Eric D. Schabell: March 2012

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Red Hat Cloud Tour 2012 in London - a birds eye view from the Clouds

View of London from the Clouds
I was on site at the Red Hat Cloud Tour in London at the Millbank Tower location. Wow, what a view you get from the 29th floor above the centre of London! I have put some impression pictures in the link behind the photo, it was great weather and around 160 attendees making it a good day for all to catch up on Red Hat's thoughts and ideas around implementing your Cloud strategies.

I gave a session on JBoss in your Cloud infrastructure, slides posted below. This also dived into the topics around JBoss EAP6 and OpenShift, with some t-shirts being passed out among the attendees.

Monday, March 26, 2012

JUDCon 2012 Boston - talk accepted OpenShift state of the Union

I previously submitted several talks to JBoss World and JUDCon hoping to drop in on the largest JBoss conference in the world. They have accepted the following OpenShift talk, so see you in Boston on 25-26th of June 2012.

OpenShift State of the Union, brought to you by JBoss

It has been a marriage made in heaven. JBoss has brought the enterprise application platform and JEE to the OpenShift PaaS for all of your development tasks. It is much more than a simple application server though, JBoss provides a multitude of projects that cover everything from mobile, business process management, web development, support tooling to inter connectivity with other development languages like Ruby.

This session will take you through an overview of what OpenShift has to offer right now, how to get started, and then provide some highlights of the various projects that you can now access within the JBoss community. Bring you laptop and follow along as we help you get started in mobile development with Aerogears, Ruby Java connectivity with TorqueBox, process development with tooling from jBPM and much more. These will all be real world projects put on display for you with code you can access live during this session!

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Codemotion 2012 Rome OpenShift Primer Adventure

I am in Rome, Italy this week giving my OpenShift talk at Codemotion 2012. This conference was a very large (I was told, the largest in Italy) and had over 3000 attendees. Being in Rome must have helped if you take a walk through the set of pictures I took of not only the conference but of the city.

I arrived a day early as I had some work to do at the local Red Hat offices, giving a JBoss BRMS 5.3 preview session to the local Solution Architects and Consultants. The office is located a stones throw from  Vatican City. Nothing like that view out the window of your office to distract you, I don't know how anyone gets any work done! Enjoy the pictures I put together here.

I discovered that OpenShift released not only a new website and logo, but also a new version with some interesting features (DIY and Node.js cartridges). Damn, now all my session slides included screenshots that were outdated. Back to the drawing board and I worked out the new slides to showcase OpenShift logo and new site look. While I was at it, I decided to demo the HTML5 mobile demo based on the JBoss AeroGear project, but then tailored a bit to become the Codemotion 2012 mobile registration application. You can view it as long as it is available on codemotion-inthe.rhcloud.com.


Friday the conference started at the University and was very busy. The wifi was not working very well if you were not a student so I was a bit worried about my chances to demo OpenShift live. It turned out to work fine if you were in a presentation room.

My talks had around 60 attendees and they were some of the most enthusiastic participants I have yet had in a session. We had a lively discussion, many questions, a mobile registration application demo and they were even cheering the results.

I have decided I will be submitting every year to the Codemotion conference in Rome. I hope to see you all again next year!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Computable.nl - Open Cloud is a Blessing for the User

My Dutch language Cloud article was published over on computable.nl with the title translated to English for this post. Here is the text for posterity.

Open cloud is zegen voor de gebruiker

Openheid in software en architecturen is een grote zegen voor gebruikers, beheerders en budgethouders. Deze waarheid is zo erkend dat veel leveranciers `open' als een soort mantra gebruiken, alhoewel ze dat vaak helemaal niet zijn - enkele uitzonderingen daargelaten. Dit gaat nergens meer op dan bij cloud computing.


Het hebben van een open architectuur en een open aanpak is bij het opzetten en het bouwen van een cloudoplossing van groot belang. Alleen met een open cloud kunnen it-organisaties verschillende infrastructuren beheren door ze samen te brengen onder dezelfde cloudarchitectuur. In tegenstelling tot het creĆ«ren van cloudsilo's of het weer opnieuw opbouwen van it-structuren, biedt een open cloud voordelen voor de gehele it-infrastructuur, waaronder grotere efficientie, flexibiliteit en controle over de technologie roadmap. Bovendien hebben organisaties zo de toekomst van hun it in eigen hand. 

Maar wat betekent `open' in de context van cloud? Het begint en eindigt zeker niet met de onderwerping van een standaard format of met de acceptatie door partners van specifieke technologieplatformen. Als we kijken naar een open cloud bezit hij in ieder geval de volgende kenmerken: 

- Is open source. Hierdoor hebben gebruikers controle over hun specifieke implementatie en worden ze niet beperkt tot de technologie en business roadmap van een bepaalde leverancier. Ze kunnen clouds bouwen en beheren waardoor ze zelf controle hebben over hun eigen koers evenals inzicht krijgen in de technologie waarop ze hun business baseren. Het biedt de flexibiliteit om workloads naar keuze, inclusief proprietaire, uit te voeren in hun cloud. Dankzij open source is samenwerking met andere communities en bedrijven eveneens mogelijk om innovatie te stimuleren op juist die vlakken die voor die organisatie belangrijk is. 

- Heeft een onafhankelijke community. Open source gaat niet alleen over de softwarecode, licenties, hoe het gebruikt en uitgebreid wordt. Minstens zo belangrijk is de community die verbonden is aan de code en hoe het wordt bestuurd. Als men zich hiervan het enorme samenwerkingspotentieel realiseert en de innovatiekracht, dan impliceert dat wel dat men de structuren en organisatie op orde moet hebben om er volledig van te kunnen profiteren. 

- Is gebaseerd op open standaarden, of protocollen en formaten die zich ontwikkelen naar standaarden en onafhankelijk zijn van leveranciers en platformen. Standaardisatie in de zin van officiele cloud standaarden met standaard bodies bevindt zich nog in een vroege levensfase. Benaderingen voor interoperabiliteit die niet onder controle staan van leveranciers en die niet verbonden zijn aan specifieke platformen bieden belangrijke flexibiliteit. Hierdoor kan de API specificatie zich verder ontwikkelen zonder beperkingen en dat biedt mogelijkheden om varianten te ontwikkelen die tegemoetkomen aan individuele technische en commerciele wensen en 
eisen. 

- Biedt eigenaren van intellectuele eigendomsrechten volledige vrijheid om de technologie te gebruiken. De recente geschiedenis heeft herhaaldelijk aangetoond dat er geen garanties zijn dat intellectual properties (IP) toegankelijk blijven voor iedereen. Om erop te kunnen vertrouwen dat je toegang behoudt tot die IP-assets waarvan je hebt besloten afhankelijk van te zijn, moet er toestemming worden gegeven dat die technologie open en toegankelijk blijft voor gebruikers. Zogenoemde 'de facto standaarden' die vaak uitsluitend 'standaarden' zijn bij de gratie van de grote leveranciers, schieten in deze test tekort. 

- Kan worden ingezet op een infrastructuur naar keuze. Hybride cloud management moet een extra abstractielaag bieden bovenop virtualisatie, fysieke servers, storage, netwerken en publieke cloud leveranciers. Dit vereist dat cloudbeheer onafhankelijk is van virtualisatie en andere basistechnologieen. Dit is een fundamentele reden dat cloud verschilt van virtualisatiebeheer. Hierdoor zijn hybride clouds mogelijk die fysieke servers, meerdere virtualisatieplatformen en een breed scala van publieke (top) cloud leveranciers overspant. 

- Is plugbaar en uitbreidbaar met een open api. Hierdoor kunnen gebruikers functionaliteiten en technologieen toevoegen van een verscheidenheid aan leveranciers en andere bronnen. De api zelf kan niet onder beheer staan van een specifieke leverancier of gebonden zijn aan een specifieke implementatie maar moet onder toezicht staan van een derde partij die bijdragen en uitbreidingen mogelijk maakt op een open en transparante manier. Deltacloud, een api die de verschillen tussen clouds abstraheert, is een goed voorbeeld. Het staat onder toezicht van de Apache Software Foundation en is niet een project dat door Red Hat wordt gecontroleerd of is gebonden aan een bepaalde implementatie van cloud management. 

- Maakt overdraagbaarheid naar andere clouds mogelijk. Een cloud benadering die heterogene infrastructuren ondersteunt, impliceert dat investeringen die gedaan zijn in het ontwikkelen van een open cloud overdraagbaar moeten zijn naar andere clouds. Overdraagbaarheid kan op verschillende manieren waaronder programmeertalen en frameworks, gegevens en de applicaties zelf. Als een applicatie voor een cloud wordt ontwikkeld, zou het niet nodig moeten zijn het in een andere taal te herschrijven of andere API's te gebruiken om het ergens anders naar toe te verplaatsen. Bovendien betekent een consistente runtime omgeving binnen verschillende clouds dat nogmaals testen en kwalificeren niet elke keer nodig is als je wilt redeployen. 

Een open cloud vereist een breed scala aan attributen om de omslag te maken van compleet gesloten naar helemaal open. Het hebben van een aantal attributen is beter dan helemaal niets. Maar enkel met het volledige gamma kunnen organisaties maximaal profiteren van cloud computing.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Red Hat Cloud Tour 2012 London - JBoss and OpenShift in London

I am going to be speaking at the Red Hat Cloud Tour on the stops in London and Amsterdam.

You can catch the London stop on the 28th of March at the Millbank Tower where I am giving a breakout session.



Leverage An Intelligent Application Infrastructure for Competitive Advantage
Realizing the benefits of cloud requires new thinking in how you build and deploy applications and how you architect an intelligent infrastructure to deliver agility, efficiency, and portability across a variety of on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid environments. The requirements range from delivering world-class user experiences across millions of devices, form factors, and client platforms, to collecting data from what analysts refer to as “the internet of things” - billions of connected devices and appliances across globally distributed networks to feed the analysis of big data for better business decisions.


In this session, you'll learn how JBoss is the best choice to future-proof your application and systems infrastructure and take advantage of the latest innovations to deliver an agile, intelligent and integrated enterprise across on-premise and public clouds.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Red Hat Cloud Tour 2012 Amsterdam - JBoss to future-proof your Clouds


I will be in Amsterdam on 3rd of April 2012 talking at the Red Hat Cloud Tour 2012. We will be covering a legion of Cloud related topics, but I will be focusing on both JBoss in the Cloud and OpenShift as your PaaS of choice for your business application in the Cloud.

Leverage an Intelligent Application Infrastructure for Competitive Advantage
Realizing the benefits of cloud requires new thinking in how you build and deploy applications and how you architect an intelligent infrastructure to deliver agility, efficiency, and portability across a variety of on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid environments. The requirements range from delivering world-class user experiences across millions of devices, form factors, and client platforms, to collecting data from what analysts refer to as “the internet of things” - billions of connected devices and appliances across globally distributed networks to feed the analysis of big data for better business decisions.
In this session, you'll learn how JBoss is the best choice to future-proof your application and systems infrastructure and take advantage of the latest innovations to deliver an agile, intelligent and integrated enterprise across on-premise and public clouds.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Red Hat Cloud Tour 2012 Amsterdam - An OpenShift Primer

I will be in Amsterdam on 3rd of April 2012 talking at the Red Hat Cloud Tour 2012. We will be covering a legion of Cloud related topics, but I will be focusing on both JBoss in the Cloud and OpenShift as your PaaS of choice for your business application in the Cloud.

OpenShift Primer - get your business into the Cloud today!

Whether your business is running on applications based on Java EE6, PHP or Ruby, the cloud is turning out to be the perfect environment for developing your business.
There are plenty of clouds and platform-as-a-services to choose from, but where to start? Join us for an action-packed hour of power where we'll show you how to deploy your existing application written in the language of your choice - Java, Ruby, PHP, Perl or Python, with the framework of your choice - EE6, CDI, Seam, Spring, Zend, Cake, Rails, Sinatra, PerlDancer or Django to the OpenShift PaaS in just minutes.
All this and without having to rewrite your app to get it to work the way the cloud provider thinks your app should work.
You can have your business applications running in the cloud on OpenShift Express in seconds, while also making use of the web browser do the heavy-lifting of provisioning clusters, deploying, monitoring and auto-scaling apps in OpenShift Flex.
If you want to learn how the OpenShift PaaS and investing an hour of your time can change everything you thought you knew about putting your business applications in the cloud, this session is for you!


Friday, March 9, 2012

Getting started with the OpenShift Express Web Management Console

This week the newest release of OpenShift brought two really great features to an already awesome PaaS Cloud provider. First, JBoss AS has been upgraded from 7.0 to 7.1 and the all new Express Web Management Console has been released as a preview. In this article we examine how to use this new console and will help you create and then destroy an application.

Overview
Figure 1: follow link to launch
the Express Console
In this section we assume you have already registered as an OpenShift user and are logged into the OpenShift Express start page. In figure 1 the Express landing page is shown and if you follow the Express Console link you will be brought to a page that currently shows the old administration console and includes a link to Preview the new OpenShift Management Console. Follow this link to the preview as shown for my user in figure 2.

Figure 2: preview Express
management console
It provides an overview of the users existing application, with a Details button for each application. My user has two application already created, one a jBPM web editor project based on JBoss and a second PHP twitter project that makes use of mongodb as a backend, see figure 2. At the top of the applications list, you have a button to Create a New Application. We will be using this button to create an existing project called kitchensinkhtml5, a mobile application from the JBoss project Aerogear. The nice thing about this demo project is that you can view it both in your desktop browsers and in your mobile devices.
Figure 3: choose a type
of application

Create application
Since this user already has created a domain and has existing applications setup, we just need to start by using the Create a New Application button. This takes us to the first of three steps where we will choose a type of application, which will be the JBoss Application Server 7.1 chosen by the Select button shown in figure 3.

Figure 4: create application
The next step is to configure and deploy the application, done by filling in an application name in the provided text box and clicking on the Create Application button. We will be calling this application kitchensinkhtml5, so we fill in that name in the text box and submit to create our new application as shown in figure 4.

Figure 5: next steps
Once we submit our creation request, the OpenShift Express magic is started to setup our new instance with JBoss AS 7.1 started. We are presented with a final screen that is labeled Next Steps which provides information on accessing your application, making code changes, how to manage your application and how to start adding capabilities. As shown in figure 5, we will be pulling in a git clone of our Express application repository so that we can setup our kitchensink application code. As stated in the section making code changes we will clone the repository locally from a shell command line:

git clone ssh://8df3de8e983c4b058db372e51bfe5254@kitchensinkhtml5-inthe.rhcloud.com/~/git/kitchensinkhtml5.git/
cd kitchensinkhtml5/
Once that is done we need to pull in our existing kitchensink code base:

cd kitchensinkhtml5
git remote add upstream -m master git://github.com/eschabell/kitchensink-html5-mobile-example.git
git pull -s recursive -X theirs upstream master
 Finally, we push this back upstream to our Express instance as follows: 
git push  
We can now view the application at the URL assigned to our Express instance: 
http://kitchensinkhtml5-{$domainname}.rhcloud.com

You should see the mobile member registration application as shown here in figure 6.
Figure 6: mobile application

Destroy application
A final action that you can do with the new OpenShift Express Web Management Console is to destroy your application. As we only get five instances at a time, you will soon find yourself creating and destroying Express instances with ease.

Figure 7: delete application
After logging in as described above and starting the preview of the web management console, you will see your list of existing applications. By selecting an applications Details button you will be shown an overview of the application, see figure 7 for our example editor application we will be destroying.

Figure 8: application deleted
You will notice a Delete button in the right top corner of the application overview screen, see figure 7. When selected, you will be asked to confirm that you really want to destroy this application. If you confirm this decision by clicking on the Delete button, your application and Express instance will be cleaned up. You will be returned to the application overview screen, see figure 8, and are ready for your next interaction with the Express Web Administration Console.

Summary
In this article we have covered the very basics of the newly released OpenShift Express Web Administration Console. We have shown you how to view your applications, create a new application and how to free up an Express instance by destroying one of your applications.


Thursday, March 8, 2012

Codemotion 2012 - Get your code into the Cloud with OpenShift

My talk on helping you get your code into the Cloud with OpenShift has been accepted for Codemotion 2012 in Rome, Italy. 

My session will be on Friday, 23 March 2012 from 1410 hrs. I will be wandering around all day and have some pretty cool t-shirts to pass out if you can show me your code running in OpenShift!

 If you want to get the most out of this session, please bring your laptop and sign up for an account at OpenShift begin sure to use the promotional code: CODEMOTION.

See you there!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Video Recording: An OpenShift Primer for Developers to get your Code into the Cloud

The great group over in Luxembourg (YaJUG) put up a recording on parleys.com of the OpenShift session I gave in January 2012.

I cover lots of OpenShift, so enjoy!

Video Recording: JBoss Brings More Power to your Business Processes

The great group over in Luxembourg (YaJUG) put up a recording on parleys.com of the jBPM5 session I gave in January 2012. This took place after a previous talk and I have just changed 'uniform' to put on the JBoss shirt.

I cover BPM, jBPM and the jBPM Migration project. Enjoy!