Building an Image Containing an Application to Run Under Enterprise Server

This topic outlines the steps that a Dockerfile must carry out to create an image that contains a COBOL application that can be run under Enterprise Server.

Before you follow the steps in this topic you must have built a base image for Enterprise Server. For information on creating a base image for Enterprise Server see Building a Base Image Containing Enterprise Server.

Before building an image containing an application to run under Enterprise Server you need to ensure that you have available the following:

To build an image that includes an application to run under Enterprise Server your Dockerfile needs to perform the following steps:

  1. Specify a base image to work from. This should be an image containing only Enterprise Server which was built for 32-bit or 64-bit as required and includes the additional build functionality, typically microfocus/edbuildtools-build:win_5.0_x86 or microfocus/edbuildtools-build:win_5.0_x64.

    See Building a Base Image Containing Enterprise Server for more information.

  2. Define metadata for your image. This will make it easier to establish significant details of the image when you use the docker inspect command.
  3. Define any variables for filenames and folder locations.
    Note: If you will be using this image to run applications under Enterprise Server, you need to set the MFDS_EXTERNAL_ADDR environment variable to specify a resolvable external address string. This is to enable client browsers to resolve the URLs used by ESMAC and other utilities in Enterprise Server Administration.

    The value that you specify for this environment variable is used to replace the internal container address in the URL.

  4. Create a folder to hold the application files then copy the application files and the license file (.mflic) for Enterprise Server file into it.
  5. Use the MFLicenseAdmin.exe utility to install the license for Enterprise Server.
  6. Perform any required clean-up. This includes tasks such as resetting variables and deleting temporary folders.
  7. Specify the name of the executable to run when the image is run.

The above process is used by the Docker demonstrations that create images for applications that you can run under Enterprise Server. For more information on one of those demonstrations, including information on all the files it contains and a detailed description of the Dockerfiles it contains, see The CICS Docker Demonstration.

Note: When starting a container that includes an application to be run under Enterprise Server, to be able to manage the container's enterprise servers using Micro Focus Directory Server (MFDS) and Enterprise Server Monitor and Control (ESMAC) from a machine other than the host machine you must specify some additional parameters on the docker run command. The additional parameters are:
  • -p to map the container's port to a port on the host computer
  • -e to specify the MFDS_EXTERNAL_ADDR environment variable, which is used to specify the name of the host computer where the container is running.

For example, when running an image for the CICS Docker demonstration you should ensure the docker run command contains parameters such as the following: 

-p 16001:86/udp -p16001:86/tcp -p 9000-9010:9000-9010 -e MFDS_EXTERNAL_ADDR=host-computer-name
Parent topic: Building Images for COBOL Applications
Related information
Building a Base Image Containing Enterprise Server
The CICS Docker Demonstration