Configure a SmartCloud enterprise image using the WebSphere Cast iron

The industry is rapidly embracing cloud technology to improve internal efficiency and launch new cloud services. In such a context, the ability to quickly and efficiently integrate, aggregate, and provide multiple classes of differentiated cloud services is critical to cloud service providers. The Proxy service platform also plays an important role here. They provide a pre-built environment for exposing and reselling cloud services. Managing new service providers in this proxy service platform means managing User Configuration, service versioning, service activation, service deletion, and so on.

For faster service activation and better market response, you can use IBM WebSphere Cast Iron to connect the proxy service platform to a cloud service provider. This simplifies and shortens the time-to-market for new cloud services in the proxy platform.

Figure 1 is an overview of the key components of this proxy platform. At the top, end users request cloud services through a store. The store is typically based on a standard business platform, offering a good shopping experience and experience unrelated to cloud technology and selling services based on IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS.

At the bottom, different cloud service providers offer multiple categories of differentiated cloud services. In the middle, WebSphere Cast Iron provides an integration layer that typically leverages APIs that are materialized by different cloud service providers to provide a secure connection between the proxy service provider's data center and the cloud service.

Figure 1. Use Cast Iron as a hybrid to gather into the platform

There are two main types of agent service providers:

For cloud service providers, IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, which is part of IBM SmartCloud products, provides a secure, scalable, managed IT infrastructure, and provides on-demand access to virtual servers and storage resources.

This article provides steps for using the SmartCloud REST API to perform a SmartCloud instance configuration request from Cast Iron without writing any code. This operation is based on the Cast Iron Studio V6.1.0.3 and SmartCloud REST API Reference version 2.0. This article does not provide an IBM SmartCloud Enterprise account, you need to have your own account.

WebSphere Cast Iron and smartcloud Enterprise integration scenarios

The IBM WebSphere Cast Iron solution is a complete and powerful platform that was originally designed to meet the specific requirements of connecting all cloud applications, all preset applications, and any combination of two sets of applications.

The WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud Integration technology simplifies data migration and application integration, and provides everything you need to accomplish this type of project with a "just configuration, no coding" approach that requires no professional programmer or middleware expert. Some enterprises choose to integrate their applications in a few days using the WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud integration technology, costing 80% less than other traditional methods.

On the other hand, IBM Cloud (also known as IBM SmartCloud Enterprise) is an IBM-hosted IaaS product designed to support corporate entities, providing a public, shared, virtualized, and user-managed environment that can be accessed through the Internet, and pay according to the amount of usage.

SmartCloud has several APIs (a JAVA™API, a command-line interface API) that contains a REST API. This REST API is best suited for cast Iron integration, and this article describes how to use it in cast Iron (see Figure 2).

Cast Iron Executes the SmartCloud instance creation request and replies with a custom response message that contains the request ID of the instance creation request.

Figure 2. Cast Iron and SmartCloud integration scene

First, let's take a look at the SmartCloud REST API.

Using the SmartCloud REST API

To interact with SmartCloud, you need to have some basic understanding of its REST API. This section provides a brief description of the common mechanism.

Overview

The SmartCloud REST API manages SmartCloud instances of Third-party applications. You can use a standard set of HTTP methods to access all resources through a unique URL built from a base URL. The basic URL is: https://www-147.ibm.com/computecloud/enterprise/api/rest/20100331.

The URL will be referenced in the remainder of the article as <base_url>.

For example, to access the list of data center locations, use the following resources Uri:get <base_url>/locations.

Request and Response formats

The REST API service for SmartCloud supports two types of response coding formats: XML and JSON (JavaScript Object notation). The default response format is XML. This article uses only XML format. SmartCloud-oriented REST API service provides an XSD schema for all XML requests and responses.

Security

SmartCloud-oriented REST API service is a secure WEB resource that uses Basic authentication. All requests to the API require that SSL be passed to ensure transport layer encryption.