WebSphere ... going Mobile and the Cloud

In my recent travels, two topics have come up over and over again. The first is mobile and the second is cloud. I'll see if we can get some content on mobile, but for now here is a great overview by Chris Mitchell.

On cloud, I wanted to point folks to some excellent sources of information on cloud that are by my WebSphere colleagues, but not on this blog.

Jason McGee has alot of demos on his blog that show how the IBM Workload Deployer help you leverage your middleware in the private cloud.

Dustin Amrhein reflects on how these technologies relate to real world deployments on his blog.

Matt Hogstrom has talked about his views of the cloud based as well on his blog.

Last, but not least, Jerry Cuomo has talked about our strategy around cloud and IBM's views on what private cloud means and how to consider performance around cloud (something I'm personally involved with at this point) on his blog.

Please take some time to spin through these blogs and let me know if there are additional aspects of cloud and mobile you'd like to hear from WebSphere folks.

The appliance form factor of WebSphere CloudBurst

As with most new technologies, the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance inspires a healthy set of questions. As usual most of the questions are about features, capabilities, use cases, etc., yet there is one question that is quite frequent but a bit of an outlier from the preceding categories. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve talked to a group about WebSphere CloudBurst without getting this question. What's the question?

“Why is WebSphere CloudBurst an appliance?”

It is a very fair question and one whose frequency used to surprise me. I guess I should have seen it coming because save the WebSphere DataPower Appliance, the brand isn’t typically associated with hardware.

In this particular case though, I can confidently say the appliance was exactly the right form factor for the offering, and it comes down to three main reasons:

1) Consumability

2) Capability

3) Security

In general, appliances deliver a very high level of consumability or put another way, decreased time to value. WebSphere CloudBurst fits this mold. When you receive the appliance you hook it up to your network, do some one time initialization and you are up and ready to go. The appliance comes loaded with pre-built and ready to use virtual images and patterns. You simply define your cloud infrastructure to WebSphere CloudBurst and you can start deploying the shipped patterns or you can begin to build and deploy your own. Since the function provided by WebSphere CloudBurst is delivered on the appliance’s firmware, there is no need to install and subsequently maintain software on other machines. In addition, any updates to this function are delivered via firmware updates that can be applied directly from the appliance’s console.

From a capability perspective, appliances deliver right-sized, purpose-built compute resources. In particular, the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance contains the right amount of processing power, memory, storage, etc. to meet its needs. In many ways, this points back to consumability in that you don’t have to hunt down the right set of hardware and storage because all of that is delivered on the appliance. In addition, the delivery of function (firmware) and hardware in one unit allows for optimization otherwise hard to achieve.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, the appliance form factor of WebSphere CloudBurst provides for a very high level of security. To start, all of the contents stored on the appliance, whether they exist on the hard drive or flash drive, are encrypted by a private key. This private key is unique to each and every appliance and it cannot be modified. The appliance provides no way to upload and execute code. There is no shell with which you can interface, and the internals operate on “Just Enough Operating System” principles to decrease the attack surface even further. Finally, the appliance is physically secure. If someone were to remove the casing in an attempt to access the internals, the box is put into a dormant state and must be sent back to IBM before it can be used again. This is in no way an exhaustive list of security features, but hopefully it gives you some background on the high degree of security provided via the appliance form factor.

I hope this helps shed some light on the decision to deliver WebSphere CloudBurst as an appliance. If you have other questions about WebSphere CloudBurst check out my top ten FAQs, or leave a comment below.

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance

Up to this point, we haven't discussed the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance too much on this blog (though I've been writing about it extensively here). So if you have been following and reading along here and have only casually heard of this new appliance, you may be asking yourself "What is it?" and "What does it do?" Given that, I thought it was about time we provided a brief overview of WebSphere CloudBurst on the WebSphere Community Blog.

Very simply put, WebSphere CloudBurst is a cloud management device provided in an appliance form factor. It provides you with the capabilities to create, deploy, and manage virtualized WebSphere application environments in an on-premise cloud. Laying the foundation for the cloud-based application environment lifecycle capability provided by WebSphere CloudBurst are special virtual images. These virtual images, which are provided and maintained by IBM, provide pre-installed, pre-configured software stacks that include everything from the operating system all the way through the IBM Software middleware tier. As of right now there are three different IBM Software offerings packaged in this virtual image format: WebSphere Application Server (generally available in 6.1 and 7.0 versions), WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 (Beta version), and DB2 Enterprise 9.7 (trial).

Why did I refer to the virtual images as building blocks? Because from these virtual images WebSphere CloudBurst patterns are built. A pattern is a complete representation of your middleware application environment. The appliance comes pre-loaded with a set of best-practice patterns, and you can also build your own. A custom pattern will include the topology (i.e. the number of application server nodes, management nodes, databases, etc.) you desire, as well as your custom configuration like your applications that run in the environment. As an example, here’s a screenshot of a WebSphere Application Server pattern I built using WebSphere CloudBurst:

Once you build your custom application environment in the form of a WebSphere CloudBurst pattern, you can use the appliance to dispense it to your on-premise cloud. This cloud, consisting of a pool of hypervisors (both VMware and PowerVM platforms are supported) and associated compute resources like memory, storage, CPU, and IP addresses, is defined to and managed by the appliance. When deploying your patterns into the cloud, WebSphere CloudBurst uses an intelligent placement algorithm that considers things like available compute resource and high availability to ensure that your application environment runs as safely and efficiently as possible.

The end result of deployment is a fully functional WebSphere middleware environment running in one or more virtual machines. These environments offer the same capabilities and function as if you had deployed them in a more traditional manner, so you can run the same applications you use now unchanged. In addition, you can use WebSphere CloudBurst to apply fixes and upgrades to your application environments in a simple, fast and safe manner, and you can easily remove an environment when you are no longer using it thus returning resources to your cloud.

In my opinion, this is one of those things that is easier to understand when seen. In that regard, I’ve put together quite a few short demonstrations that highlight different features and capabilities of the appliance. If you are interested in reading more, I mentioned a blog earlier, and we have quite a few articles available on developerWorks.