Here comes WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0

Lifted from Dustin's Blog.

Just over a year ago, IBM announced the availability of the initial version of the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance. Today, an announcement signals the coming availability of WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0, and that brings the major release count up to three in a period of about 12 months (the release of 1.1 came at the end of last year).

You can read the announcement for yourself, but here is a quick overview of the new features and enhancements delivered in the latest version:

- WebSphere Process Server support: You can now provision fully functional, virtualized WebSphere Process Server environments using WebSphere CloudBurst. This adds to the existing support for WebSphere Application Server, and the beta and trial versions of WebSphere Portal and DB2 respectively.

- Multi-image pattern support: In previous versions of WebSphere CloudBurst, all patterns mapped to a single virtual image. This meant your custom patterns could only contain parts (or nodes) from a single product. Now you can build patterns that contain parts from multiple different images. This allows you to represent diverse application environments, for instance, one that includes WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Process Server, and DB2 components, as a single pattern. Of course, this also means installing and initializing these different product components becomes as simple as deploying a single pattern.

- Dynamic system management: During the lifetime of an application environment, it is commonplace to add additional capacity. Specifically for WebSphere environments, this often means adding more nodes and application servers into your landscape. WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0 makes it simple (click of a button) to add more nodes and application servers to a virtual system you previously deployed. Using this new capability, you can quickly scale up your application environment to meet the changing demands of its users. Conversely, you can scale down the environment and remove unnecessary nodes with the simple click of a button as well.

- Intelligence for the runtime: I always talk about the WebSphere intelligence the appliance delivers in terms of deploying and constructing WebSphere application environments. The addition of the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition Intelligent Management Pack means this intelligence starts to make its way into the runtimes of your application environments. Use the new intelligent management pack to enable a policy-based approach to managing your applications. You can enforce application health actions, govern application response times, and even manage the rollout of new versions of your application with no service disruption.

- New Red Hat WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition: The WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition is a virtual image that includes everything from the operating system all the way to the WebSphere Application Server, pre-installed and pre-configured. Initial versions of this virtual image shipped with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Staring in WebSphere CloudBurst 2.0, users can use a new WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition virtual image for VMWare ESX that packages the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server operating system.

As WebSphere CloudBurst marches forward with new releases, a theme becomes apparent: Give users a choice. What do I mean? Well, just look at where WebSphere CloudBurst stands with the 2.0 release:

- You can use WebSphere CloudBurst to provision environments to VMware ESX, PowerVM, and z/VM hypervisor platforms

- You can use WebSphere CloudBurst to provision WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Process Server, DB2, and WebSphere Portal

- You can run your virtualized WebSphere application environments on SUSE, Red Hat, AIX, and zLinux operating systems

Want to see more about the 2.0 release? Check out my new video. This much is inarguable: For running WebSphere application environments in an on-premise cloud, nothing comes close to the capabilities of WebSphere CloudBurst.

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.

WebSphere Hypervisor Edition for AIX gets a date

Yesterday, IBM announced the dates for the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition for AIX.

Borrowing from the announce letter:

• Adds support for PowerVM hypervisor


• Optimizes WebSphere Application Server for virtualized environments enabling higher hardware utilization, while allowing you to spend less time on installation and configuration, and more time on strategic initiatives


• Manages installation and deployment of WebSphere Application Server and associated operating system in conjunction with WebSphere CloudBurst

The WebSphere Hyper Visor Edition for AIX will be available November 25th. The WebSphere Cloudburst appliance will ship preloaded with this support on January 29th, 2010.

We haven't talked much about Hypervisor Edition or Cloudburst on this blog. Anyone interested in us talking more about the benefits and typical uses of this technology? The net, net of Hypervisor Edition is its a packaging vehicle of the application server environments for virtualized environments (doing the things you'd want a virtualized image to do correctly) that works with (or without) the CloudBurst appliance that deploys such environments to your private clouds used in testing and production.