Kategorie: technology

Deploying CloudForms in Microsoft Azure

In this article we will deploy the CloudForms appliance in the Azure cloud. Red Hat provides CloudForms as an appliance. For Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure, Red Hat provides a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) as a dynamic disk. Azure, unfortunately, does not support dynamic disks. In order to import the CloudForms appliance into Azure, we need to convert the appliance VHD to a fixed disk.
The VHD will have a fixed size of around 40GB. To prevent having to upload 40GB and only upload the actual data which is closer to 2GB, we will use several tools. You can of course use Powershell, using the Azure cmdlets, or if you are a Linux guy like me, Microsoft has provided a tool written in Go that works great for uploading disks to Azure. In addition Microsoft provides a command line (Azure CLI) similar to the functionality of Powershell, but written in Python.
Convert VHD from Dynamic to Fixed
The first question you might have is why provide a dynamic disk? Well Red Hat doesn’t want you to have to download a 40GB image so they provide a dynamic disk. In the next steps we will take that image, convert to fixed disk and upload to Azure.
First, we need to convert the image to a raw image. We can do this using qemu-tools. To do so, we need to compute the appropriate size for the new disk image and resize it. I‘ve written a quick script that will do this. You can get it here.
Upload and Run CloudForms
In order to upload the disk image to Azure and run it, you need to use the Microsoft Azure VHD tools and Azure CLI tools as I mentioned previously. They are written in Go, so you may also need to install Go as well. The steps I took in my environment are at the end of this post.
The command to upload the disk image is:
$ ./azure-vhd-utils upload –localvhdpath /home/cfme-azure-5.7.0.17-1.vhd –stgaccountname <storage account> –stgaccountkey <storage key> –containername templates –blobname cfme-azure-5.7.0.17-1.vhd –parallelism 8
You need to substitute your own values into the storage account and storage key values. Once the upload completes you can deploy the CloudForms Appliance in Azure. In order to do this we will use the Azure CLI.
The following command creates the CloudForms VM from the VHD you just uploaded.
$ azure vm image create cfme-azure-5.7.0.17-1 –blob-url https://premiumsadpdhlose2disk.blob.core.windows.net/templates/cfme-azure-5.7.0.17-1.vhd –os Linux /home/cfme-azure-5.7.0.17-1.vhd
Note that you can also use the Azure portal UI to create the CloudForms VM once the image is uploaded.
Configure CloudForms in Azure
Once the CloudForms Appliance is deployed you can access it using username/password or ssh-key, depending on what you chose when creating VM in Azure.
That‘s it! You can now configure the CloudForms appliance just as you would normally.
Summary
In this article we explored how to deploy the CloudForms appliance in the Azure cloud. CloudForms provides a single-pane for administering various cloud platforms. Having a CloudForms appliance deployed in Azure gives you more responsive management over Azure resources.
Happy Clouding in Azure!

Note: As I mentioned, the Azure VHD tools are written in Go so you need to first install Go. I installed version 1.7.4.
$ gunzip go1.7.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz
$ tar xvf go1.7.4.linux-amd64.tar
$ cd go
Export the environment parameters
$ mkdir $HOME/work
$ export GOPATH=$HOME/work
$ export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin
Then install the VHD tools
$ go get github.com/Microsoft/azure-vhd-utils
Similarly, to use the Azure CLI, you need to install Python and dependencies first. (These may already be on your system, but are provided here for completeness.)
$ sudo dnf install python
$ sudo dnf install python-pip
$ sudo dnf install python-devel
$ sudo dnf install openssl-devel
$ sudo dnf install npm
Then you can install the Azure CLI
$ sudo npm install azure-cli -g
$ sudo pip install –upgrade pip
$ sudo pip install azure==2.0.0rc5
 
Quelle: CloudForms

How businesses can get the cognitive edge

The buzz in the computing industry is all about cognitive.
My clients are at various stages of understanding its implications. They want to know what cognitive truly is and how it solves real business challenges.
So what is cognitive?  As many observers have noted, it’s not a specific product. Instead, it’s an era that includes multiple vendors and various technologies. The move to this new era is driven by changes in the data landscape. Cognitive computing is vital to turning zettabytes of data into meaningful information. It enables computers to understand, reason and learn without a person programming everything to achieve answers.
For a business, cognitive’s implications are enormous. It is the “disruptive enabler.”
IBM has identified five areas where a business can benefit now if it starts building a cognitive business:

Drive deeper engagement. Help clients behind the scenes for better customer experience.
Scale expertise. Companies spend lots of money training employees. This can be scaled more effectively.
Put learning in every product. Build products that adapt to each customer&#8217;s needs.
Change operations. Streamline your supply chain to help margins.
Transform how discovery is done. From pharmaceuticals to financial industries, research will be the foundation of how many companies work in the future.

In our survey of companies on a cognitive journey, the results were profound. For advanced users, the gains in customer engagement and the ability to respond faster to market needs were nearly doubled compared to beginners. Improvements to productivity and efficiency were just as significant.
For example, Mueller, a privately held company that employs 700 people across four manufacturing and distribution centers in the south-central United States, has implemented cognitive systems to assist with revenue forecasting, supply chain management, marketing, employee health and safety, and talent management. Within 12 months, one solution returned 113 percent on investment, creating a net annual benefit of more than $780,000, and reducing scrap metal waste by 20 to 30 percent. Another solution reduced the time spent creating reports by more than 90 percent, while a third solution resulted in a 90 percent improvement in the time to value in data processing.
USAA, a financial services company, provides banking and insurance services to 10.4 million past and present members of the US armed forces and their immediate family members. To better service these customers, USAA has implemented an innovative cognitive computing solution that uses IBM Watson. The solution enables transitioning military members to visit usaa.com or use a mobile browser to ask questions specific to leaving the military, such as “Can I be in the reserve and collect veterans compensation benefits?” or “How do I make the most of the Post-9/11 GI Bill?” As a result, USAA can provide customers comprehensive answers to complex questions in a non-judgmental environment.
WellPoint (now part of Anthem), one of the largest health benefits companies in the United States, delivers numerous health benefit solutions through its networks nationwide. For complex decisions, patients can often wait weeks for the clinical review to occur, and a lack of available evidence or ability to process in a timely fashion can delay treatment or lead to errors. To address this business challenge, WellPoint implemented a cognitive computing solution powered by IBM Watson that provides decision support for the pre-authorization process. Providing these decision support capabilities and reducing paperwork gives clinicians the chance to spend more time with patients.
These are the competitive business advantages an enterprise needs: the capabilities to transform business processes, impact business outcomes and engage customers in the new era ahead.
This fundamental change in computing needs leading-edge providers to drive it. We agree with research analysts at Gartner who said in their latest report that the IBM approach to cognitive computing is “likely to be one of the most attractive platforms in the future.&#8221;
If your business hasn’t done so already, now’s the time to start your cognitive journey.
Learn more about cognitive capabilities with IBM Watson.
The post How businesses can get the cognitive edge appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

CurrentCare offers the benefits of assisted living at home with Watson IoT

Forget cameras, microphones, and wearable devices. There’s a better way to monitor the well-being of loved ones who might need assistance. Instead of intruding on their privacy, their houses can check that they’re all right using passive sensors.
Inspired by a number of energy monitoring projects, including one to reduce energy poverty for residents in social housing, Current Cost, a manufacturer of real-time displays for monitoring domestic electricity usage, has taken a new direction and developed a connected-home offering.
Current Cost realized that its energy monitoring product family could be enhanced with additional sensors to provide CurrentCare, a solution for ambient assisted living.
CurrentCare is a spinoff company that, with IBM as its technology partner, passively monitors elderly and vulnerable people in their homes. With sensors, CurrentCare’s telecare solution alerts caregivers and family members when something out of the ordinary is happening.
What appliances can tell you
For example, consider someone who has an electric kettle and makes a cup of tea first thing in the morning. If the kettle is being monitored, it’s obvious, when it goes from zero watts to 3,000 watts in the morning, that someone’s heating water for their tea.
It is also obvious when something hasn’t happened by a certain time. In many cases, it would be extremely unusual, and maybe something is very wrong, if a habitual morning tea drinker hasn’t had at least one cup of tea by 10 in the morning.
Configuring CurrentCare
The CurrentCare solution uses low-cost sensors on key appliances, door open/close sensors, temperature and carbon monoxide monitors, room-level motion detectors, pressure mats in or near the bed, and a toilet flush sensor.
The sensors are easy to install and can be individually configured in a person’s home for their specific needs. Data is sent from the home over broadband (a GSM option will also be available soon) to a cloud-based analytical system, hosted by IBM.
Users can configure alerting rules, customizing them to the individual, to determine what to do if something unusual happens.
How the system works
CurrentCare’s data analysis service is hosted in an IBM cloud data center, and makes use of the secure, scalable and reliable IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity platform, which receives data sent from the CurrentCare equipment in patients&#8217; homes. The data is then processed by an application running in the IBM Bluemix application platform.
Here, the triggering rules for the sensors from each house are applied, determining what alerts are to be sent to which appropriate party:

If the front door opens between midnight and 4 a.m.

Call me
Send the friendly neighbor a text

If the toilet hasn&8217;t flushed by 10 a.m.

Send me a text

If the room temperature drops below 68 degrees

Turn on the heating

If the refrigerator fails

E-mail me

The CurrentCare portal dashboard works with any browser, including tablets and smartphones. This means caregivers can access data and activity charts wherever they are.
CurrentCare minds the house
At the heart of it all, the CurrentCare system is a home monitoring system. This means it can also help homeowners while they’re away, alerting them to factors such as whether anyone has entered the yard or opened the door. They’ll know if their pet sitter has come and whether the mail carrier delivered the package they were expecting. They can also be alerted to unusual activity. It’s a great way to keep an eye on things.
For more about the CurrentCare system and the way it works, visit CurrentCare.
To learn more about this topic, read this post on the IBM Internet of Things blog.
The post CurrentCare offers the benefits of assisted living at home with Watson IoT appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud