How to enable IBM SmartCloud Application Services

I will explain in this article how to provision the different services provided by IBM SmartCloud Application Services.

The goal of IBM SmartCloud Application Services, or SCAS, is to provide end-to-end services for applications from the development to production. SCAS consists of five areas shown on the picture below:

IBM SmartCloud Application Services two main services are implemented which cover the application lifecycle, the application environment and part of the integration.

First, the IBM SmartCloud Application Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service, which allows you to manage your application lifecycle development, is based on Rational products such as Rational Team Concert, Rational Quality Management, and Rational Requirement Composer.

Second, IBM SmartCloud Application Workload Service, which allows you to deploy topology on the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise via virtual application or system patterns, is included.

The DevOps methodology consists of a number of use cases to manage application development and operations. DevOps covers three areas, development, quality assurance, and technology operation: IBM SmartCloud Application Services helps with all three. Adopting DevOps will provide a reduced change scope, increase release coordination, and speed automation.

Both services, IBM SmartCloud Application Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service and IBM SmartCloud Application Workload Service, are used for the DevOps scenario. For example, in Rational Application Developer a developer tracks the ‘defect’ managed by the IBM SmartCloud Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service and uses the Workload Deployer plug-in to create a test environment on the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise using the IBM SmartCloud Application Workload Service. IBM SmartCloud Application Services provides the functionality needed for each segment of the DevOps scenario.

IBM SmartCloud Application Services are deployed from the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise portal but first you have to create an SSH key:

You will need also to provide an SSH key to the SmartCloud Application Services, if you don’t have one yet and it is better to make it default.

To do that, go on the SmartCloud Enterprise platform, in the ‘Account’ tab and click on ‘generate a new key’ (You can also provide your own key if you wish by selecting “add key”).

provide a name

and download the key on your local disk. (You will need this file if you want to connect the generated instances via ssh).

Make it default by going back in the ‘Account’ tab, click on “Change default key” and select the just generated key.

Deploy the IBM SmartCloud Application Collaborative Lifecycle Management Service:

  1. Login to SCE
  2. Open Control Panel
  3. Open ‘Service Instance’ panel.
  4. Select data-center
  5. Select the ‘SCAS CLM Service’
  6. Click Next and proceed:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bByHSeH3OjY[/youtube]

Deploy the IBM SmartCloud Application Workload Service:

  1. Login to SCE
  2. Open Control Panel
  3. Open ‘Service Instance’ panel.
  4. Select data-center
  5. Select the ‘SmartCloud Application Workload Service’
  6. Click Next and proceed:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdLcxzhZOo[/youtube]

After having deployed the SmartCloud Application Workload Service you have to add your SmartCloud Enterprise credentials in the SmartCloud Application Workload Services in order to be able to deploy instances on SmartCloud Enterprise from SmartCloud Application Workload Services.

After that open, the SmartCloud Application Workload Services and go in ‘Cloud’->’Cloud Group’ and select the ‘SCE Default Group’.

In the ‘Login Information’ section, enter your SCE User ID, password and the name of the generated key:

Conclusion: Within a few minutes, IBM SmartCloud Application Services are ready for use.