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Adding a new channel in Hyperledger Fabric

Prerequisites

To add a new channel a fully configured Fabric network must be present already, i.e. a Fabric network which has Orderers, Peers, Channels (with all Peers already in the channels). The corresponding crypto materials should also be present in their respective Hashicorp Vault.

NOTE: Do not try to add a new organization as a part of this operation. Use only existing organization for new channel addition.

Modifying Configuration File

Refer this guide for details on editing the configuration file.

While modifying the configuration file(network.yaml) for adding new channel, all the existing channel should have channel_status tag as existing and the new channel should have channel_status tag as new under network.channels e.g.

network:
  channels:
  - channel:
    channel_status: existing
    ..
    ..
    participants:
    - organization:
      ..
      ..
    - organization:
      ..
      ..
  - channel:
    channel_status: new
    ..
    ..
    participants:
    - organization:
      ..
      ..
    - organization:
      ..
      ..

The network.yaml file should contain the specific network.organization details along with the orderer information.

For reference, see network-fabric-add-channel.yaml file here.

Run playbook

The add-new-channel.yaml playbook is used to add a new channel to the existing network. This can be done using the following command

ansible-playbook platforms/hyperledger-fabric/configuration/add-new-channel.yaml --extra-vars "@path-to-network.yaml"

NOTE: Make sure that the channel_status label was set as new when the network is deployed for the first time. If you have additional applications, please deploy them as well.