Enterprise-oriented cloud computing, part 3rd: Creating a private cloud using WebSphere Cloudburst

Brief introduction

Data center costs include three components: hardware, physical costs (such as energy and refrigeration), and administration. Among the three, administrative costs are a significant part of the overall continuing cost. Therefore, eliminating manual processes, errors, and repetitive content will greatly reduce and control IT costs.

The new IBM WebSphere Cloudburst Appliance and IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition provide deployment and management capabilities for rapid, repeatable deployment of WEBSPH ERE application The Server environment, thereby significantly reducing the administrative requirements associated with these activities. In addition, by leveraging virtualization and cloud computing principles, WebSphere Cloudburst can efficiently leverage a shared resource pool-a private cloud-to reduce infrastructure costs.

This article provides an introduction to the WebSphere Cloudburst and WebSphere application Server Hypervisor Edition, and discusses how these new products can introduce the great benefits of private cloud computing to WebSphere Enterprises Environment.

Private Cloud

As discussed in earlier articles in this series, cloud computing solutions have many forms: the public cloud, the hybrid cloud, and the private cloud. The type of cloud is often defined according to the location of the physical resource and data. For a private cloud, we mean a cloud that exists within the corporate firewall, and all computing resources and services that make up the cloud are protected by firewalls.

While private clouds do not free you from the responsibility to acquire and maintain computational resources, there are many reasons why companies should choose a private cloud over a public cloud:

Security and Compliance: You may need to more tightly control and monitor how and where the data is stored than a typical public cloud service.

Provides functionality that cannot be implemented through a public cloud: You may need a very specific vendor technology, or you may need availability assurance, and the use of a public cloud does not suffice.

Private cloud can be a financial asset: if you have a large existing data center investment, you may want to optimize these existing resources without buying a public cloud service. Even companies that do not have the cost of this kind of investment often see the price advantage of an internal (on-premise) solution because the flexibility of an external (off-premise) solution costs something (like renting a car and buying a car).

Private Cloud solutions deliver many of the same advantages as the public cloud, such as cost reduction, business agility, and enhanced innovation. The main difference is that you gain complete control over the cloud (and responsibility).

Introduction to WebSphere Cloudburst

WebSphere Cloudburst is a new product provided by IBM that includes hardware and software features for creating and managing internal private clouds. WebSphere Cloudburst provides the ability to build, deploy, and maintain virtualized WebSphere application server configurations, covering many configurations ranging from single server deployment to more complex cluster deployments.

Figure 1. WebSphere Cloudburst

As shown in Figure 1, the WebSphere Cloudburst consists of three basic parts:

Devices: The actual WebSphere Cloudburst appliance includes hardware, management applications, and a set of pre-installed and pre-configured WebSphere application Server virtual images and schemas. All access to the WebSphere Cloudburst is done through a supported interface, using the WEB 2.0 user Interface, the complete Command line Interface (CLI), or the REST API.

Cloud: WebSphere Cloudburst supports the "Use your own cloud" model, which provides management programs (hypervisor), network functionality, and storage for use by devices. The cloud is where the deployed WebSphere applications run, and they do not run on the WebSphere Cloudburst appliance.

Virtual systems. WebSphere Cloudburst provides tools to customize the images and schemas provided by IBM to create a service catalog for your WebSphere application and to provide a variety of features to bring WebSphere application Server The virtual system is assigned to a private cloud. The WebSphere Cloudburst appliance includes intelligent layout capabilities to deploy WebSphere application Server mode to the cloud and ensure efficient cloud resource utilization and high availability. Once the model is deployed, WebSphere Cloudburst provides management and optimization capabilities, including a mechanism for applying patches to the environment.

WebSphere Cloudburst Appliance addresses escalating server costs and middleware management and governance issues from a number of dimensions. WebSphere Cloudburst provides the tools to build a consistent, repeatable WebSphere application Server deployment. These deployments are optimized for virtualized environments, enabling you to reduce management costs and leverage the benefits of server consolidation in this environment. In addition, WebSphere Cloudburst has applied best practices to identify and tune configurations.

WebSphere Cloudburst is also available for integration scenarios involving deployment and service management tools from IBM's rational® and tivoli® series. These integration features provide you with seamless, end-to-end workflows that dramatically improve IT efficiency and agility.

Why Choose WebSphere cloudburst appliance?

As you can see from the name, the WebSphere cloudburst appliance is actually a device. Delivering this new product in the form of equipment can bring many benefits:

Usability: The device provides a high degree of usability. After you connect to the device and accept the initial license, the WebSphere Cloudburst console is available immediately. No additional installation steps are required, and you can start building your private WebSphere cloud immediately.

Security: The WebSphere Cloudburst appliance is similar to IBM WebSphere Datapower®soa appliance and provides a very solid layer of protection. In addition, WebSphere Cloudburst applies encryption to SSL certificates, passwords, virtual images, applications, and all content stored in them. Users interact with WebSphere Cloudburst using one of the following three interfaces: A WEB 2.0 user interface, a complete Command line Interface, or a REST API. There are no other access points (such as command-line shells), so there is less chance of malicious attacks.

Performance: WebSphere Cloudburst Appliance as a dedicated storage for the accompanying and customized WebSphere application Server virtual images and schemas. The device includes advanced compression and storage technology that allows users to store large numbers of large virtual images. The device also delivers processing capabilities for managing these virtual images and enables you to create a private WebSphere cloud.

Now, let's take a detailed look at the WebSphere application Server virtual images and schemas, which are essential components of the WebSphere Cloudburst.

Pre-loaded images and patterns

A virtual image is the basic element that makes up a WebSphere cloudburst product. In particular, the new WebSphere application Server Hypervisor Edition is the building ground for the WebSphere Cloudburst model. The WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition (Figure 2) is a special edition of WebSphere Application server, running on top of a hypervisor and optimized for virtual environments. (packaged can be used for both WebSphere application Server v6.1.0.x and v7.0.0.x). The first edition of WebSphere Application server Hypervisor Edition contains WebSphere Application server binaries and configuration files, IBM HTTP server, and a SLES Li Nux operating system, all content is preinstalled and packaged using the Open virtualization Format (OVF).

Because virtual images are pre-installed, configured, and tuned, you can achieve a fast return on investment (ROI) because you do not need to install WebSphere application Server again.

Figure 2. WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition

WebSphere Cloudburst introduces the idea of the schema, in this sense, the layout structure of the components contained in the WebSphere application Server Hypervisor Edition. These modes are deployable units that can be run immediately on VMware ESX or ESXi servers. Figure 3 Graphically depicts a representative WebSphere Cloudburst pattern.

Figure 3. WebSphere Cloudburst Mode

The patterns shipped with WebSphere Cloudburst accumulate expertise and feedback from users and technicians over the past decade to build a WebSphere application Server environment. In addition to delivering deployable topologies, WebSphere Cloudburst is tuned to the WebSphere application Server environment for specific patterns to ensure that the environment contains the most relevant and valuable best practice knowledge.