosing. For more information, see Creating custom roles.

26 February 2020

Updated handling of API keys for removed users

When you remove a user from your account, IBM Cloud automatically cleans up the API keys associated with that user's identity, so you don't have to. For more information, see the Updated handling of IBM Cloud API keys for users removed from accounts blog post.

21 January 2020

IBM Cloud Shell (Beta) is now available

We're introducing a new way to access IBM Cloud from the command line with no installation needed - IBM® Cloud Shell! IBM Cloud Shell is a cloud-based shell environment that gives you instant command-line access through your web browser. It's preconfigured with the full IBM Cloud CLI, all CLI plug-ins, and tons of tools so you have everything that you need to manage apps, resources, and infrastructure. To try out this beta release, see Getting started with IBM Cloud Shell.

09 January 2020

Improved Support Center

The latest enhancement to the support center offers a personalized experience to better resolve any IBM Cloud related issue. Navigate through the landing page to view incidents that are specific to your account along with a list of your open cases. Additionally, our self-help options have expanded, popular FAQs and recommended topics are populated to provide information that is relevant to your account. To check out the new experience, log in and go to the Support Center .

19 December 2019

Disable public access to resources

All users and service IDs are members of the Public Access group by default, which provides unauthenticated access to the resources that the group can access. You can now disable public access at the account level for cases in which you might want to prevent policies that could publicly expose resources from being created. For more information, see Managing public access to resources.

26 November 2019

Delete resource groups

Besides the default resource group that's automatically created for you when create your IBM Cloud account, you can now delete any resource group that doesn't contain any resources. For more information, see Managing resource groups.

04 November 2019

Bitnami Helm charts

IBM and VMware are partnering to provide the Bitnami Application Catalog to IBM Cloud customers. The first set of offerings available in the IBM Cloud catalog are the Bitnami Helm charts, which Bitnami has created and validated to work on the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. Kubernetes developers typically install Helm charts manually from the CLI by using the helm command. However, this installation process has been simplified by building an auto-installation feature in the IBM Cloud catalog. Check out these offerings today by selecting Bitnami from the Provider filter.

18 October 2019

Apply promo codes to your account and services

IBM Cloud now has promo codes that you can use to get credit toward your account and services. Promo codes are provided by IBM Cloud sales on a limited basis to customers with billable accounts. You can apply promo codes from a new Promotions page or from the catalog when you create a resource in the IBM Cloud console. For more information, see Applying promo codes.

Download access reports for specific resources

Have you ever wanted to get a quick view of all users, service IDs, access groups, and services that have access to a specific resource in your account? Well, now you can download a report that includes details about who can access your resource. From the My resources page in your account, you can select the Export access report option in the row for an IAM-enabled resource to get the report. For more information about the types of data available in the report and who has access to view the report, see Exporting an access report.

15 October 2019

Mapping actions to IAM roles

When you invite a user to your account or assign an existing user IAM access, you can review each action that is mapped to a role. Click the Actions for role option to view a list of all actions that are mapped to a specific role when you're selecting the roles to assign in an access policy. By reviewing the action to role mappings, you can have confidence that you are always assigning the correct level of access to users in your account. For more information about this new enhancement, see Invite User Flow and Transparent Actions.

03 October 2019

Cloud Paks and Schematics templates

With the deployment power of the IBM Cloud Schematics service, we now deliver bundled solutions through packaged software and deployable automation scripts that empower you to build, manage, and modernize your cloud architectures faster and more securely. The first release of these offerings include IBM Cloud Paks and a handful of useful Terraform-based templates.

From the catalog, filter by the offering type and deployment target to find what you're looking for faster. Select Cloud Paks and Terraform to check out the new offerings that are available.

23 September 2019

Term-based model for IBM Cloud support subscriptions

New subscriptions for IBM Cloud support now follow the same term-based model as subscriptions for IBM Cloud platform services. Rather than credit being valid in monthly increments, credit is now available up front for an entire subscription term, which can be up to one year's worth of credit. You now have more flexibility to use your support credit when you need it, and the chances of incurring monthly overages are reduced. When you buy or renew a support subscription, any existing active support subscriptions are converted to this new flexible model for the remainder of their term. For more information, see Support subscriptions.

You can also now view your support subscriptions in the IBM Cloud console so you can keep track of your available credit. For more information, see Viewing your support costs.

12 September 2019

Redirecting SoftLayer to IBM Cloud

SoftLayer account owners who previously didn't have access to the IBM Cloud platform can now manage their infrastructure, services, and applications from one location: cloud.ibm.com.

25 July 2019

IBM Cloud enterprises for centrally managing multiple accounts

You can now centrally manage billing and usage for multiple accounts by creating an IBM Cloud enterprise. With an enterprise, you can create a multitiered hierarchy of accounts by organizing related accounts into account groups. Enterprises simplify management of multiple accounts with the following key features:

• Consolidated billing means that you can manage billing, invoicing, and payment for all accounts from a single place, the enterprise account.
• Subscription credit is aggregated into a credit pool and shared with all accounts in the enterprise. Not only is tracking your subscriptions easier, but you can get fewer, larger subscriptions for a better discount because the credit is shared.
• Top-down usage reporting gives you a unified view of usage costs from all accounts, organized according to your enterprise hierarchy.

If you have multiple accounts, at least one of which is a Subscription account, you can create an enterprise. See What is an enterprise? and Introducing IBM Cloud Enterprises for more information.

Subscriptions page for tracking subscription credit spending

If you have a Subscription account, you can now view all of your subscriptions and analyze your credit spending on the Subscriptions page. You get a high-level view of the total subscription credit in your account and detailed charts that visualize trends such as your credit burndown and monthly spending. You can also view credit from any promotions in your account. For more information, see Managing subscriptions.

Additionally, to better reflect their usage, codes that you apply to add subscription credit to your account are now called subscription codes rather than feature codes.

02 July 2019

Managing SoftLayer SAML federation on IBM Cloud

Former SoftLayer users who set up a SAML identity provider for logging in with federated IDs can now manage their configuration data in the IBM Cloud console in Access (IAM) on the Identity providers page. This type of federation is deprecated, so new identity providers can't be set up currently. You can continue to update your identity provider data or choose to delete this federation in favor of switching to federating with IBMid.

14 June 2019

Customize your dashboard

You can now control what's displayed on your dashboard. Customizing your dashboard includes the ability to add, remove, and rearrange the widgets. For more information, see Customizing your dashboard.

04 April 2019

Export usage data with associated tags

You can now use our newest tagging capabilities to manage resources, usage, and costs in the exported usage report. When you add a tag to a resource, you can view the tag that is associated with the resource. In the IBM Cloud console, go to Manage> Billing and Usage> Usage> Export CSV> Instances to download your usage report.

25 March 2019

Enabling public access to resources

You can now enable public access to objects in your IBM Cloud® Object Storage buckets by using a new access group that is provided for you in your account. This new access group is called the Public access group, and all users and service IDs are added to it by default. You can update the policies for the access group to enable all users, even unauthenticated users, access to the resource that you specify in the policy. Learn more about the public access group.

12 March 2019

Multifactor authentication for users with federated IDs

Account owners or users assigned the administrator role for the billing account management service can enable multifcator authentication (MFA) for all users in their account. Federated users who use their corporate or enterprise single sign-on ID can now be required to authenticate by using MFA for logging in to IBM Cloud. For more information about this feature enhancement and what you need to know about enabling MFA for your account, see Introducing MFA for IBM Cloud Users with Federated ID .

31 December 2018

New appdomain.cloud host name option

A new host name option *.appdomain.cloud is available on cloud.ibm.com.

Previously, the mybluemix.net domain was used for hosting apps in various deployment targets, such as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service or Cloud Foundry. Any apps that are hosted on mybluemix.net are not impacted.

The subdomain for Cloud Foundry apps is cf.appdomain.cloud. The subdomain for apps that you deploy to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is containers.appdomain.cloud.

30 November 2018

New Cloud Foundry API endpoints

The legacy api.*.bluemix.net Cloud Foundry API endpoints are still available for compatibility with earlier versions. However, you can update scripts and infrastructure automation to use the following new Cloud Foundry API endpoints for your region:

• api.us-south.cf.cloud.ibm.com (previously api.ng.bluemix.net)
• api.eu-gb.cf.cloud.ibm.com (previously api.eu-gb.bluemix.net)
• api.us-east.cf.cloud.ibm.com (previously api.us-east.bluemix.net)
• api.eu-de.cf.cloud.ibm.com (previously api.eu-de.bluemix.net)
• api.au-syd.cf.cloud.ibm.com (previously api.au-syd.bluemix.net)

Enhanced support experience for IBM Cloud

With the Support Center, you can work to resolve all IBM Cloud-related issues. The landing page provides you FAQs, so you can find the answer to your question without even contacting IBM Cloud. You can also chat with a live support rep. Your cases can now be managed in from a single location. In the console, go to Support > Manage cases to create, view, or edit cases.

You can also find the Status page from the Support Center. It is enhanced to include all unplanned incidents, planned maintenance, announcements, and security bulletin notifications about key events that affect the IBM Cloud platform, infrastructure, and major services. Click View cloud status from the Support Center. To check out the new experience, log in and go to the Support Center .

Unified login, API keys, and user and access management

With our latest updates, you can take advantage of a simplified secure login that is available for all users regardless of your ID type. Whether you have an IBMid or a SoftLayer ID, you can quickly log in to the IBM Cloud console from our enhanced login page. You can also make secure API calls across IBM Cloud and automate your CLI login by using an IAM API key or an IAM access token.

After you log in, you can now see all users, including platform and classic infrastructure users, from your Users page in the Access (IAM) UI. Depending on your access to view other users in the account, you can filter your view quickly by account users, classic infrastructure users, or Cloud Foundry org. You can also use the filters to find users quickly by name, email, or status.

Now that all of your users are in a single console, you can manage their access to all types of resources from the same place. Access starts with the user, so start by selecting a user from your list. Then, depending on which type of resource that you want to assign access to, you can choose from IAM access policies, Cloud Foundry access, or classic infrastructure permissions. If you want to assign IAM access policies, try creating an access group to streamline your access management process by adding all users to the same access group that need the same policies assigned.

For more details, check out Outstanding User Access Improvements Help Deliver a Unified IBM Cloud Platform.

Find all IBM Cloud CLI plug-in documentation in one place

You can now access all of the IBM Cloud CLI plug-in documentation in one location, making it easier for you to find any CLI command that you are looking for. Check out the References section in the CLI documentation.

New dashboard and Resource list page

With our latest update, you can now view all your platform and infrastructure services from one location. When you log in, you can check out the new dashboard. After you add resources to your account from the catalog, you can use your resource list to get a full view of your account resources:

• The dashboard is redesigned so that you can view a summary your resources, maintenance, status, apps, support, usage, and users.
• You can find more details about your resources by going to your resource list. You can tag your resources to organize them, or select them to update the details page.
• Now that you can see all of your resources in one place, we added a global search so that you can quickly find resources that you created and expect to find in your resource list.
• You can also search for catalog results, so you can quickly find resources to add to your account.

Unified account, billing, and user profile information

Your account, billing, and profile information is now simplified. You can view your account information for all of your platform and infrastructure resources in a unified console.

Your profile and settings area contains information about you as well as your email notification preferences for all resource types.

Your account information area contains information about your company or organization, account settings, and quick access for working with resource groups and Cloud Foundry orgs. You can even find best practices to help you get up and running quickly!

Your billing and usage area of your account helps you understand your bill, make payments, monitor subscriptions, get quotes, track orders, and set spending notifications.

Check out Bringing It All Together: A Single Account and Billing Management Experience for more details.

Organize your resources with tags

Tags are now available for you to add to your resources, like Cloud Object Storage, to help you manage resources and find the resources that are the most relevant to you. For example, if you have hundreds of resources and you want to differentiate between ones that are paid the same way, you could tag them with costcenter:location01. Or, if you have a team that is working on a couple of resources repeatedly, you can use something like team-blue. You can also filter the My resources page by tags to quickly organize and find the resources that you need. For more information, see Working with tags and Platform Tagging on the Enhanced IBM Cloud Platform.

Get accurate monthly costs with the cost estimator

To help you decide and analyze what services you'd like to purchase, you can use the cost estimator. Now, you can go through the console and select each service you'd like to have, and add all of the costs in an easy to use tool. You can even enter projected data usages, lookups per second, writes per second, and queries per second to get a more accurate estimation of your monthly expenditures. You can use the cost estimator with each catalog service you select, or you can click the Cost Estimator icon in the console menu to get a summary of your estimated costs. For more information, see Estimating your costs.

01 November 2018

Updated global location names

As IBM Cloud continues to expand our global availability footprint, we’re updating our location naming structure to better support an understandable, consistent hierarchy of geographies, regions, and data centers around the world. If you’re familiar with our current global regions, you’ll recognize names like US South and Sydney. We’re aligning these location names to the names of the city in which the data centers physically exist.

For now, the programmatic IDs are not changing, so there’s no impact from an API perspective. The following table shows the old and new location names. For more information and a comprehensive list of data centers and regions, see Service availability.

New location names

Previous Location Display Name	New Location Display Name	Code
US South	Dallas	us-south
US East	Washington DC	us-east
United Kingdom	London	eu-gb
Germany	Frankfurt	eu-de
Sydney	Sydney	au-syd
AP North	Tokyo	jp-tok

30 October 2018

Assign account management access to others

With IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM), you can delegate common tasks that you complete as an account administrator to another user in your account. By creating an access policy on one or all of the available account management services, you can easily delegate responsibilities such as inviting and removing users, managing access groups, managing service IDs, maintaining private catalog services, and even monitoring billing and tracking usage. There are four individual account management services and an all services option that you can use to set up access policies:

• User Management for inviting and removing users
• IAM Access Groups for creating, editing, deleting, updating, and assigning access
• IAM Identity Service for viewing, creating, deleting, and assigning access to service IDs and associated API keys across the account
• Global resource catalog for viewing private catalog offerings and updating the metadata and visibility for the offerings
• All account management services for access to each of the individual account management service options based on the assigned role as well as access to billing and usage tracking.

For more information on the tasks that a user can do based on which account management service they have a policy on and which role they are assigned, see Example platform management roles and actions for account management services. For more information about this new feature, see the Introducing More Flexibility and Control for IBM Cloud Account Management Services Access blog post.

17 July 2018

Searching for resources

You can search for resources from anywhere in the IBM Cloud console. Type the name of a resource in the search field in the console menu bar. Press the Forward Slash key (/) to activate the search.

12 July 2018

Dynamically add federated users to access groups

You can create dynamic rules to automatically add federated users to access groups based on specific identity attributes. When your users log in with a federated ID, the data from the identity provider dynamically maps your users to an access group based on the rules that you set. For more information, see Creating dynamic rules for access groups.

01 June 2018

Protect your service IDs and API keys

To avoid a situation where your service ID or API key is deleted causing an outage or disruption, you can lock service IDs and API keys by using the UI or CLI. Locking a service ID also prevents any access policies from being changed, deleted, or assigned as well as any API keys associated with the service ID from being created or deleted. For more information, see Locking a service ID and Locking an API key.

31 May 2018

Upgrade your Lite account to a Subscription account

You can now upgrade your Lite account to a Subscription account directly from the IBM Cloud console. With a Subscription account, you can use both platform and infrastructure offerings, and take advantage of discounted pricing by making a monthly spending and term commitment. You can also avoid surprises with fixed billing on a monthly payment schedule, but with the flexibility to order more or less based on your needs. For more information, see FAQS for billing and usage.

15 May 2018

IBM Cloud CLI rebranding

The IBM Cloud CLI commands changed from bluemix and bx to ibmcloud. However, you can still use the bluemix and bx CLI commands until they are removed later. There is no short name now, just the full name ibmcloud.

02 May 2018

Multi-factor authentication for your account

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security to your account by requiring all users to provide a time-based one-time passcode in addition to their standard IBMid and password during login. This is also commonly known as two-factor authentication (2FA). MFA is enabled per account, and once it is turned on, all users in the account are required to log in by using the extra security measure. For more information, see the IBM Cloud Platform now adds support for Multi-Factor Authentication blog post.

03 April 2018

Assign access quickly by using access groups

Do you want to be able to assign access quickly by using the least number of policies possible? Now you can with access groups. Group a set of users and service IDs together and assign a single policy that applies to all members of the group. By using access groups, you can limit the time that you spend managing access to the users and service IDs in your account.

15 December 2017

Cloud Foundry Service US East region

A new US East data center is now available in Washington, DC. You can reach this new region by using the us-east.cloud.ibm.com endpoint. For details about the services that are available for purchase in this new region, see Services by region.

14 December 2017

Support for resources in the European Union

If your services and data centers are located in Europe, IBM Cloud now offers extra capabilities to protect your data in the European Union. You can request that support is provided by customer success teams that are located in Europe. This support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. See Enabling the EU supported option and Requesting support for resources in the European Union for more information.

28 November 2017

Withdrawal of support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1

On 1 March 2018 IBM Cloud will withdraw support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 across many of our cloud products and services as part of our commitment to offering a cloud that is secure to the core and in alignment with industry best practices for security and data privacy.

16 November 2017

A new way to organize resources within your account

Resource groups are a new way for you to create customizable groupings of account resources, and access to the group and the resources within it are managed by using Identity and Access Management (IAM). Everyone starts out with a default resource group. You can rename this resource group and add new service instances to it as you create them from the catalog.

For users with a Pay-As-You-Go or Subscription account, you can create extra resource groups to make managing quota and viewing billing usage for a set of resources easier. You can also group resources to make it easier for you to assign users access to more than one service at a time. To learn more about working with resource groups for your account, see Managing resource groups.

Updates for IBM Cloud IAM

The introduction of resource groups within your IBM Cloud account provides a new way for you to assign access. Users and service IDs can be assigned access to all services within a resource group, enabling you to quickly assign access to more than one resource at a time. You can also customize access for each user or service ID by assigning access to just some services within a resource group, or you choose to assign access to individual resources down to the service instance level. For more information about the features that you can take advantage of by using IAM, see What features does IAM provide?

Customize your dashboard view

You can view and manage all the resources in your account from your dashboard in the IBM Cloud console. And now, you can set filters to customize your view. For example, you can filter by resource group to view the specific resources in a resource group. You can also filter by region or Cloud Foundry space.

02 November 2017

Support Center

We now have the new Support Center where you can search for information, post questions to our developer community, and manage tickets. Go to Support > Support Center in the IBM Cloud console menu bar.

31 October 2017

Introducing IBM Cloud

Bluemix is now IBM Cloud. Besides rolling out our new name, nothing changes. You can still easily build and run your apps and services as always. Check out the IBM Cloud blog for more details.

Lite account

A Lite account is our new account type that gives you access to try select services for free with no time restrictions. This new account also includes usage tracking and efficiency features to help you better manage your resources. To learn more about what's available, see Account types.

06 October 2017

Identity and Access Management application authentication feature

Identity and Access Management (IAM) now supports service IDs, which you can think of as identities that can be used for apps to authenticate with your IBM Cloud services. Instead of using individual user credentials, a Service ID can be created with an associated API key and access permissions in the form of a service policy that is assigned to the Service ID in order for you to control the level of access for any application authenticating with that ID.

For more information about the benefits of this feature and how to get started, see the Introducing IBM Cloud IAM Service IDs and API Keys.

27 July 2017

IBM Cloud global catalog

Expanding on the last console update to manage your public regions from a single location in the console, IBM Cloud now has a global catalog, making the process of selecting and deploying items that you select from the catalog a more streamlined process. Regardless of the region that you select in the console, you can now see all services that are available across all public regions from your catalog. Once you select a tile from the catalog, you can see which regions the service is available in, and select where you want to deploy it. For more information about the latest updates to the catalog, see A global IBM Cloud catalog makes building things easier.

23 May 2017

IBM Cloud console updates

You can now manage your public regions from a single location through the updated IBM Cloud console. The region selector offers you streamlined access to your resources, and other enhancements include higher availability and improved performance.

01 May 2017

Identity and access management

With the latest updates and improvements, IBM Cloud account owners or administrators can now use a new unified access control UI to take advantage of the following capabilities:

• Manage users' fine-grained access to Kubernetes services and other services as they adopt the new access control features
• Assign service policies and Cloud Foundry roles to users within their organizations

Additionally, IBM Cloud platform users can create, delete, and list API keys associated with their user IDs. And platform users can use those API keys to authenticate when using APIs or CLIs.

Lastly, we enhanced our unified user management capability to ensure that in a linked IaaS-PaaS account, users are managed in a unified way with no need to add users separately in the SoftLayer Customer Portal or the IBM Cloudconsole.

13 April 2017

Navigation design changes for IBM Cloud docs

With this navigation update, we think you'll understand how content is better organized throughout our docs, and will be able to find relevant content more efficiently. With fewer nested layers of content, you won't have to dig around to find the documentation you need to be successful with IBM Cloud.