PyPIM

PyPIM exposes a Pythonic interface to communicate with the Product Instance Management (PIM) API.

What is the PIM API?

The PIM API is a gRPC API, enabling both library and app developers to start a product in a remote environment and communicate with its API.

The PIM API is intended to be as simple as possible to be adaptable in a variety of network and software infrastructures. Using this API does not require any knowledge of its infrastructure. You need only know which product to start and which API the product exposes. The PIM API itself exposes very few features and assumes that all the configuration is set on a server.

The PIM API is not intended to manage stateless services, to be a job management system, or a fully featured service orchestration API. Its purpose is to expose a minimum feature set for managing service-oriented apps.

Getting started

To use PyPIM, you must have access to the PIM API.

PyPIM itself is pure Python and relies on gRPC.

Installation

The ansys-platform-instancemanagement package is tested for Python 3.7 through Python 3.10 on Windows and Linux.

pip install ansys-platform-instancemanagement

Configuration

By default, PyPIM is configured externally instead of via code. Anywhere in the local storage, create a configuration file with this format:

{
    "version": 1,
    "pim": {
        "uri": "dns:pim.svc.com:80",
        "headers": {
            "metadata-info": "value"
        },
        "tls": false
    }
}

Then, define the environment variable ANSYS_PLATFORM_INSTANCEMANAGEMENT_CONFIG to point to this configuration file.

Usage

PyPIM is a single module called ansys.platform.instancemanagement, shortened to pypim.

To start MAPDL and communicate with PyPIM, use this code:

import ansys.platform.instancemanagement as pypim
from ansys.mapdl.core import Mapdl

if pypim.is_configured():
    with pypim.connect() as pim:
        with pim.create_instance(
            product_name="mapdl", product_version="221"
        ) as instance:
            instance.wait_for_ready()
            channel = instance.build_grpc_channel(
                options=[("grpc.max_receive_message_length", 8 * 1024**2)]
            )
            mapdl = Mapdl(channel=channel)
            mapdl.prep7()
            ...

You can also use PyPIM without the with statement, as shown in this code:

import ansys.platform.instancemanagement as pypim
from ansys.mapdl.core import Mapdl

if pypim.is_configured():
    pim = pypim.connect()
    instance = pim.create_instance(product_name="mapdl", product_version="221")
    channel = instance.build_grpc_channel(
        options=[("grpc.max_receive_message_length", 8 * 1024**2)]
    )
    mapdl = Mapdl(channel=channel)
    mapdl.prep7()
    ...
    instance.delete()
    pim.close()

Integration

PyPIM can be integrated in PyAnsys libraries to transparently switch to a remote instance in a suitable environment. This process is described in Integration in the PyPIM documentation.

For example, starting MAPDL with PyPIM is as simple as using this code:

from ansys.mapdl.core import launch_mapdl

mapdl = launch_mapdl()