Innovations within reach: It's fast, highly

consumable, deeply knowledgeable, uses patterns

– and it's purple
Top ten frequently asked questions about WebSphere
CloudBurst

Skill Level: Intermediate

Dustin Amrhein
Staff Software Engineer
IBM

27 Jan 2010

The IBM® WebSphere® CloudBurst™ Appliance is a cloud management device that

provides you with the ability to quickly and simply create, deploy, and manage
virtualized WebSphere middleware application environments in an on-premise cloud.
Because it's new and because it challenges traditional processes, WebSphere
CloudBurst tends to prompt more than a few questions from curious technical and
business audiences. Here are some of the most frequently asked about this
groundbreaking new appliance.
Each installment of Innovations within reach features new information and
discussions on topics related to emerging technologies, from both developer and
practitioner standpoints, plus behind-the-scenes looks at leading edge IBM®
WebSphere® products.

Finding your way in the cloud

The IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance provides the capability to create, deploy,
and manage virtualized WebSphere application environments in an on-premise
cloud. Since its first release in June 2009, followed by Version 1.1 in November
2009, we have observed a very healthy and broad interest in this new cloud

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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:

1. Do my WebSphere application environments run on the WebSphere

CloudBurst Appliance?

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.

2. What products can WebSphere CloudBurst provision into an on-premise

cloud?

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.

3. Do the virtual images provided by WebSphere CloudBurst include 32-bit or

64-bit environments?

Currently the virtual images provide 32-bit versions of each IBM software product
(WebSphere Application Server, DB2, and WebSphere Portal) and the operating

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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.

4. What hypervisors are supported by WebSphere CloudBurst?

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.

5. Is SUSE Linux the only operating system supported when deploying to

VMware ESX hypervisors?

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.

6. How is WebSphere CloudBurst different from other virtualization

management solutions?

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.

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7. Is WebSphere CloudBurst only meant for non-production (development or

test) environments. Can it be used for production environments? If so, what
value does it bring?

WebSphere CloudBurst can absolutely be used in production environments.

Although these environments are not usually as dynamic as their development and
test counterparts, the appliance brings capabilities very applicable to production
settings.

First of all, patterns make it easier to promote your middleware application

environments from development to test to production, or whatever your particular
promotion path may be. Moving an application environment from one context to
another -- say, staging to production -- might mean simply redeploying the pattern
and supplying new deploy-time parameters, or it might mean cloning the pattern you
used in staging and selecting a new virtual image that represents the operating
system environment or platform that you use in production. In either case, your
entire middleware configuration, including your applications and their associated
configuration, is preserved in the pattern, thereby limiting the opportunity for bugs to
be introduced by way of inconsistent configurations, and accelerating the overall
promotion process.

In addition to simplifying and hardening the process of promoting your middleware

application environments, WebSphere CloudBurst provides you with the ability to
simply and safely automate the application of both fixes and upgrades to your
application environments. The appliance drives the application of the fix or upgrade
after it has taken and stored a snapshot of the entire environment to provide a
simple rollback capability. This is crucial in production environments where
downtime must be kept at a minimum and last-known good configurations are crucial
assets.

8. Why is WebSphere CloudBurst shipped as an appliance?

There are three main reasons why WebSphere CloudBurst is delivered in the
appliance form factor:

• The appliance form factor provides a high level of consumability. You

simply drop in WebSphere CloudBurst, connect it to your network, do
some one-time initialization, and then you are ready to begin building your
on-premise cloud. Updates to the function of the appliance are provided
by way of firmware updates that are applied directly from the WebSphere
CloudBurst Web console. With the appliance, there is no need to install
and maintain software on several different machines.
• The appliance provides a dedicated and purpose-built compute resource.
WebSphere CloudBurst includes two mirrored hard disks to store virtual
images, script packages, patterns, and so on. You do not have to procure

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other resources on which to store these artifacts. The appliance also

provides the necessary memory and processing power to handle pattern
deployments, image imports, and other intensive compute resource
processes.
• Perhaps most importantly, the appliance provides an extremely secure
environment from which to create and manage your on-premise
WebSphere Application Server cloud. There is no shell or other
mechanism from which you can upload and execute code on the
appliance. The operating system in the appliance follows "Just Enough
Operating System" principles to further decrease the attack surface. All
contents stored on the appliance’s hard disks and flash memory are
encrypted with a private key that is unique to each and every appliance,
and that private key cannot be modified. And if all that isn’t enough, the
physical casing of the appliance is tamper resistant. If anyone were to
remove the casing in a malicious attempt to remove components, the
appliance is disabled and must be sent back to IBM to be reset before it
can be used again.
9. Can I use WebSphere CloudBurst to manage WebSphere Application Server
environments that were previously installed?

No. WebSphere CloudBurst provides management capabilities for the virtual

systems created from deploying patterns that exist on the appliance. There is no
way to point WebSphere CloudBurst at an existing environment and subsequently
use the appliance’s management capabilities with that environment.

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.

And finally, one bonus question...

11. Is the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance really purple?

Yes it is. Seriously, people ask this a lot!

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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.

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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

About the author

Dustin Amrhein
Dustin Amrhein joined IBM as a member of the development team for WebSphere
Application Server. While in that position, Dustin worked on the development of Web
services infrastructure and Web services programming models. In addition, Dustin
lead the technical effort in the development of a Java RESTful services framework. In
his current role, Dustin is a technical evangelist for emerging technologies in IBM’s
WebSphere portfolio. His current focus is on WebSphere technologies that deliver
cloud computing capabilities, including the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance.

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