Kategorie: technology

Kubespray.io takes the pain out of Kubernetes deployment

The post Kubespray.io takes the pain out of Kubernetes deployment appeared first on Mirantis | Pure Play Open Cloud.
There are a lot of differences between OpenStack and Kubernetes, but one thing they both share is that setting them up is far from trivial. Fortunately, the Kubernetes community seems to have learned some lessons from its big brother, and today they launched an updated Kubespray.io website, a web-based toolset for deploying Kubernetes clusters on (almost) any environment with Kubespray, the Kubernetes community deployment project.

What is Kubespray?
Kubespray, formerly Kargo, is a project under the Kubernetes community umbrella. It’s a set of tools designed for easily deploying production-ready Kubernetes clusters.
For example, say you wanted to deploy a Kubernetes cluster on your OpenStack cloud, with 2 masters, 2 minions, and 3 etcd nodes.  The first thing you’d need to do is make sure you had seven nodes available.  If you were using kubespray-cli, you could simply type:
kubespray openstack –masters 2 –nodes 2 –etcds 3
This command would not only create the instances, it would let Kubespray know where they are, so you could automatically deploy a cluster to them with a command such as:
kubespray deploy –openstack -u ubuntu
Kubespray supports multiple Linux distributions to host the Kubernetes clusters, including Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS/RHEL and Container Linux by CoreOS. It also supports multiple cloud providers as an underlay for the cluster deployment, including AWS, DigitalOcean, GCE, Azure and OpenStack, as well as bare metal installations.
Kubespray can deploy Kubernetes clusters that may consume both Docker and rkt as container runtimes for containerized workloads, and can deploy the cluster over a variety of networking plugins, including Flannel, Weave, Calico, and Canal, or it can use the built-in cloud provider networking instead.
Once your cluster is up and running, you can simply start using it as you would any other k8s cluster.
It’s that easy.
Well, almost.
OK, so what’s Kubespray.io, then?
You know how they say if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is?  Well, there’s no question that Kubespray makes it a heck of a lot easier to deploy Kubernetes than doing it by hand, but it’s still not simple.  Before you can get to the point of running those simple commands, you need to take care of all of the necessary configuration.
That’s where Kubespray.io comes in.
While Kubespray itself is a CLI-based tool, Kubespray.io is an easier-to-consume web-based service. It enhances the existing experience of provisioning, deployment and management of Kubernetes installations with the web-based user interface and other notable improvements.
For example, suppose you want to use Kubespray to deploy Kubernetes on 5 AWS instances, sized t2.large.  After entering your AWS credentials, you can simply specify these parameters directly from Kubespray.io.  (Make sure that your Region is set to us-west-2.)

From there, Kubespray simply does the provisioning, providing you a stream of the log so you can see what’s happening.
When it’s done, you’ll see a link to your dashboard:

Kubespray.io is under active development, so while you can currently deploy Kubernetes installations on Amazon Web Services and DigitalOcean, extending its support to cover GCE, Azure, OpenStack and others is in the project roadmap.

Kubespray was originally intended for developers trying out Kubernetes, but it’s evolved to include the ability to deploy Highly Available clusters. So whether you’re a hobbyist or getting really serious with your container orchestration plans, please join us at kubespray.io to deploy your first Kubernetes highly-customizable cluster, and let us know how it works for you, and how we can make it even better.
(This article was originally published at Kubespray.io.)
The post Kubespray.io takes the pain out of Kubernetes deployment appeared first on Mirantis | Pure Play Open Cloud.
Quelle: Mirantis

What new IBM APM capabilities deliver to your business

Today’s business environment increases the pressure on nearly everyone teams to go beyond their traditional roles. Everyone from infrastructure and operations professionals, application owners, application developers and DevOps team members now need  to help drive continuous innovation to meet business objectives.

Continuous innovation is driven by continuous delivery of new and updated applications. It is easy to see why application performance management (APM) tools have become such a necessity. IBM has long been recognized as an industry leader in application performance management, most recently by Forrester in their Application Performance Management Leadership report.
This week, we’re aiming to strengthen our leadership position with new enhancements to our IBM Cloud Application Performance Management offering.
Here’s what the latest version of IBM APM delivers:

Custom UI builder. Create your own dashboards to hand tailor the exact monitoring experience you need
Monitor your APIs. Ensure availability and performance of exposed APIs from your secured enterprise services, and determine root cause for problematic transactions that span through multiple backend services
Expanded coverage of application environments. This includes new support for IBM Middleware on Linux on Power LE and Linux on System z and other popular offerings.
Data retention. Retain and visualize data for trend analysis and export reports

We’ve also simplified the APM portfolio to two core offerings. IBM Cloud APM, Base is for IT operations teams. The other offering is IBM Cloud APM, Advanced for app owners, developers, DevOps teams, and IT Operations teams. Why? Each offering customizes more relevant performance information than ever before.
Here are some additional capabilities specific to each offering.
Cloud APM, Base

Create custom views with choice of metrics, the time frame, and the type of chart in which to display the data. These dashboards can also be exported to reports in a variety of formats
Receive Linux on IBM z Systems support for monitoring the Linux operating system, IBM WebSphere Applications Server, IBM DB2, IBM MQ, and IBM Integration
Monitor the Linux operating system, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and IBM DB2 with Linux on IBM Power Systems (Little Endian) support

Cloud APM, Advanced
Receive all of the capabilities mentioned for the Base offering, plus:

Unlock resource monitoring and transactions tracking of IBM API Connect environments
Also unlock resource monitoring and deep diagnostics for Java Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) runtimes
Track transactions and get deep diagnostics for Red Hat JBoss runtimes, added to the existing resource monitoring capabilities

For more information on IBM Cloud Application Performance Management, feel free to reach out to me. You can also take a look at our demo video showing how to easily identify slow website transactions and isolate the cause.
We also have industry-specific white papers taking a look at Application Performance Management and DevOps for the following:

Finance
Insurance
Telecommunications

The post What new IBM APM capabilities deliver to your business appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Australian digital-only bank improves the customer home loan experience

In the world of digital banking, bigger isn’t always necessarily better.
Australian digital-only bank UBank is aiming to disrupt the banking industry to deliver a simpler, better, smarter customer experience. Founded in 2008, UBank has been consistently pushing the boundaries of traditional banking, including introducing the first online home loan application in Australia.
Today, the UBank team continues to challenge itself to think about what it can do next for its customers, but it’s not looking to drive innovation with more people. The company has deliberately kept a limited headcount of around 200 employees. Yet it’s a growth business looking to attract more customers, which means the team must do things smarter and more efficiently. Without the shortcut of hiring more talent, the business has been challenged to become even more innovative and disruptive.
A truly agile operating model
As a way of building on this disruption mindset, the company looked to platform-as-a-service (PaaS) technology, which gives more control to developers and helps conserve resources. PaaS also helps speed time to market because it reduces barriers from idea to production, which means new products get to customers faster.
UBank evaluated cloud providers and chose to work with IBM. While it initially appeared that IBM was a better fit for large corporations, the IBM Watson and Cloud Adoption Leadership team‘s approach to focusing on the business outcome first and then showing how technology could support it second really hit the brief. The IBM team’s approach to solving problems and the Bluemix open standards were critical factors in leading UBank to trial Bluemix.
Partnering with IBM Bluemix
To get started, UBank visited the Bluemix Garage to test drive IBM Bluemix. With the help of experienced engineers from the cloud adoption leadership team, UBank created a Facebook plugin referral app for home loans. UBank leaders immediately saw real value in the speed of delivery and creation of new products. There was also a strong alignment in culture and methodology that brought the two teams together. Instead of a traditional approach, the Bluemix Garage team wowed the UBank team with its agile culture and fast-paced model.
The model allows UBank to trial different ideas, and if something doesn’t work, it can be scrapped and the company can move on to the next project. In this sense, Bluemix enabled innovation and showed how it could help teams reach for the next thing instead of worrying about an unsuccessful attempt. Further, lean and agile product teams can be truly autonomous and go from a new feature idea to production without having to work with multiple other teams and create it, avoiding friction.
Fast-tracking an AI experience
Growing its home loan customer base is a key objective for UBank, so it’s imperative to continuously refine and improve the application experience to make it as easy as possible for customers. Prior to this project, UBank significantly streamlined and simplified its online home loan application form to take as little as four minutes for prepared applicants. UBank also implemented a live chat capability to offer real-time support customers, but the team wanted to see if they could go further to find a more efficient solution.
In striving to do more, RoboChat was born. RoboChat is the first chatbot in Australia to help customers with their online home applications. UBank built an orchestration layer on IBM Bluemix that connects with the IBM Watson Conversation API to its current live chat solution, LiveEngage by LivePerson. RoboChat sits the UBank website and effectively acts as an additional staff member with a specific set of skills within the site’s existing live chat capability.
RoboChat took only two months from concept to production.
For UBank, working with the IBM Watson and cloud adoption leadership team and the Bluemix Garage felt like it was working with another startup with the right cultural fit to help accelerate innovation.
Read the case study or check out the press release for more details about RoboChat.
Learn more about IBM banking solutions.
The post Australian digital-only bank improves the customer home loan experience appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

My First Ansible Service (Video)

With this short video, we start a series based on Red Hat Knowledge Base articles exploring how to take advantage of Ansible automation inside Red Hat CloudForms.
In this first video we show:

How to enable Embedded Ansible in CloudForms
Set up a new Ansible GitHub repository
Create a new Service Catalog and Service Item
Provision and retire the new Service

 

 
The Red Hat Knowledge Base article, including the necessary playbooks to implement this example, are available on the Red Hat Customer Portal.
Quelle: CloudForms

Unlock the power of WebSphere z/OS on IBM Z

I’ve seen a lot of excitement from developers around the July 17th launch of the latest IBM Z hardware and software (z/OS), and justifiably so. There are clear, significant benefits of IBM Z, including its security, resiliency and performance characteristics that make it a platform worthy of running your mission-critical enterprise applications.
And for all of these reasons—and more—it’s also a great platform to run WebSphere Application Server (WAS).
Many of the largest and most successful enterprises and government agencies use WAS z/OS. They run thousands of runtime instances simultaneously to process billions of transactions per month. Like all current WAS offerings, WAS z/OS consists of two Java EE-compliant application server runtime environments. One is our “traditional” WAS (tWAS), the other is the newer WebSphere Liberty server. Both are fully supported, resilient, secure, production-ready servers  with unique operating characteristics, allowing you to choose the server that best suits your needs. But both tWAS and Liberty running on z/OS provide features that WAS is known for—and the z/OS platform extensions that IBM Z users expect.
We created Liberty a few years ago to better meet the needs of companies looking to develop a hybrid cloud infrastructure. It is composable, meaning it only includes the components your specific applications are using, making it lightweight and faster-starting. Liberty is also a pure Java-based server, enabling higher offload rates and therefore lower costs to users of IBM Z Systems Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) specialty engines.
Many IBM Z customers have begun to include WAS z/OS and Liberty as a core component of their application modernization strategies. They tell us it offers capabilities to modernize existing applications without the need to relocate them on another system.
As announced with the latest version of z/OS (V2R3), Liberty is now embedded in z/OS for use by elements and stack products. By sharing a single copy of Liberty, companies can reduce the maintenance overhead of multiple installed z/OS stack products.
Perhaps the best news? This embedded Liberty is also available at no additional charge for z/OS development use. Previously, WAS has been available at no charge for development use on desktop machines. So now you can think of this z/OS embedded Liberty as “WAS for developers on the mainframe.” It provides an excellent way to create an extended proof-of-concept to better understand how well your applications will run on z/OS, including zIIP offload characteristics.
So consider taking another look at IBM Z, specifically WAS z/OS, and WebSphere Liberty. This combination continues to grow and evolve, earning its reputation as a trusted and resilient platform designed to support companies’ most mission-critical work. If you’re ready to have an enterprise-grade platform that can deliver surpassed availability performance, and security, WAS z/OS is the solution for you.
Interested in learning more? Join our webcast on August 14, 2017 at 11 am EDT to hear directly from the experts about WAS z/OS on IBM Z.
The post Unlock the power of WebSphere z/OS on IBM Z appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Cognitive disruption: Where man and machine become one

In 2017, digital disruption is history. If you are not thinking about cognitive disruption, your business is way behind the technology curve.
In the recent IBM annual survey of global CEOs, about 73 percent say cognitive computing will play an important role in the near future of their organizations, with the same sentiment echoed by other top executives as well. While almost three-fourths of CEOs agree that their businesses, and their industries, will be disrupted by cognitive computing in the near future, surprisingly only about half of these CEOs are planning to adopt cognitive computing by 2019.
While that may seem stunning, the primary reason is pretty clear: infusing cognition into an existing infrastructure is extremely difficult.
As an example, the cognitive brain known as IBM Watson took decades to build, cost hundreds of millions of dollars and involved thousands of super-bright engineers. Given the substantial investment required to build cognitive apps, the average enterprise may not have the tolerance or the capital to expend resources at that level. Therefore, it’s critical to look for a cloud platform that not only brings a robust, scalable, and secure environment, but also comes with cognitive capabilities already infused at the core of the platform.
Let’s take a step back and ask, “What is cognitive computing?” It is an effort to mimic the human brain’s learning process, thought process, reasoning, analysis, and decision making. At times people get confused this with machine learning (ML), business intelligence (BI), deep learning (DL) and other existing analytical solutions.
A major difference between existing systems and cognitive systems is that cognitive systems can understand what’s called “dark data.” Dark data, also known as unstructured data, cannot be analyzed by existing systems to get insights that can help with the decision making.
Dark data is growing exponentially, as it is estimated to be about 80 percent of world’s current data collection. It’s estimated to grow to about 90 percent by 2020. This noisy, mostly machine-unreadable data comes from unstructured data groups such as images, telematics, sensor information, video, audio and so on.
The other difference is that cognitive systems can help users move away from the “programmable era” and into the “cognitive era.” Historically, computers needed to be programmed explicitly on what to recognize and how to react to different scenarios. However, these traditional, non-cognitive systems hit a brick wall when they encounter a scenario that they are not programmed for.
In contrast, cognitive systems have critical thinking capability, much like a human brain. When presented with a new scenario, they can learn, understand, analyze the situation and act without the need for additional programming to make authoritative decisions.
Ultimately, cognitive computing is not about mankind against the machines, as Terminator movie series would suggest. It is about machines collaborating with mankind, augment the human brain, man and the machine turning into one, with specific goal in mind. It is about the machines helping mankind. Now is the time to work together to build smarter cognitive solutions and apps for your enterprise using IBM Watson Cloud Platform.
In my next post, I’ll discuss how Watson can help organizations achieve their goals.
Learn more about IBM Watson Developer Cloud.
The post Cognitive disruption: Where man and machine become one appeared first on Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud