Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Getting started with Bluemix!

No, honestly... I never thought it would be that simple!

Bluemix is currently in open beta. You need to register to get started.

To register go to: https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/
The free trial version is available for 30 days.

Once you have logged in, you will see a nice dashboard.
Just explore around to your heart's content when you have time, the DOCS are exhaustive, yet very useful.

Quick steps for your first app:
    • Click on Create an App; you will be presented with the Catalog, with Boilerplates* and Runtimes.

    • Let's start with 'Liberty for Java'.

    •  Give it a name.   
      • P.S. myTestApp will most likely be taken! Chose a better one ;) 
    • Give it a few minutes and you will see the 'health' of your app turn green.
    • Click on the app and click on VIEW QUICK START. 
    • Now go to myTestApp.bluemix.net  and Voila! That's your very first app there.
    • Ok. It has some code written for you already. Just as an example. So let's just continue to add our bit to this app.
    • Blindly follow the steps given there UNTIL STEP #3.
    • Extract the zip file and add a simple HTML file of your own in WebContent folder. Let me just add this simple HTML file that takes a word and says 'Hello'.
    • Generate a war file. You can use eclipse or run 'ant build-war' from command prompt.
    •  Now the following simple commands in your terminal:
    • cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net
    • cf login -u <user-name>
    • Give your password
    • cd to your project path where the war file resides
    • cf push <app-name> -p <war file name>
    • On bluemix dashboard, you can see the health of the app turning red for a while and then back to green. That means your app is running now!
    • Congratulations! That took about 2 minutes and that is how is easy it is!
    • http://pd-javaapp1.mybluemix.net/SayHello.html here is my app for you all to test!

    Try it out and let me know the results and questions if you have any! :)

    *Boilerplates: Just a fancy word for 'getting started applications'.
    Here is a youtube link that shows how to add a servlet. Thank you Ryan Baxter!

    Sunday, July 13, 2014

    Are you a newbee to IBM Bluemix too?

    What is IBM Bluemix?

    So everybody is talking cloud these days.
    And IBM being pioneer in most of the technologies since about a hundred years, could not just take a back seat now, could it?

    In IBM's words -

    "Bluemix is an implementation of IBM's Open Cloud Architecture, leveraging Cloud Foundry to enable developers to rapidly build, deploy, and manage their cloud applications, while tapping a growing ecosystem of available services and runtime frameworks."

    Okay. Lets dissect this description...

    Bluemix is an implementation of IBM's Open Cloud Architecture. 
    So Bluemix is nothing but the latest cloud offering from IBM.

    ...leveraging Cloud Foundry...
    Cloud Foundry is an open source platform as a service (PaaS) that lets you quickly and easily create and deploy applications on the cloud.

    ...to enable developers to rapidly build, deploy, and manage their cloud applications
    It lets organizations and developers to quickly create, deploy, and manage applications on the cloud. Cloud Foundry lets you focus on building cloud applications rather than the underlying infrastructure needed by the app to run on cloud.

    ...while tapping a growing ecosystem of available services and runtime frameworks
    Now this is what that makes it most interesting.
    Part of any open cloud environment deployment includes cloud workloads and capabilities that are available within the cloud.
    The number of services and frameworks provided by Bluemix is quite impressive. This reduces the time for application/infrastructure provisioning and total cost of ownership. It provides flexibility for developers in terms of storage, bandwidth and power. And businesses in terms of instant updates and new features deployed automatically; thus letting them rapidly adjust to their customer and client needs.

    I can't wait to start with my first application on Bluemix!

    For more details on services provided by IBM Bluemix, please visit:

    http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-bluemixfoundry/

    I will be back with more on this soon!