Customizing ITNM->TBSM Integration

This week at a customer site we've been customizing the integration of ITNM data into TBSM. While the ITNM DLA provides topology data, this large customer needed more detailed information. Some highlights of the work done:

We integrated ITNM with TBSM using a policy and the XMLToolkit. The requirement was to represent the MPLS VPNs in a service tree and show the VPN Type, VPN Name, devices used in the VPN and the interfaces on the devices. ITNM does not represent the data this and default import using the DLA didn't give us what we wanted or needed.

We started scouring the ITNM Oracle database and found the entityID's for the devices and worked from there to find the devices, interfaces and vpn names and types and then built the service tree hierarchy based on the SQL query. This process created book that the XMLtoolkit read (API data).

We can provide innovative solutions for you, too. Contact Tony Delgross at tony@gulfsoft.com to get the ball rolling.

What are some time-saving tips that every Linux user should know?

Here's the link

I ran across this information while browsing quora.com, a crowdsourcing site for answering everyday questions from normal people. It's a very active community with some good gems of information.

Impact 7.1.0.2 recently released

And we've been able to do some pretty amazing stuff with it. Specifically, we've been able to pull ITNM multi-parent topology information into DASH using an Impact policy and display that data without using Java - only HTML5/JavaScript/CSS. Here's a screenshot of that data in DASH:

This is a better view of the data, with correct icons and state information:

Cloud Computing Simplified

IBM really produces a TON of great information on all computer-related topics. One they recently released is this redpaper on Cloud Computing, available here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp5179.html?Open . From the abstract:

"Starting with the basic building blocks of cloud computing, we cover a wide range of cloud topics in this book. We do not go into details of specific cloud products on the market, so this book serves as a cloud primer for readers who are new to this exciting technology. If you are already familiar with the fundamentals of cloud computing and would like to explore more advanced cloud topics, you can still benefit from this book. Each section is independent of the others, so it is OK to skip the sections you are familiar with and go directly to the section you’d like to read first"

IBM InterConnect Presentation - Application Performance Management and IT Service Management Best Practices

The following presentation was presented at IBM InterConnect 2015.

Download Link - via Google Drive

PDF - SCO 2.3.0.1 Troubleshooting VMControl Image Issues in Glance

ICO all-in-one deployment doesn't install Workload Deployer

The ICO 2.4 and 2.4.0.1 Deployment Server installers are definitely great pieces of software. They check prerequisites correctly and install without a hitch. They are really, really nice.

This post is about one of the options in the 'ds wizard' script options. Specifically, when you take the path:

[0] New IBM Cloud Orchestrator deployment.
[0] Demo
[1] All In One
[2] All In One IBM Cloud Orchestrator Deployment
   - Deploys IBM Cloud Orchestrator all-in-one in one machine.


This path actually deploys the template sco-devstack (/opt/ico_install/topology_templates/sco_devstack.json), which does NOT install the IBM Workload Deployer component. The effect that this has is that you do NOT have a PATTERNS option in the Administrator GUI (https://machine.fqdn:8443/), and so you can't create, view or use any patterns.

So if you want an all-in-one deployment, you should take a different option. Specifically, the path you should take through the wizard is:

[0] New IBM Cloud Orchestrator deployment.
[0] Demo
[1] All In One
[2] All In One IBM Cloud Orchestrator Deployment 
[0] All In One with addtional KVM compute node
   - Deploys IBM Cloud Orchestrator all-in-one KVM topology with an additional KVM compute node where components use a shared 
   - internal database.

And when it asks you for the FQDNs of the three servers, specify the FQDN of the ONE server that you'll be using in each of those three places.