Introducing WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter : Traditional WAS leveraging the benefits of IBM Cloud Private!
Application modernization is the transition of existing applications to new approaches on the cloud…
IBM clients are seeking solutions that provide an iterative approach to application modernization based on the business needs and application complexity.
Businesses prioritize leveraging existing investments and adopting new technologies at their pace. As WebSphere application workloads grow onto cloud environments, the benefits received from the cloud will continue to grow. Adoption of best practices and technologies aimed at rapid-fire application delivery for business innovation and responsiveness, high security, availability and privacy are some of the benefits on Application Modernization on IBM Cloud Private.
IBM Cloud Private makes it easy to stand up an elastic runtime that is based on Kubernetes. Now, for workload styles that need to stay in VMs, we are adding WebSphere Application Server for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter as an option.
WebSphere Application Server (WAS) for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter has great attraction as a way to get your traditional WAS migrated to up-to-date WAS V9 integrated with IBM Cloud Private Core Operational Services!
IBM provides an additional proven approach for modernization — best practices, tools and technologies to assist our customers on the Application Modernization Journey.
Let me quickly lay down the benefits of WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter:
Reduce development cycle time through streamlined administration, development, and testing. The most significant benefits are the reduced wait times experienced by developers and test engineers to gain access to new environments. Especially later version of WebSphere as V7/V8 End of Service will create the need to dev/test on the latest WebSphere Application Server.
Increase speed-to-market and improve end user experience. Through automated application delivery, business teams are able to introduce new functionality at a much faster rate, allowing them to be more responsive to customer needs while identifying new business opportunities.
Hardware Capital Avoidance : The efficiency gains from rightsizing the application environments and the savings related to reclamation of unused capacity on-prem.
Automate and standardize delivery of infrastructure that extend your Traditional WAS VM topologies in an IBM Cloud Private management plane using Cloud Automation Manager to seamlessly manage your private cloud along side your Kubernetes workloads in IBM Cloud Private.
Here is an example of an Architecture Diagram showing WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter deployed as a service in the IBM Cloud Private Catalog. Meaning IBM Cloud Private Kubernetes workloads with traditional WAS VMs (as VM based Middleware) provisioned beside it, with WebSphere ultimate integrating into IBM Cloud Private operational core services management place.
This journey is not all about WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter. IBM Cloud Private users can leverage Transformation Advisor — a tool that will analyze your existing your WAS applications and give you prescriptive guidance on what to move and leverage WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter as the target for “Complex Scenarios” which require VM based topologies.
IBM Cloud Automation Manager is leveraged underneath the covers to automate the deployment of your traditional WAS topologies to your existing VMware environment by leveraging Terraform templates and Chef cookbooks. WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter is the starting point in IBM Cloud Private for end-to-end automation deployment and efficient management of traditional WAS workloads.
In summary, existing WebSphere Application Server customers have an integrated starting point for an e2e framework for App Modernization with the tools, technologies and services to be successful on IBM Cloud Private… and seeding the ultimate goal of getting to Cloud Enabled and Cloud Native WebSphere workloads in IBM Cloud Private!
To get you started, we have created several artifacts that allow you to quickly leverage WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter “Community Edition” and see some initial benefits of Application Modernization.
WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter “Community Edition” Next Steps:
- Check out the GitHub repository
- Review the developerWorks Recipe on how to set up WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter “Community Edition”
- IBM Cloud Private provides the catalog, the deployment engine, and a management plane. We created a Helm chart with the configuration parameter and setup steps needed for an admin to install WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter “Community Edition”. Setup and Installation covers the following plus video:
- Service container
- Service UI
- Content and installation scripts
- Templates
- Customer configuration
- Skeleton YAML file
- Network customization file
4. Once WAS for IBM Cloud Private VM Quickstarter “Community Edition” is setup in the catalog, developers, testers, and operations can leverage the simple GUI to deploy WebSphere Application Server clusters and nodes in VMs.
Stay tuned for additional updates on Application Modernization on IBM Cloud Private and enhancement to the journey of WebSphere to Cloud!
A great primer on deciding how to invest in which workload type between traditional WebSphere and WAS Liberty can be absorbed here..Traditional WebSphere or Liberty: how to choose?
