Achieving Developer Nirvana With Codename: BlueMix

Achieving Developer Nirvana With
Codename: BlueMix
By: Ryan Baxter
@ryanjbaxter
http://ryanjbaxter.com

Definition
nirvana
/nərˈvänə,nir-/
In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is described as the
extinguishing of the fires that cause suffering.
2

Does This Sound Like Dev Nirvana?
 Install runtime, container, and all libraries
 Install needed services (databases, mobile, etc)
 Bind the services to the application, ports/ips/firewalls
 Setup dynamic routing and load-balancer
 Setup four layers of built-in High-Availability
 Setup streaming logging aggregation
 Setup application performance monitoring
 Scale the application up to X instances
 Then repeat for dev, test, and production
3

What Is BlueMix?
 A platform for running virtually any application in the cloud
without having to worry about the hardware, software, and
networking needed to do so.
 This definition is usually what we refer to as a platform-as-
a-service or PaaS
 BlueMix is similar to other platforms you may have heard
of
 Heroku, Google App Engine, OpenShift, Pivotal One
4

How Everything Fits Together
 A PaaS is software that is
usually running on top of an
IaaS and abstracts the
complexities of the IaaS away
 BlueMix runs on top of Softlayer
 Your app runs on top of
BlueMix and has no knowledge
of the IaaS layer
5
IaaS (Softlayer)
PaaS (BlueMix)
Your App

Why Not Just Use IaaS?
 It might be just as easy to get started at the IaaS layer if
you use a prebuild image
 Over time though the maintenance of this image
increases the cost
 OS updates, security updates, new versions of libraries, DNS and
networking changes, configuration and maintenance of other
services like DBs, etc
 At the PaaS layer all of this cost disappears! The platform
takes care of it for you!
6

Benefits Of Using BlueMix
 Save time by just worrying about the code and not the
infrastructure
 Quickly get your app in the hands of your users –
deploying your app is a matter of running a single
command
 Easily add functionality to your application using IBM and
partner provided services
 Use the languages, runtimes, and frameworks that you
are most familiar with
 SoftLayer
7

BlueMix Open Beta
 BlueMix is currently in open
beta, you need to register to get
going
 During the beta you get 8GB of
memory to use across as many
apps as you want and can
provision up to 20 services
 Register at bluemix.net, you need
an IBM ID
8

Lets Deploy An App!
App to enable anyone to ask questions for a session…but
we can make it even easier.
9

Cloud Foundry And BlueMix
 BlueMix is built upon an open
source project called Cloud Foundry
 IBM contributes to the project and is a
founding member of the Cloud Foundry
Foundation
 All tools, documentation, and
samples for Cloud Foundry are
relevant and can be used with
BlueMix
 Buildpacks, Services, CLI, Scaling,
etc are Cloud Foundry concepts
10

Runtimes And Buildpacks
 One of the benefits of BlueMix is that it supports virtually
any runtime you may want to use
 This is accomplished a psuedo-standard called
buildpacks
 BlueMix has 4 built in buildpacks
 Java Liberty, Node.js, Sinatra, and Ruby On Rails
 If you are pushing an application using one of these languages
you do not need to specify a buildpack to use, BlueMix installs it
for you
 Other runtimes are supported via community buildpacks
11

Buildpack Anatomy
13
Runtime
Container Libraries
Application
Buildpack

BlueMix Services
 Services allow you to add
functionality to your application
with minimal cost and effort
 Select service and plan, then bind
to your application
 Once a service is bound to your
application information to use
the service is available in an
environment variable called
VCAP_SERVICES
14

The Cloud Foundry Command Line (CLI)
 The command line will most likely be your tool of choice
when doing anything with BlueMix
 Anything you will want to do in BlueMix can be accomplished
using the CLI
 Pushing An Application, stopping, starting, restarting,
deleting
 Create, bind, and unbind services
 View and tail application logs
 Documentation:
http://docs.cloudfoundry.org/devguide/installcf/whats-new-
15

Pushing An Application
 You can push an application
using the cf push command
 What you push depends on the
runtime you will use, for Java you
may push a war or jar, for Node.js
you will push the app directory
 cf push will push everything in
the current directory unless you
specify the –p option
16

Manifest Files
 cf push commands can become very verbose
 cf push appName –p myapp.war –b
https://github.com/ryanjbaxter/mybuildpack -i 5
–m 512M --no-start
 To avoid having to type this you can use a manifest file
 When using a manifest file you just execute cf push and the CLI
will look for manifest.mf in the current directory
 Manifest Generator: http://cfmanigen.ng.bluemix.net
17

Sample Manifest File
 Command Line
cf push appName –p myapp.war –b
https://github.com/ryanjbaxter/mybuildpack -i 5 –m
512M --no-start
 manifest.mf File
---
applications:
- name: appName
memory: 513M
instances: 5
buildpack: https://github.com/ryanjbaxter/mybuildpack
services:
- todo-mongo-db
18

Logging
 Logging is the first step in figuring out what is wrong
 You application’s logs will be written to stderr.log and
stdout.log
 Logs can be viewed in the BlueMix UI by selecting your
applications runtime
 Logs can be tailed from the command line – very useful!
 cf logs appName
 cf logs appName --recent – shows you the most recent
logs
19

Scaling
 BlueMix allows you to scale
your application horizontally
and vertically within minutes
 If the load on your application
increases/decreases you may
want to adjust the number of
instances to handle the load
 If you find the resources
available to your app is tight
you can increase the memory
20

Dev Ops Services
21
• DevOps Solution in the cloud for building
mobile and cloud applications
• Optimized for use with BlueMix
• Integrated task tracking, agile planning,
source control with auto deploy
• Use your favorite tools or work from the
Web IDE
• Hosted Jazz SCM or Git or link to GitHub
• Public and private projects
• Continuous Integration and Deployment
with Jenkins
• Mobile quality and application
performance monitoring (coming)

Resources
 Documentation:
https://www.ng.bluemix.net/docs/index.jsp
 developerWorks: http://developer.ibm.com/bluemix
 Sample Apps & Tutorials:
https://www.ibmdw.net/bluemix/docs/articles/,
https://www.ibmdw.net/bluemix/docs/sample-code/
 Developer Forum:
https://www.ibmdw.net/answers/?community=bluemix
 Blog: https://www.ibmdw.net/bluemix/blog/
 Twitter: #BlueMix, @IBMBlueMix
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Resources From Today
 Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/RyanBaxter/dev-
nirvanabluemix
 Code: https://github.com/CodenameBlueMix/session-
questions
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Thank you.
Join the beta at: www.bluemix.net

Creating Apps In The BlueMix UI
 You can create an
application in the
BlueMix UI by going to
the catalog and
choosing a boilerplate
or runtime
 Boilerplate = code +
service
 Runtime = code
27

Using The Dashboard
 You will be brought to
the dashboard which
will now have a tile for
your app
 Click the tile to see
additional details
about your app
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View The Guide To Download The Source
29

Updating The Source
 Downloading the source code may be good for learning
but you are most likely not going to use any of it
 In fact it is not even necessary to create an app in the UI first
 You will want to download and install the Cloud Foundry
Command Line tool in order to upload / create your
application
 Follow the documentation here:
http://www.ng.bluemix.net/docs/BuildingWeb.jsp#install-cf
30

Achieving Developer Nirvana With Codename: BlueMix

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