Contents
2 Abstract 3 Introduction
4 Building on the capabilities of WebSphere
Application Server
4 Providing an expert, integrated environment
7 Accelerating application development and deployment 9 Comparing IBM PureApplication System to
traditional environments
10 Experiencing the value of IBM PureApplication System 10 Accelerating the transition to the cloud
11 Empowering the organization
Abstract
Businesses that depend on web applications are constantly looking for ways to increase the efficiency of developing new applications and reduce the complexity of administering the environment. But many of the tasks required for application development, configuration and deployment are
time-consuming and expensive. IT is under pressure to control these costs while ensuring that applications will run smoothly and web-based interactions will be fast, responsive and secure. The complementary capabilities of IBM® WebSphere® Application Server and IBM PureApplication™ System can help address these challenges. Organizations around the world use WebSphere Application Server to host the Java-based web applications that make today’s commerce possible, and WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 provides the resiliency, simplicity and control organizations need today. With IBM PureApplication System, organizations can further reduce IT lifecycle complexity in order to speed application deployment and enable simplified management of cloud and virtualization environments.
Introduction
Because of modern business complexity, many critical projects are delivered behind schedule and over budget, limiting the business agility that organizations need to be truly competitive. Demands for rapid application development and delivery are driving simplified, integrated and automated development and operational lifecycles for businesses.
Achieving these goals requires organizations to take action in several key areas:
• Consolidation: Consolidate applications and underlying systems more efficiently to reduce operating expenses • Optimization: Better tune and automate applications to
improve performance, scalability and reliability
• Innovation: Deliver new applications and services more rapidly to meet business needs
• Acceleration: Deploy applications into a secure and integrated private cloud environment more quickly Three basic approaches have emerged to address these
Building on the capabilities of WebSphere
Application Server
The combination of IBM PureApplication System and WebSphere Application Server is designed to provide the best features of self-tuned systems, appliances and the cloud. Organizations that are already realizing the benefits of WebSphere Application Server can gain further advantages— including increased agility and substantial savings of time and resources—by running WebSphere Application Server applications on IBM PureApplication System.
The flagship product in the IBM WebSphere software suite, WebSphere Application Server supports a broad range of platforms and flexible approaches to application management, from simple solutions to those requiring high availability and high quality of service. The newest release of WebSphere Application Server, V8.5, provides advanced capabilities, including improved application resiliency and intelligent application management. Operations, security, control and integration have all been streamlined. Fast, flexible, simplified tools and processes provide an enhanced developer experience.
IBM PureApplication System adds additional value to WebSphere Application Server V8.5 capabilities (see Figure 1). The system provides an integrated, cloud-ready application platform with: • Factory integration of the infrastructure with WebSphere
Application Server
• Integrated IBM DB2® database software • Built-in application migration capability
• Application readiness with workload deployment capability, built-in elasticity and data placement optimizations
• Enhanced application developer control for simplified test and development
• A single management console and monitoring view for complete platform and infrastructure management
Providing an expert, integrated
environment
Figure 1: Capabilities provided by WebSphere Application Server 8.5 and IBM PureApplication System.
Capabilities IBM WebSphere Application
Server Version 8.5
IBM PureApplication System
Self-service, single management console for VM provisioning Cloud administration
Multi-tenancy, isolation
Basic, single image composition, manipulation Rapid, scalable provisioning
Automatic fault-tolerant hardware and software
Image library (search/compare, versioning and software stacks) Virtual system patterns
Virtual application patterns Runbook automation
Solution extensibility and integration Service usage and accounting Capacity planning analytics
Built-in cloud monitoring (virtual and physical) Delivered on integrated, optimized system Integrated hardware management
The pre-entitled, pre-integrated stack combines infrastructure and application platform components with proven expertise (see Figure 2). Expertise is delivered through built-in patterns that come preloaded on IBM PureApplication System, including an IBM web application pattern.
This built-in expertise drives automated features that help reduce operational costs while enhancing availability, security and responsiveness of the WebSphere Application Server environment. For example, environments automatically scale up and down based on business service-level agreements (SLAs) specified by the organization. Failed virtual machines are replaced with new virtual machines (VMs) that are configured with the old VM’s identity. And web requests are automatically load balanced across multiple virtual application servers. Security is also built in, with access control lists (ACLs) for application sharing and management access and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration for application security. IBM PureApplication System patterns are not just blueprints or sets of instructions; the expertise is codified and immediately executable. These patterns are learned from decades of client and partner engagements that are captured, tested and refined in the development lab. IBM PureApplication System is pre-optimized for IBM application patterns that ship with the system, and more than 200 patterns optimized by independent software vendors (ISVs) and IBM Business Partners are also available online through the PureSystems Centre. Additionally, businesses can build and capture their own custom patterns with the IBM PureApplication System pattern development kit.
Figure 2: Infrastructure, application and pattern components of IBM PureApplication System.
Patterns of expertise
• A deployable form of proven best practices from years of experience and expertise to simplify complex tasks
For more information on patterns and their uses, see the white paper “Understanding Patterns of Expertise: Virtual Application Patterns” at ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=W
H&infotype=SA&appname=SWGE_WA_WA_USEN&htmlfid=WA W12350USEN&attachment=WAW12350USEN.PDF
Accelerating application development
and deployment
In many organizations, it can take days to request and set up a development environment, leaving less time for testing and innovation. To address this challenge, organizations can use the patterns in IBM PureApplication System to enable faster setup of test and development environments and quicker application deployment than is possible with most standard approaches. Once a developer creates an application, there is no need to request the opportunity and resources for testing the application. Using self-service, the developer can perform all the necessary tasks by remotely leveraging virtual instances through a web browser.
Patterns simplify the installation, integration and management of numerous components that make up an application
deployment. The IBM Virtual Application Builder graphical user interface enables choices to be made based on desired business outcomes for the application (see Figure 3). As these selections are made, the system’s built-in expertise provisions the environment and performs all of the configuration and integration necessary to deploy virtual machines running in the cloud. Application developers can also access the PureSystems Centre online catalog of applications and solutions to quickly extend IBM PureApplication System capabilities.
In addition to simplifying application development, the system enables a simplified experience across the spectrum of IT responsibilities. For example, IT technicians can set up the factory-installed, fully packaged solution out of the box by simply plugging it in and booting it up. IT architects benefit from management integration across the system and open standards for easy integration into existing environments. And data center managers can upgrade with zero downtime based on integrated patches and system design.
Real-world results on IBM PureApplication System
As a built-for-cloud platform system that simplifies deployment and management of WebSphere Application Server applications, IBM PureApplication System delivers tangible results. Organizations can:
• Have the system up and running—including installation, configuration and tuning—in less than four hours1
• Deploy a three-tier web application in under 15 minutes2
and automatically scale it in minutes3
• Concurrently manage 1,000 or more virtual machines on a single IBM PureApplication System W1500-6084
• Optimize for up to 60 percent better price/performance running typical web and database applications over a competitor’s configuration5
• Automatically gain a throughput improvement of up to 2.3 times for data-intensive applications6
Comparing IBM PureApplication System to
traditional environments
IBM PureApplication System is designed to deliver faster time-to-value, a more integrated service and software management view, and simpler workload scalability, support and flexibility compared to traditional environments.
Time-to-value
Traditional environments can require months to buy, integrate, test and deploy new servers, storage, networking, operation systems and middleware. With IBM PureApplication System, the complete infrastructure stack can be up and running in hours.
Service and software management
Traditional methods can require multiple management tools for individual components with different interfaces. IBM PureApplication System provides a single point of management for the entire system and all included components.
Workload scalability
Organizations using traditional systems often feel the need to over-purchase and over-provision systems to address worst-case workload spikes. IBM PureApplication System includes built-in workload elasticity and automation to cost-effectively handle changing workload demands.
Support
Traditionally, multiple support contacts are required for the various hardware and software components. With the complete, pre-integrated IBM PureApplication System, organizations have a single point of contact for support of the entire solution.
Flexibility
Experiencing the value of IBM
PureApplication System
Organizations using IBM PureApplication System for Web Application Server applications benefit from the removal of manual steps and automated delivery for fast time-to-value and increased agility in responding to business opportunities. Costs and resource requirements are reduced with the pre-integrated and optimized environment, and the patterns built into the system reduce the amount of in-house expertise needed. The system also enables applications to be implemented in a repeatable, optimized way that significantly lowers the risk of human error. Real-world experience shows how the value adds up.
Case in point: Government agency
Business need: Rapidly create a highly responsive, private cloud computing environment for analytics workloads related to national security
With IBM PureApplication System:
• Pre-integration and rapid implementation meet the demanding timeline
• System successfully meets the extreme peaks and troughs inherent in analytics workloads
• Costs reduced across the development and operations lifecycle
Case in point: Global UK bank
Business need: Reduce the time and cost of delivering application and platform services
With IBM PureApplication System:
• Application delivery time shortened from six weeks to two minutes
• Patterns and tooling reduce application migration costs by GBP800,000
• Systems monitoring and administration costs reduced by GBP670,000
• Provisioning and patching costs reduced by GBP500,000
Accelerating the transition to the cloud
IBM SmartCloud® supports application patterns across deployment options. For private clouds, organizations can deploy patterns to an IBM PureApplication System infrastructure in a repeatable, self-service manner. For public clouds, organizations can deploy patterns to SmartCloud Application Services, or leverage the public cloud for testing of their applications that will later be deployed into production in a private cloud environment.Empowering the organization
Organizations that run WebSphere Application Server applications on IBM PureApplication System can deploy new applications and services much faster than with traditional approaches. They can also use repeatable patterns to help ensure adherence to IT policies, such as security or architecture mandates, for improved governance. They no longer need to manually scale out the topology to support a demand spike, because the system detects changes in demand and reacts based on policies—helping to reduce support costs.
Ultimately, IBM WebSphere Application Server plus IBM PureApplication System add up to increased business agility for organizations in today’s fast-paced competitive environment.
For more information
To learn more about IBM PureApplication System, see your IBM representative or visit: ibm.com/ibm/puresystems/
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1 Based on testing of IBM PureApplication System W1500-96 with time measured from powering on the system to when it is ready to support application deployments.
2 Based on testing of IBM PureApplication System W1500-192 deploying a single Virtual Application Pattern consisting of two WAS VMs plus a DB2 VM, and updating the Elastic Load Balancer. The WAS VMs were allocated four vCPUs, 4 GB of memory and 12 GB of disk while the DB2 VM was allocated eight vCPUs, 6 GB memory and virtual disks of 12 GB and 4 GB.
3 Based on testing, under various workload conditions, of IBM PureApplication System W1500-192 automatically scaling a Virtual Application Pattern of WAS VMs by adding an extra WAS VM.
WAW12361-USEN-00 4 Based on testing of IBM PureApplication System W1500-608 (9.7 TB
RAM, 6.4 TB solid-state disk, 48 TB heard-disk drive and 2.6 GHz Sandy Bridge processors). VMs were deployed using the Virtual System Pattern methodology and were deployed as a WAS 8.5 five-node cluster that deploys five virtual machines consisting of one deployment manager, three custom WebSphere nodes and one IBM HTTP Server. Each VM had default CPU and memory settings of one virtual CPU and 2 GB of memory.
5 Based on IBM internal tests of IBM PureApplication System W1500-96 compared to results of testing of a competitor’s configuration (previous version; no longer available) executing an online Java Enterprise Edition trading application workload in a controlled laboratory environment and a three-year total cost of acquisition (based on US list prices). The cost calculation compares the average cost per request. Three-year total cost of acquisition includes expected hardware, software, service and support. Users of this document should verify the applicable data for their specific environment.
6 Up to 2.3x performance, measured in transactions per second, of a Virtual System Pattern consisting of a disk I/O-intensive application workload based upon testing of IBM PureApplication System W1500-96 when IBM Storwize® Easy Tier® capability leverages a solid-state disk for frequently accessed data versus the same workload running on hard disk drives prior to automated optimization.