Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Dustin Amrhein
Staff Software Engineer
IBM
27 Jan 2010
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved. Page 1 of 7
developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks
management device. I suppose that part of the reason for this interest could be
simply attributed to the appliance’s newness, but I also believe that a significant level
of interest is because the capabilities of WebSphere CloudBurst make you
reconsider the way in which you interact with your middleware application
environments. This challenge to the status quo has prompted both excitement and
countless questions about the appliance from clients and colleagues alike over the
past several months.
I have had the opportunity to talk about WebSphere CloudBurst many times since it
was launched, and in so doing have noticed a fairly common set of questions
emerging from both business and technical professionals. In this first installment of
What’s next, I thought it would be appropriate and helpful to share these top ten
questions with everyone who is curious about the WebSphere CloudBurst
Appliance.
And so, in no particular certain order, here are the things that people want to know
most about WebSphere Cloudburst:
No! In fact, if you remember nothing else from this article -- or anything else you
read about WebSphere CloudBurst -- remember this: The appliance does not host
your IBM WebSphere Application Server environments. It dispenses those
environments into an on-premise cloud, and once they are out and running, the
appliance is not a part of the critical path for that application. No application requests
are routed through the appliance, and absolutely no part of the application
environment runs on the appliance in any form or fashion. I’ll take it one step further
and point out that if the appliance were to fail for any reason, that failure would not at
all impact the availability of your applications running in the virtualized environments
that had been dispensed by WebSphere CloudBurst.
As of this writing, there are three IBM software products that are built into virtual
images for the appliance: WebSphere Application Server, IBM WebSphere Portal,
and IBM DB2®. WebSphere Application Server is offered in both V6.1 and V7.0,
with and without feature packs. A beta image of WebSphere Portal V6.1.5 is being
offered, as is a trial version of DB2 Enterprise 9.7.
Currently the virtual images provide 32-bit versions of each IBM software product
(WebSphere Application Server, DB2, and WebSphere Portal) and the operating
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
Page 2 of 7 © Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved.
ibm.com/developerWorks developerWorks®
system. The exception is the IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition
packaged for the PowerVM™ platform. In this virtual image, both the WebSphere
Application Server and AIX® operating system are 64-bit.
As of version WebSphere CloudBurst V1.1, both VMware ESX (3.0.2, 3.0.3, 3.5, and
4.0) and PowerVM hypervisor platforms are supported. From a single appliance, you
can manage and deploy to both hypervisor platforms. The user experience -- with
respect to deploying patterns and managing virtual systems -- is consistent
regardless of the target platform. When you build a particular pattern, you base it on
a virtual image that is packaged for either the VMware ESX or PowerVM platform.
This does tie a pattern to a particular hypervisor platform, but it is very simple to
clone a pattern to create a new one that is based off of a virtual image packaged for
a different platform. This enables you to quickly and easily move patterns from one
platform to another without losing any of the customizations you have built into the
middleware tier.
As of this writing, SUSE Linux is the only operating system shipped in the
WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition virtual image. However, swapping
out the SUSE Linux® virtual disks for virtual disks containing Red Hat Enterprise
Linux (RHEL) is supported. If you use RHEL, the only difference is that you are
responsible for maintaining the operating system, whereas if you use the SUSE
Linux included in the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition images, IBM
ships updates and maintenance for the operating system. There is an IBM services
offering available to assist you in creating a custom WebSphere Application Server
Hypervisor Edition image that contains the RHEL operating system.
The biggest difference between the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance and other
virtualization management solutions is that the appliance is deeply knowledgeable
about the software it dispenses. The appliance knows how to do things like federate
nodes into a cell, create application server clusters, apply best practice performance
tuning, and apply both fixes and upgrades to your WebSphere Application Server
environments, all without you having to supply custom scripting, as you would with
other virtualization management solutions. Add this extensive WebSphere
Application Server know-how to extremely fast deployment times and the ability to
add your own customizations at each level of the software stack, and WebSphere
CloudBurst is in a class of its own when it comes to managing WebSphere
middleware environments in an on-premise cloud.
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved. Page 3 of 7
developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks
There are three main reasons why WebSphere CloudBurst is delivered in the
appliance form factor:
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
Page 4 of 7 © Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved.
ibm.com/developerWorks developerWorks®
10. What if I require vendor software -- like monitoring and anti-virus solutions
-- in the environments dispensed by WebSphere CloudBurst?
If you require software above and beyond what we ship in our virtual images, you
can use what we call the extend and capture capability of WebSphere CloudBurst to
make these customizations. Essentially, you select an image that already exists in
your WebSphere CloudBurst catalog and extend it. The appliance creates a running
virtual machine from that image, and you can log in to that virtual machine and install
your required software. Once you have made your changes, you simply capture the
customized environment and it is stored as a new virtual image in your WebSphere
CloudBurst catalog. At that point, you can use it as the basis for your custom
patterns, thus ensuring the customized environment when you deploy said patterns.
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved. Page 5 of 7
developerWorks® ibm.com/developerWorks
Any more?
Although these are probably the ten most frequent questions I get, this is by no
means an exhaustive list. If you have questions about WebSphere CloudBurst that
are not answered here, check out some of our articles and demonstrations listed in
the Resources section. You can also reach me on Twitter (@WebSphereClouds)
with any questions you have.
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
Page 6 of 7 © Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved.
ibm.com/developerWorks developerWorks®
Resources
• WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance product information
• Using WebSphere CloudBurst to create private clouds
• Article series: Customizing with WebSphere CloudBurst
• Introducing the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance command line interface
• Using the WebSphere CloudBurst REST API interface
• Video: Watch WebSphere CloudBurst demonstrations
• IBM developerWorks WebSphere
It's fast, highly consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns – and it's purple
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010. All rights reserved. Page 7 of 7