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What's new in smart cloud enterprise 2.2
1. What’s new in IBM SmartCloud Enterprise?
December 2012
This document provides an overview of new and exciting IBM SmartCloud Enterprise
capabilities that are have been made available over the last several months, culminating
in an updated release in December 2012. These new features and functions are the result
of feedback from customers and business partners along with IBM planned strategic
initiatives. We welcome feedback and will continue to enhance IBM SmartCloud
Enterprise to extend its scope as an enterprise cloud infrastructure to help enterprises and
partners embrace cloud computing with confidence in the security, reliability and control
that IBM delivers.
In addition to the availability of IBM SmartCloud Application Services, IBM’s platform-
as-a-service offering, key new and enhanced capabilities for IBM SmartCloud Enterprise
include:
• Platinum M2 VM sizes (Now generally available)
• Alternate Windows Instance Capture (Now generally available)
• Windows Import/Copy (Pre-Release -- Available by request)
• Windows 2012 (Pre-Release, but available to all users)
• Cloud Services Framework enhancements
• APIs for guest messaging (New and available for all users)
• ISO 27001 Certification (for all IBM SCE data centers)
• Object storage (enhanced portal integration with SCE)
SmartCloud Enterprise (SCE) will now be deployed in the following countries: Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Senegal, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar,
United Arab Emirates and Yemen. These new additions join the 64 countries where SCE
is already announced and/or deployed, providing the broadest geographic coverage of any
cloud IaaS provider.
Platform as a Service: IBM SmartCloud Application Services
IBM’s platform as a service, IBM SmartCloud Application Services, runs on top of and
deploys virtual resources to IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. SmartCloud Application
Services delivers a secure, automated, cloud-based environment that supports the full
lifecycle of accelerated application development, deployment and delivery. SmartCloud
Application Services provides an enterprise-class infrastructure, enhanced security and
pay-per-use, and allows clients to differentiate themselves with built-in flexible options
that configure cloud their way – leading to a competitive advantage.
SmartCloud Application Services provides two separate but complementary services:
IBM SmartCloud Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service (CLMS) and IBM
SmartCloud Application Workload Service (SCAWS).
IBM SmartCloud Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service
This service, CLMS, provides an integrated set of IBM Rational® tools as a service.
CLMS is designed to help you coordinate software development activities throughout the
2. lifecycle of an application, from requirements tracking through design, implementation,
build, test, deployment and maintenance. CLMS provides you a "walk up and use,"
quick-adoption service for new projects, teams and clients with no up-front investment to
get started. Clients can add users and roles through a straightforward web user interface.
The environment is designed for resilient service including monitoring, backup and data
retention.
The service includes the functions of the following IBM Rational tools:
• Rational Team Concert: To track work items, perform source control, and project
planning activities.
• Rational Requirements Composer: To track requirements and reports.
• Rational Quality Manager: To track defects and provide automated quality
insights based on project metrics.
The Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service may be used together with the IBM
SmartCloud Application Workload Service as one integrated ‘DevOps’ solution that
promotes communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and
IT operations to more rapidly produce quality software products and services.
IBM SmartCloud Application Workload Service
This service, SCAWS, provides platform services based on the concept of a pattern. A
pattern consists of proven best practices and expertise for complex system tasks that have
been captured, lab-tested and optimized into a deployable form. Application patterns
help our clients eliminate manual errors in their application development, quickly deliver
new applications, and drive consistent results.
The service offers the following selection of application patterns:
• Web Application Pattern (with auto scaling, proxy and caching services)
• Application Pattern for Java
• Transactional Database Pattern
• Data Mart Pattern
These patterns are made available, deployed and managed from an integrated Workload
Service controller environment. That environment includes a visual pattern editor, policy-
based deployment and pattern workload instance lifecycle management, including
monitoring, logging and reporting.
Application patterns that are developed and tested within IBM SmartCloud Application
Services are then portable to either public cloud, SmartCloud Enterprise, or private cloud
with the IBM PureApplication System, delivering choice and flexibility in deployment
models.
In addition to the application patterns, the IBM SmartCloud Application Workload
Service provides users with the ability to customize or create, and deploy virtual system
patterns from within the Workload Service controller environment. Virtual system
patterns consist of the specifications for whole configurations of SmartCloud Enterprise
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3. virtual machines provisioned from specially prepared images, and are a way to capture
the details of complex systems and assure they are consistently deployed.
Platinum M2
With the addition of Platinum M2, SmartCloud Enterprise now offers 10 server and eight
attachable persistent storage options which enable the configuration of systems to match
a wide variety of workloads.
An exciting new addition to our Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum server
configurations, Platinum M2 offers a great new alternative for memory-intensive
workloads with 16 Virtual CPUs with 1.25 Gigahertz, and 32 GB of virtual memory.
Additional value from Platinum M2:
• Intel architecture servers can be provisioned with Linux (Red Hat, Novell SUSE
or customer provided) or Microsoft Windows Server (2003 or 2008) and your
choice of middleware – backed by a 99.9% SLA.
You can also dynamically attach and detach up to three extra blocks of persistent storage
(RAID protected in user selectable storage areas) to an instance, preformatted (ext3) or
raw in eight sizes from 256 GB to 10 TB: these configurations are available across all
SCE servers.
Windows Instance Capture
We are now offering to all customers additional flexibility and choice in Windows
instance capture: clients can use the “Save private image” function with or without the
use of Sysprep, the Microsoft System Preparation tool.
The Microsoft System Preparation tool (sysprep.exe) enables Windows system
administrators to prepare Windows Server system images for duplication from one
computer to another computer in a manner that is supported by Microsoft. It changes
security identifiers (SIDs) and other system and configuration settings to make them
unique from one computer to the next in preparation for an automated deployment.
Using Sysprep is the default and should be used to assure that multiple instances created
from the same saved image are unique. Saving an image without using Sysprep (non-
Sysprep) should be used for backup and restore of servers that have software installed
that is sensitive to changes in the system SID. When using non-sysprep capture, care
should be taken to avoid provisioning instances with duplicate SIDs. For further
information on Sysprep, please refer to Microsoft documentation.
Windows Import/Copy (pre-release)
SCE 2.2 is offering a pre-release capability to import and copy Microsoft Windows
images, based on customers’ request and selection.
Windows Import/Copy allows you to import Windows Server virtual images from your
existing environment into SmartCloud Enterprise as well as transfer SCE images between
datacenters. The feature is designed as an extension to the existing Linux Image
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4. Import/Copy functionality and as such leverages the existing API and Command line
tools. The expectation is to make this widely available in the first half of 2013.
Windows 2012 (pre-release)
SCE 2.2 is offering a pre-release capability for customers to provision Windows 2012
images. Windows Server 2012 is available now for all customers from Microsoft and
provides many enhancements from previous Windows Server versions. Windows Server
2012 targets cloud workloads, so customers will be able to test these capabilities for their
workloads on SCE. During this pre-release, Windows Server 2012 will be available to all
customers and should be used for non-production use. Full support is expected later in
2013.
Cloud Services Framework enhancements
IBM SmartCloud Enterprise has added the following enhancements to the Cloud Services
Framework:
• Augmenting the existing service provisioning/deprovisioning with backend
support
• New metrics to monitor service usage
• Service image hiding
• Extending the existing REST APIs with Java API and CLI capabilities
• Extending existing service descriptors and persistence of service instance
parameters
• For technical details on these enhancements and the specific value they provide,
please refer to the "Creating and Customizing Services" document in
Documentation Library.
These exciting enhancements to the Cloud Services Framework make it easier for SCE
customers and partners to create and deliver services on top of SmartCloud Enterprise.
Now you can quickly and easily define and register all the aspects of your service and
make it available to your end customers.
APIs for guest messaging
This new functionality provides a set of APIs to monitor the health of SCE virtual
machine instances by issuing guest messages. Timely receipt of "guest messages" let you
know that your virtual machine is working properly.
ISO 27001 Certification
Information security has become increasingly important to all businesses, big and small.
IBM takes security of its customers’ data very seriously, which has been our heritage for
more than 100 years. To further enhance our security standards and the protection
offered to our customers, IBM has completed the necessary steps to earn ISO 27001
Certification. The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 27001 standard
provides a framework to ensure that the certified organization addresses security needs
for its customers.
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5. The certification from Bureau Veritas was attained for all IBM SmartCloud Services data
centers. Customers in all centers now benefit from:
• Secure Shield Internet connectivity
• Additional firewall and intrusion protection
• New distributed denial of service protection
• New Botnet protection
• Updates to hypervisor and additional level of isolation
IBM has obtained certificates to the ISO 27001 standard by country and/or business unit.
To review the entire list, please visit the IBM ISO 27001 web site.
Object storage
As a feature of SmartCloud Enterprise, object storage gives clients an enterprise-class
choice when it comes to self-service cloud back-up and archive.
IBM partners with Nirvanix, a leading provider of enterprise-class cloud storage services,
to deliver SCE-object storage. As part of SCE Release 2.2, in January SCE-object storage
will integrate the IBM and Nirvanix portals into one IBM portal, making it easier for
clients to provision storage.
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