Adding a new channel in Hyperledger Fabric

Prerequisites
Modifying configuration file
Running playbook to deploy Hyperledger Fabric network

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.