Tag Archives: virtualization

A System for Changing Systems – Part 4 – Groundwork for Understanding the Capabilities of a System Changing System

In the last couple of posts, we have talked about how application systems need a change application system around them to manage the changes to the application system itself. A “system to manage the system” as it were. We also talked about the multi-part nature of application systems and the fact that the application systems typically run in more than one environment at any given time and will “move” from environment to environment as part of their QA process. These first three posts seek to set a working definition of the thing being changed so that we can proceed to a working definition of a system for managing those changes. This post starts that second part of the series – defining the capabilities of a change application system. This definition will then serve as the base for the third part – pragmatically adopting and applying the capabilities to begin achieving a DevOps mode of operation.

DevOps is a large problem domain with many moving parts. Just within the first set of these posts, we have seen how four rather broad area definitions can multiply substantially in a typical environment. Further, there are aspects of the problem domain that will be prioritized by different stakeholders based on their discipline’s perspective on the problem. The whole point of DevOps, of course, is to eliminate that perspective bias. So, it becomes very important to have some method for unifying the understanding and discussion of the organizations’ capabilities. In the final analysis, it is not as important what that unified picture looks like as it is that the picture be clearly understood by all.

To that end, I have put together a framework that I use with my customers to help in the process of understanding their current state and prioritizing their improvement efforts. I initially presented this framework at the Innovate 2012 conference and subsequently published an introductory whitepaper on the IBM developerWorks website. My intent with these posts is to expand the discussion and, hopefully, help folks get better faster. The interesting thing to me is to see folks adopt this either as is or as the seed of something of their own. Either way, it has been gratifying to see folks respond to it in its nascent form and I think the only way for it to get better is to get more eyeballs on it.

So, here is my picture of the top-level of the capability areas (tools and processes) an organization needs to have to deliver changes to an application system.

Capabilities

Overview of capability areas required to sustain environments

The quality and maturity of these within the organization will vary based on their business needs – particularly around formality – and the frequency with which they need to apply changes.

I applied three principles when I put this together:

  • The capabilities had to be things that exist in all environments that application system runs (ie dev, test, prod, or whatever layers exist). THe idea here is that such a perspective will help unify tooling and approaches to a theoretical ideal of one solution for all environments.
  • The capabilities had to be broad enough to allow for different levels of priority / formality depending on the environment. The idea is to not burden a more volatile test environment with production-grade formality or vice-versa. But to allow a structured discussion of how the team will deliver that capability in a unified way to the various environments. DevOps is an Agile concept, so the notion of minimally necessary applies.
  • The capabilities had to be generic enough to apply to any technology stack that an organization might have. Larger organizations may need multiple solutions based on the fact that they have many application systems that were created at different points in time, in different languages, and in different architectures. It may not be possible to use exactly the same tool / process in all of those environments, but it most certainly is possible to maintain a common understanding and vocabulary about it.

In the next couple of posts, I will drill a bit deeper into the capability areas to apply some scope, focus, and meaning.

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A System for Changing Systems – Part 2 – The “Chang-ee”

As discussed last time, having a clear understanding of the thing being changed is key to understanding how to change it. Given that, this post will focus on creating a common framework for understanding the “Change-ee” systems. To be clear, the primary subject of this discussion are software application systems. That should be obvious from the DevOps discussion, but I prefer not to assume things.

Application systems generally have four main types of components. First, and most obviously, is the software code. That is often referred to as the “application”. However, as the DevOps movement has long held, that is a rather narrow definition of things. The software code can not run by itself in a standalone vacuum. That is why these posts refer to an application *system* rather than just an application. The other three parts of the equation are the database, the server infrastructure and the network insfrastructure. It takes all four of these areas working together for an application system to function.

Since these four areas will frame the discussion going forward, we need to have a common understanding about what is in each. It is important to understand that there are variants of each of these components as changes are applied and qualified for use in the production environment. In other words, there will be sub-production environments that have to have representative configurations. And those have to be considered when deciding how to apply changes through the environment.

  • Application Code – This is the set of functionality defined by the business case that justifies the existance of the application system in the first place and consists of the artifacts created by the development team for the solution including things such as server code, user interface artifacts, business rules, etc.
  • Database & Data – This is the data structure required for the application to run. This area includes all data-related artifacts, whether they are associated with a traditional RDBMS, “no sql” system, or just flat files. This includes data, data definition structures (eg schema), test datasets, and so forth.
  • Server Infrastructure (OS, VM, Middleware, Storage) – This represents the services and libraries required for the application to run. A broad category ranging from the VM/OS layer all the way through the various middleware layers and libraries on which the application depends. This area also includes storage for the database area.
  • Network Infrastructure – This category is for all of the inter-system communications components and links required for users to derive value from the application system. This includes the connectivity to the users, connectivity among servers, connectivity to resources (e.g. storage), and the devices (e.g. load balancers, routers, etc.) that enable the application system to meet its functional, performance, and availability requirements
Application System Components

Conceptual image of the main system component areas that need to be in sync in order for a system to operate correctly

The complicating factor for these four areas is that there are multiple instances of each of them that exist in an organization at any given time. And those multiple instances may be at different revision levels. Dealing with that is a discussion unto itself, but is no less critical to understanding the requirements for a system to manage your application system. The next post will examine this aspect of things and the challenges associated with it.

New Toy!!! IBM Workload Deployer

The company I work for serves many large corporations in our customer base, many of whom are IBM shops with the commensurately large WebSphere installed bases.  So, as you might imagine, it behooves us to keep abreast of the latest stuff IBM delivers.

We are fortunate enough to be pretty good at what we do and are in the premiere tier of IBM’s partner hierarchy and were recently able to get an IBM Workload Deployer (IWD) appliance in as an evaluation unit.  If you are not familiar, the IWD is really the third revision of the appliance formerly known as the IBM WebSphere Cloudburst appliance.  I do not know, but I would presume the rebrand is related to the fact that the IWD is handling more generic workloads than simply those related to WebSphere and therefore deserved a more general name.

You can read the full marketing rundown on the IBM website here:  IBM Workload Deployer

This is a “cloud management in a box” solution that you drop onto your network, point at one one or more of the supported hypervisors, and it handles images, load allocation, provisioning etc.  You can give it simple images to manage, but the thing really lights up when you give it “Patterns” – a term which translates to a full application infrastructure (balancing webservers, middleware, DB, etc.).  If you use this setup, the IWD will let you manage your application as a single entity and maintain the connections for you.

I am not an expert on the thing – at least not yet, but a couple of other points that immediately jump out at me are:

  • The thing also has a pretty rich Python-based command line client that should allow us to do some smart script stuff and maintain those in a proper source repository.
  • The patterns and resources also have intelligence in them where you can’t break dependencies of a published configuration
  • There are a number of pre-cooked template images that don’t seem very locked down that you can use as starter points for customization or you can roll your own.
  • The Rational Automation Framework tool is here, too, so that brings up some migration possibilities for folks looking to bring apps either into a ‘cloud’ or a better managed virtual situation
I do get to be one of the first folks to play with the thing, so I’ll be drilling into as many of these these and other things as time permits.  More on it as it becomes available.