Eric D. Schabell: March 2016

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Ultimate Guide to Retail in the Cloud with JBoss Cool Store

ultimate guide
App Dev Cloud with JBoss Cool Store
We have been discussing why application developers can't ignore their stack anymore in the App Dev Cloud Stack series.

We talked about the various layers from the bottom up, but have yet to provide you with any application development tooling beyond the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK). All you have so far is an easy to install project called the Container Development Kit Install Demo.

We then provided two getting started projects with JBoss BRMS and JBoss BPM Suite products running on the Red Hat CDK. These were just initial setups of the products and the projects you can create there are left up to you to develop.

Today we bring you a full retail example with the JBoss Cool Store running on the OpenShift Enterprise layer of your stack, provided by our Red Hat CDK installation.

You can now fully demo and leverage a retail example based on JBoss BRMS through the business central web console running containerized on an OSE pod.
ultimate guide
Watching the JBoss Cool Store build.

Retail in the Cloud

We will be leveraging previous work that installs the Red Hat CDK. The Red Hat CDK is packaged into a RHEL 7 virtual machine that you can start on your machine after installing this project. There are several choices provided with pre-configured installations, but they all include the basic setup for Docker and the tools needed to start leveraging Docker based containers.

The following container must be started after installing this project for you to get started with the JBoss Cool Store retail application:
    ultimate guide
    The retail JBoss Cool Store in the Cloud!
  • OpenShift Enterprise - a containerized version of OpenShift Enterprise can be started that can be accesses through a Web console in your browser or via the OpenShift command line tools. Explore your very own private PaaS developer experience with this container.
Now that the you have the OpenShift Enterprise image up and running, you can start moving the JBoss Cool Store application into the Cloud with the following steps:
  1. First complete the installation and start the OpenShift image supplied in the cdk-install-demo.
  2. Install OpenShift Client Tools if you have not done so previously.
  3. ultimate guide
    Cloudy JBoss Cool Store project.
    Download and unzip this demo.
  4. Add products to installs directory.
  5. Run 'init.sh' or 'init.bat' file. 'init.bat' must be run with Administrative privileges.
  6. Login to Cool Store to start exploring a retail web shopping project:
Now you are up and running with a fully installed, Cloud ready JBoss Cool Store . If you want to learn how to build the Cool Store from the ground up, check out this online workshop:



For more information around containers, a Cloud stack and why you need to care about this containerized stack for your application development, see the App Dev Cloud Stack series that takes you on a tour of the Red Hat Cloud Suite.

Stay tuned for more!





Monday, March 28, 2016

Digital sign for Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK)

Recently we introduced you to the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK) with an easy to install demo project to get your started on an OpenShift Enterprise image.

The next time you are in a Red Hat office somewhere in the world, keep your eyes peeled for the digital signage that is displaying all manner of news.

These signs are somewhere on the walls at our offices all over the world, from Amsterdam to Singapore, from Raleigh to Tokyo.

Keep your eyes peeled as we have hijacked the sequence and inserted our very own Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK) install demo announcement.

Feel free to use the slide in your presentations and if you happen to see one of these live, snap a picture, push it out on twitter to @ericschabell.


Friday, March 25, 2016

Real App Dev in the Cloud with JBoss BRMS Install Demo

real app dev
App Dev Cloud with JBoss BRMS Install Demo
We have been discussing why application developers can't ignore their stack anymore in the App Dev Cloud Stack series.

We talked about the various layers from the bottom up, but have yet to provide you with any application development tooling beyond the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK). All you have so far is an easy to install project called the Container Development Kit Install Demo.

That is about to change with this article, so read on.

We have been providing an array of JBoss BRMS and JBoss BPM Suite demo projects, mostly leveraged by application developers by installing them locally. We did provide a simple containerized installation generation option based on Docker, but this was also rather trivial to your local machine hosting the container.

Today we move into the Cloud to provide you with real application development based on the Cloud stack as described in our series. The first installment is a basic JBoss BRMS product installation on the OpenShift Enterprise layer of your stack, provided by our Red Hat CDK installation.

You can now fully demo and leverage a JBoss BRMS through the business central web console running containerized on an OSE pod.
real app dev
Watch the JBoss BRMS application build in OSE.

Jumping into the Cloud

We will be leveraging previous work that installs the Red Hat CDK. The Red Hat CDK is packaged into a RHEL 7 virtual machine that you can start on your machine after installing this project. There are several choices provided with pre-configured installations, but they all include the basic setup for Docker and the tools needed to start leveraging Docker based containers.

The following container must be started after installing this project for you to get started with our first JBoss BRMS application development demo:
  • OpenShift Enterprise - a containerized version of OpenShift Enterprise can be started that can be accesses through a Web console in your browser or via the OpenShift command line tools. Explore your very own private PaaS developer experience with this container.
real app dev
Fully functional JBoss BRMS on OSE.
Now that the you have the OpenShift Enterprise image up and running, you can start moving the JBoss BPM Suite install demo into the Cloud with the following steps:
  1. First complete the installation and start the OpenShift image supplied in the cdk-install-demo.
  2. Install OpenShift Client Tools if you have not done so previously.
  3. Add products to installs directory.
  4. Run 'init.sh' or 'init.bat' file. 'init.bat' must be run with Administrative privileges.
  5. Login to JBoss BRMS to start developing rules projects:
Now you are up and running with a fully installed JBoss BRMS ready to start your process project. If you want to get started, check out this online workshop, helping you get started with JBoss BRMS:



For more information around containers, a Cloud stack and why you need to care about this containerized stack for your application development, see the App Dev Cloud Stack series that takes you on a tour of the Red Hat Cloud Suite.

Stay tuned for more!





Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Rocking App Dev in the Cloud with JBoss BPM Suite Install Demo

rocking app dev
App Dev Cloud with JBoss BPM Suite Install Demo
We have been discussing why application developers can't ignore their stack anymore in the App Dev Cloud Stack series.

We talked about the various layers from the bottom up, but have yet to provide you with any application development tooling beyond the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK). All you have so far is an easy to install project called the Container Development Kit Install Demo.

That is about to change with this article, so read on.

We have been providing an array of JBoss BRMS and JBoss BPM Suite demo projects, mostly leveraged by application developers by installing them locally. We did provide a simple containerized installation generation option based on Docker, but this was also rather trivial to your local machine hosting the container.

Today we move into the Cloud to provide you with real application development based on the Cloud stack as described in our series. The first installment is a basic JBoss BPM Suite product installation on the OpenShift Enterprise layer of your stack, provided by our Red Hat CDK installation.

rocking app dev
JBoss BPM Suite floating on OSE Cloud!
You can now fully demo and leverage a JBoss BPM Suite through the business central web console running containerized on an OSE pod.

Jumping into the Cloud

We will be leveraging previous work that installs the Red Hat CDK. The Red Hat CDK is packaged into a RHEL 7 virtual machine that you can start on your machine after installing this project. There are several choices provided with pre-configured installations, but they all include the basic setup for Docker and the tools needed to start leveraging Docker based containers.

The following container must be started after installing this project for you to get started with our first JBoss BPM Suite application development demo:
  • OpenShift Enterprise - a containerized version of OpenShift Enterprise can be started that can be accesses through a Web console in your browser or via the OpenShift command line tools. Explore your very own private PaaS developer experience with this container.
rocking app dev
Fully operational, imported existing project!
Now that the you have the OpenShift Enterprise image up and running, you can start moving the JBoss BPM Suite install demo into the Cloud with the following steps:

  1. First complete the installation and start the OpenShift image supplied in the cdk-install-demo.
  2. Install OpenShift Client Tools if you have not done so previously.
  3. Add products to installs directory.
  4. Run 'init.sh' or 'init.bat' file. 'init.bat' must be run with Administrative privileges.
  5. Login to JBoss BPM Suite to start developing your BPM projects:
Now you are up and running with a fully installed JBoss BPM Suite ready to start your process project. If you want to get started, check out this online workshop, helping you get started with JBoss BPM Suite:



For more information around containers, a Cloud stack and why you need to care about this containerized stack for your application development, see the App Dev Cloud Stack series that takes you on a tour of the Red Hat Cloud Suite.

Stay tuned for more!





Friday, March 18, 2016

Installing the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK) beta 5 release

red hat container development kit
Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK)
installation made easy!

Last month we put together a demo project to get you up and running with the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK).

As an application developer or architect tasked with exploring the possibilities that containerized applications offer, Red Hat provides a Container Development Kit (CDK) that has all the tooling you need for your local OSX, Linux or Windows environment.

It also has a few containers pre-configured for you to explore.

Since the announcement of the Red Hat CDK 2 beta a few months ago, we thought it was time to take a closer look and that resulted in creating an automated installation project called the Container Development Kit Install Demo.

Today we update our project to give you the latest beta 5 in the same easy to use framework.

What you get

First off, the Red Hat CDK is a product that is available to customers and partners, for more details on who has access and how to obtain access, see Red Hat Developers. Also for the details around what specifications for your machine, see the online documentation.

The Red Hat CDK is packaged into a RHEL 7 virtual machine that you can start on your machine after installing this project. There are several choices provided with pre-configured installations, but they all include the basic setup for Docker and the tools needed to start leveraging Docker based containers.

The following containers can be started after installing this project for you to start exploring:
  • OpenShift Enterprise - a containerized version of OpenShift Enterprise can be started that can be accesses through a Web console in your browser or via the OpenShift command line tools. Explore your very own private PaaS developer experience with this container.
  • Kubernetes - a container to set you up for exploring a Kubernetes cluster. It is setup to run as an all-in-one Kubernetes master to manage pods and node for running multiple pods.
red hat container development kit
CDK install demo!
On top of this you can start creating your own container based applications after you are comfortable with how these examples work.

Container development 

As you might not want to go through all the steps in the installation guide time and again to setup the Red Hat CDK on your machine, here I hope to make it so simple anyone can do it.

Not only that, you can do it in just four steps, I promise!

It is really that easy with the fully automated Container Development Kit Install Demo project put together to make the process both fool proof and repeatable. So what are the three steps you ask?
  1. Download and unzip CDK install demo.
  2. Add products as needed, free downloads available here.
  3. Run 'init.sh' or 'init.bat' file.
  4. Read and follow displayed instructions and enjoy the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK) on your local machine!
red hat container development kit
Red Hat Cloud Suite
It will check if you have the pre-requisites installed, but if you don't and start the installation it will stop, warn you and provide the links to go and get what is missing. The same goes for the products needed, which depend on your OS for the correct virtual image you need to run the Red Hat CDK, don't worry, it will point you in the right direction if you read the output.

For more information around containers, a Cloud stack and why you need to care about this containerized stack for your application development, see the App Dev Cloud Stack series that takes you on a tour of the Red Hat Cloud Suite.

We will be back soon to dive deeper into how these container examples in the Red Hat CDK look and how to get started with them.





Wednesday, March 16, 2016

The OpenShift Profiles: An interview with Eric D. Schabell

Last week I was interviewed by the OpenShift team at Red Hat, specifically by Diego Lizarazo Rivera.

We met some time ago but never got around until now to sitting down and chatting formally about what I do, what I have done, what is related to Cloud technologies and where we might be going.

It took a bit of doing to get the video spliced, diced and marked up for public consumption, but here it is along with an article announcement on the OpenShift blog.

I not only talk about OpenShift and Cloud, but spend time on the Integrated Solutions BU and my time spent on JBoss technologies too as that relates to running them in the Cloud.

It is a short sit, so grab a nice cup of coffee or tea and enjoy our chat.




Friday, March 11, 2016

App Dev Cloud Stack - It’s all about the PaaS baby

OpenShift is all about the Paas
This series started with the statement, what do you mean by "Can't ignore the stack anymore?"

When your background is application development, you have spent many hours, days and years perfecting your craft. You have not only learned languages and concepts, you have made it a point to learn to make good architectural decisions when pulling together the applications you develop.

The problem is, we tend to ignore the stack we are working on as much as we can. Well it's time that we as application developers broadened our horizons a bit, expanding our understanding of the stack we work on with the introduction of Cloud, Platform As A Service (PaaS) and containers to our toolboxes.

Self service application delivery
Our tour of your Cloud stack continues from our previous article in this series where we covered why containers at scale matter, onwards to the layer that will resonate as the face of application delivery in our Cloud stack. That is the Platform as a Service (PaaS) layer that provides a unified way of working to present self service application development and deployment.

Into the Cloud

No that we have wandered up our Cloud stack and handled all the basic layers that help us deliver containers and containers at scale, we now arrive at the PaaS layer.

This is where the application delivery teams will directly interface with the web console that provides them with self service containers that are pre-configured for ease of use. Out of the box it provides all manner of platforms for development usage, such as PHP, Ruby, Java and more.

Application management console
As application delivery teams make use of these self service environments, the rest of the stack will make sure that the containers are created, configured to find each other and monitored to keep them performing at acceptable level or there will be alerts sent to take action.

The interesting part comes when you customize this self service console to provide the various pre-configured environments that your application delivery teams need to navigate on the way from development to production. There is nothing more frustrating for a application delivery team than having to spend time sorting out the test environment before they can push their project from development.

OpenShift provides an easy to use, fully integrated in the standard tooling that most enterprises are using today and creates an agile yet responsive application delivery receipt for success.

Want to experience this at a local level on you own machine?

We have just the thing, a project you can download to install in just minutes providing you with the same experience as an enterprise application delivery private PaaS. Check out the video that details the installation in just minutes.

Click to watch installation

OpenShift gives you full control of your applications lifecycle, allows for continuous integration ensuring you only deploy project code that works, is a fully integrated developer experience right down to integrating with their IDE and offers the full source to container image build cycle. These are just a few of the major features that this PaaS offers, check it out for yourself and explore how much you can achieve in a short period of time.

Red Hat Cloud Suite
What more could an application delivery team ask for?

Next time around we will take a look at interoperability within the Cloud stack and why that is critical to its success.

App Dev Cloud Stack series

Missed a previous article or looking for a specific article in the series?
  1. Can’t ignore the stack anymore
  2. Foundations for a stable Cloud
  3. Beginners guide to containers at scale
  4. Why containers at scale matter
  5. It’s all about the PaaS baby
  6. Open interoperability critical to success
  7. Securing containers at scale


Thursday, March 3, 2016

Red Hat Summit 2016 - Can't miss sessions on rules, integration, BPM and Cloud

Previously I posted the various talks and labs I submitted or co-submitted to the upcoming Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, CA from June 28 - July 1.

This week the invites started to roll out to speakers that got accepted or rejected. I got a combination of these, with two submissions accepted and two rejected.

The following talks and labs were accepted:

SL43953 - How to enhance customer experience through integration and automation of business events in the Cloud (Hands on Lab)

With Cloud providing a more elastic and flexible architecture to handle a multitude of business events from many different devices, we are faced with many challenges to process, analyze and react correctly to the ever changing business world around us. 

With JBoss A-MQ we are provided with many common protocols to connect our business events with our devices, but business information without the ability to filter for effective customer responses, detecting meaningful behavior and being able to react in a timely manner will cripple our customer relationships. With JBoss BRMS together with JBoss Fuse we are able to bridge the gap between just connecting and collecting business events, to leveraging business rules to determine which events have meaning that require actions to support our customer experiences. 

In this workshop the attendee will have the chance to get hands on with the following:
  • create asynchronous event driven integration between service using JBoss A-MQ
  • create rules to to analyze business events with JBoss BRMS
  • integrate rules, message event with Enterprise Integration Patters (EIP) using JBoss Fuse
  • deploy a multi-container microservices application on OpenShift
Join us for this power workshop as you learn to optimize your customers business experience with JBoss Integration products.

SS43957- Partners in crime from design to execution with Signavio and JBoss BPM

One of the great strengths of Red Hat and Open Source is that we work closely with partners. Together we can do more is one of the core concepts at Red Hat.

Within the world of BPM process design, Signavio's Process Editor is innovative technology that you can use to start modeling and engaging your organization in improving operational efficiency through the development of optimal models, right away. From browser to iPad it's easy for any process participant to capture, document and share professional models. The next step is testing and execution your processes, this is where JBoss BPM Suite comes in with all the tools you need to flush out, deploy and execute processes that are delivered by the Signavio Process Editor. 

Are you ready to be amazed at the ease of use and availability of extensive tooling to support a transition from design to execution of your business processes? Join us for this hour of power as we demonstrate the strengths of collaboration and execution of Signavio designed processes with JBoss BPM Suite. 

Excited to be speaking again at Red Hat Summit and hope to see you in San Francisco!

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

App Dev Cloud Stack - Why containers at scale matter

Manage and monitor containers at scale
is a major challenge.
This series started with the statement, what do you mean by "Can't ignore the stack anymore?"

When your background is application development, you have spent many hours, days and years perfecting your craft. You have not only learned languages and concepts, you have made it a point to learn to make good architectural decisions when pulling together the applications you develop.

The problem is, we tend to ignore the stack we are working on as much as we can. Well it's time that we as application developers broadened our horizons a bit, expanding our understanding of the stack we work on with the introduction of Cloud, Platform As A Service (PaaS) and containers to our toolboxes.

Our tour of your Cloud stack continues from our previous article in this series where we covered scaling containers, what the limits are and how to achieve containers at scale. Why containers at scale are important to our Cloud stack, what that means for application development and why it matters will be discussed in this article.

Why it matters

After detailing what containers at scale means, we now need to look at answering the question why containers at scale matters. This helps us as application developers appreciate what our Cloud stack is providing as we strive to deliver container based microservices and applications.

Containers at scale matter.
As our container usage grows and as our infrastructure become more burdened with striving to support our development projects, there will arise issues that directly effect our application delivery.

When we deliver more and more container based services, think in thousands and tens of thousands of containers, imagine what might happen. Our containers would be spread far and wide across our infrastructure, reaching a point that their relative distance to each other becomes so great that performance of our applications is affected. It is one of the more important solutions, that of providing robust orchestration features to your Cloud stack, that can take into account integration and performance issues around container based services.

Every application developers knows that it is imperative to be able to create, move, modify, configure, deploy, migrate and monitor our container based applications. If this sort of container usage is left unchecked, if there is no management, monitoring, orchestration and policies enforced then you are going to be buried under your Cloud stack.

Managing containers at scale.
Did you realize that not all containers are alike?

Each container is used to run some workload, but what do these workloads look like? Some workloads will be containerized services that have to be long-running and always available, such as customer facing applications. There will be other workloads that are more batch oriented, just running for short periods of time and not sensitive to failures. If they fail, they can be retried until they successfully complete. These batch oriented containers will have varying priorities and certain service levels to meet.

Another thing to think about when there are thousands and tens of thousands of containers deployed across an organization is how to monitor the health of each container, how to find a certain service provided by a container and how can we upgrade our deployed containers without disrupting our services? This data is crucial to being able to accurately bill based on usage statistics and service level agreements around containers in the Cloud stack.

Pretty daunting, isn't it?

Luckily there are robust orchestration features available in our Cloud stack. There are management features that allow for services to remain in close proximity to applications with a heavy usage pattern. There are monitoring features to keep applications and services both running and scaling as their workloads increase and/or decrease over time. There are billing features and tooling to ensure the users of containers are billed accordingly for the services the Cloud stack is providing.
Red Hat Cloud Suite

The Open Source solutions available to solve these tasks are Red Hat Atomic Enterprise Platform for containers at scale together with Red Hat CloudForms for management. They solve the issues described and support application delivery using containers at scale.

Next we will be taking a closer look at what is directly related to application delivery, that is the seamless self-service developer experience provided by our Platform as a Service (PaaS).

App Dev Cloud Stack series

Missed a previous article or looking for a specific article in the series?
  1. Can’t ignore the stack anymore
  2. Foundations for a stable Cloud
  3. Beginners guide to containers at scale
  4. Why containers at scale matter
  5. It’s all about the PaaS baby
  6. Open interoperability critical to success
  7. Securing containers at scale