The converged infrastructure value proposition, by now, is pretty evident
to everyone in the industry. Whether that proposition can be realized,
is highly dependent on your particular organization, and specific use
case.
Over the past several months, I have had an opportunity to be
involved with a very high-profile pilot, with immovable, over-the-top
deadlines. In addition, the security requirements were downright
oppressive, and necessitated a completely isolated, separate
environment. Multi-tenancy was not an option.
With all this in mind, a pre-built, converged infrastructure package
became the obvious choice. Since the solution would be built upon a
suite of IBM software, they pitched their new PureApplication system. My
first reaction was to look at it as an obvious IBM competitor to the
venerable vBlock. But I quickly dismissed that, as I learned more.
The PureApplication platform is quite a bit more than a vBlock
competitor. It leverages IBM’s services expertise to provide a giant
catalog of pre-configured multi-tiered applications that have been
essentially captured, and turned into what IBM calls a “pattern”. The
simplest way I can think of to describe a pattern is like the
application blueprint
that Aaron Sweemer was talking about a few months back. The pattern
consists of all tiers of an application, which are deployed and
configured simultaneously, and on-demand.
As an example, if one needs a message broker app, there’s a pattern
for it. After it is deployed (usually within 20-30 mins.), what’s
sitting there is a DataPower appliance, web services, message broker,
and database. It’s all configured, and ready to run. Once you load up
your specific BAR files, and configure the specifics of how inbound
connections and messages will be handled, you can patternize all that
with script packages, so that next time you deploy, you’re ready to
process messages in 20 minutes. If you want to create your own
patterns, there’s a pretty simple drag and drop interface for doing so.
I know what you’re thinking. . . There are plenty of other ways to
capture images, vApps, etc. to make application deployment fast. But
what PureApp brings to the table is the (and I hate using this phrase)
best-practices from IBM’s years of consulting and building these
solutions for thousands of customers. There’s no ground-up installation
of each tier, with the tedious hours of configuration, and the cost
associated with those hours. That’s what you are paying for when you buy
PureApp.
Don’t have anyone in house with years of experience deploying
SugarCRM, Business Intelligence, Message Broker, SAP, or BPM from the
ground up? No problem. There are patterns for all of them. There are
hundreds of patterns so far, and many more are in the pipeline from a
growing list of global partners.
The PureApplication platform uses IBM blades, IBM switching, and IBM
V7000 storage. The hypervisor is VMware, and they even run vCenter.
Problem is, you can’t access vCenter, or install any add-on features.
They’ve written their own algorithms for HA, and some of the other
things that you’d expect vCenter to handle. The reasoning for this,
ostensibly, is so they can support other hypervisors in the future.
For someone accustomed to running VMware and vCenter, it can be quite
difficult to get your head around having NO access to the hosts, or
vCenter to do any troubleshooting, monitoring, or configuration. But the
IBM answer is, this is supposed to be a cloud in a box, and the
underlying infrastructure is irrelevant. Still, going from a provider
mentality, to an infrastructure consumer one, is a difficult transition,
and one that I am still struggling with personally.
The way licensing is handled on this system is, you can use all the
licenses for Message Broker, DB2, Red Hat, and the other IBM software
pieces that you can possibly consume with the box. It’s a smart way to
implement licensing. You’re never going to be able to run more licenses
than you “pay for” with the finite resources included with each system.
It’s extremely convenient for the end user, as there is no need to keep
up with licensing for the patternized software.
Access to the PureApp platform is via the PureApp console, or CLI.
It’s a good interface, but it’s also definitely a 1.x interface. There
is very extensive scripting support for adding to patterns, and
individual virtual machines. There are also multi-tenancy capabilities
by creating multiple “cloud groups” to carve up resources. There are
things that need to be improved, like refresh, and access to more
in-depth monitoring of the system. Having said that, even in the past
six months, the improvements made have been quite significant. IBM is
obviously throwing incredible amounts of resources at this platform.
Deploying patterns is quite easy, and there is an IBM Image Capture
pattern that will hook into existing ESXi hosts to pull off VM’s to use
in Pure, and prepare them for patternization.
Having used the platform for a while now, I like it more every day. A
couple weeks ago, we were able to press a single button, and upgrade
firmware on the switches, blades, ESXi, and the v7000 storage with no
input from us. My biggest complaint so far is that I have no access to
vCenter to install things like vShield, backup software, monitoring
software, etc.. But again, it’s just getting used to a new paradigm
that’s hard for me. IBM does have a monitoring pattern that deploys
Tivoli, which helps with monitoring, but it’s one more thing to learn
and administer. That said, I do understand why they don’t want people
looking into the guts on a true PaaS.
Overall, I can say that I am impressed with the amount of work that
has gone into building the PureApplication platform, and am looking
forward to the features they have in the pipeline. The support has been
great so far as well, but I do hope the support organization can keep up
with the exponential sales growth. I have a feeling there will be
plenty more growth in 2014.
By: Brandon Riley
Link: http://www.virtualinsanity.com/index.php/2014/02/10/up-close-and-personal-with-ibm-pureapplication-paas/
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