Today at Impact2012, I attend a session providing tips and tricks while using the IBM PureSystems. Here what I collected and hope they will be useful for all of you;

1) Always have to 2 Hypervisors in each cloud group, in case of failure of one: As PureSystems can move instances in case of failure of an Hypervisor to another one in the same cloud group, having only 1 Hypervisor in a cloud group will disable this capabilities. Why only within the same cloud group, because first the IP address group are defined by cloud group and secondly all Hypervisors inside a cloud group should be the same type (ESX, AIX…).

2) Used shared services when possible: Using shared services for example for cache will increase the performance of your environment as you will not need to deploy this service for each deployed workload. All shared services are designed to be robust and auto-scalable.

3) Reuse existing post-provisioning scrips as Script Packages: Don’t reinvent the wheel, if scripts are available and fit your needs use them and don’t waste your time to recreate them

4) Look at PureSystem Center: PureSystems Center is a repository of patterns available for reuse. This repository grow each day.

5) Use the AMC tool (Advanced Middleware Configuration) to migrate workload to the IBM PureSystems. it will help you to migrate your configuration inside the IBM PureSystems. Please read this article for more information.

6) Reuse as much as possible the provided images because they will be maintained by IBM.

7) Include large file in the image instead of upload them at deployment time using Extend/Capture functionality or ICCT. This will speed up your deployment. Of course, don’t use this method for file that change often or small scripts or scripts which will need parameters available only at deployment time.

8) Use ICCT to create new images. The ICCT tool can be downloaded from the PureSystems portal and will help use to increase the reusability of your effort by organizing capabilities by bundles. These bundles can be reused to create multiple images. Imagine you have a bundle to setup VNC, you can reuse this bundle each time you would like to create a new image, no need to redo the setup each time.

9) Do not use Extend/Capture for Frequently changing tasks, Fast and small task -> use script package concepts. The script packages are scripts which will run either at provisioning or deprovisioning time.

10) Be caution when you develop your scripts on Windows because the famous CR/LF and LF end-line. Script with CR/LF will not run on Linux server thus have to be transformed using dostounix command. I already saw some boot script which by default transforms all scripts before calling them. This is not a good practice to me because it will reduce the deployment performance, you just have to pay a bit of attention to it.

11) All scripts are running as ‘root’ be sure you do an ‘su’ if necessary. For example, some installation scripts must run under a specific user, so just be sure you use the ‘su’ command when you launch your installation script.

12) Usage ssh command to access your deployed instance should be the last resort. Use as much as possible to functionality provided by the pattern from the portal because by changing configuration on the instance you could break the integration between the UI and your deployed pattern.

Hope these tips and tricks list has been useful for you. Enjoyed PureSystems.

BTW: there is a 90-days free trial at ‘Try IBM PureSystems. No charge‘