The IBM System z Personal Development Tool (1090) redbooks available

The IBM System z Personal Development Tool provides one or more System z processors (with several emulated I/O device types), based on a personal computer Linux environment. As the name implies, it is intended for development and similar purposes, such as education and demonstrations.

3 recent redbooks explain all you want to know:

• System z Personal Development Tool: Volume 1 Introduction and Reference, SG24-7721-00
• System z Personal Development Tool: Volume 2 Installation and Basic Use, SG24-7722-00
• System z Personal Development Tool: Volume 3 Additional Topics, SG24-7723-00

Further information:
System z Personal Development Tool 1090 User’s Guide
IBM System z Personal Development Tool (IBMzPDT) LID (GC27-2264-00)

IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management – Trial version available

IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management monitors and helps manage energy usage of IT and facility resources for efficient data center operations

• Gain insight into energy and thermal information for IT equipment, data center infrastructure and facilities equipment and enable the optimization of the monitored environment from a centralized point of control
• Store real-time, historic, and trending energy and thermal metrics in a common repository to aid in decision making and for use by other IBM service management solutions
• Use enhanced reporting capabilities to estimate the potential power and cost savings of proposed energy optimization recommendations
• Leverage enhanced workspaces, views, situations, and reports for third party power meters
• Leverage integration with Tivoli Business Service Manager to understand the business service impact of energy optimization decisions
• Pull energy usage information into Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager to enable energy-related consumption and chargeback capabilities

IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management monitors and helps manage energy usage of IT and facility resources for efficient data center operations. Download this trial version today!

Hybrid Computing Systems – IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 53, Number 5

Difficult technological challenges facing microprocessor design are forcing a rethinking of how best to utilize the increasing number of transistors provided by Moore’s Law. One promising approach is to tailor system characteristics to specific applications. These new “hybrid” system designs combine multiple types of processor cores on a single chip to reduce system power and chip area while improving performance. The twelve papers in this issue describe hybrid system challenges and solutions from component design and optimization to system architectures, design tools, programming models, and applications. This issue of the IBM Journal of Research and Development explores hardware and software design for hybrid systems, ranging from the first supercomputer to achieve a performance of over one petaflops to medical image processing applications.

WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition V7 – free trial download

Download a free trial version of IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition V7, which delivers an environment that is highly available, dynamically scalable, and easily managed. Building on the core WebSphere Application Server configuration, WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition drives business agility by providing millions of developers and IT Architects with an innovative, performance based foundation to build, reuse, run, integrate and manage Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications and services.

The trial download consists of WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition V7 virtual images for VMware ESX. Using the virtual images lets you quickly setup, deploy, and tear down WebSphere environments, allowing for quick evaluation of the product. Just download, untar and be up and running in about 30 minutes.

WAS 7 Details on administration and configuration – redpapers

Following papers are stand-alone versions of a chapter of WebSphere Application Server V7 Administration and Configuration Guide, SG24-7615.

1. WebSphere Application Server V7: System Management Technical Overview

This IBM Redpaper publication provides a technical overview of the system management functionality of WebSphere Application Server. This information can help you understand how system administration occurs. It is particularly useful in a multi-server environment to understand the distributed administration and synchronization topics.
This paper assumes that you are familiar with the concepts in WebSphere Application Server V7.0: Technical Overview, REDP-4482.

2. WebSphere Application Server V7: Working with Profiles on Distributed Systems

Installing a WebSphere Application Server environment requires planning. A major decision point is the topology for the system. These decisions include, for example, whether you will have a stand-alone server, a distributed managed server environment, and whether you will use the new flexible management options.
Planning for topology design is covered in the IBM Redbooks publication, WebSphere Application Server V7: Concepts, Planning and Design, SG24-7708. That book is designed to help you select a topology and develop a clear idea of what steps are needed to set up your chosen environment. Your options depend on your WebSphere Application Server package. The installation process is well-documented in the installation guide packaged with the product. The purpose of this IBM Redpaper publication is to help you build your initial WebSphere Application Server environment after you have installed the product.

3. WebSphere Application Server V7: Working with Profiles on z/OS Systems

The purpose of this IBM® Redpaper publication is to help you build your initial WebSphere Application Server environment using the new WebSphere Customization Tools (WCT).

4. WebSphere Application Server V7: Centralized Installation Manager

The Centralized Installation Manager (CIM) is a new feature with WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, Version 7.0 for distributed platforms. This feature can be used to consolidate and simplify the steps required to perform installations and apply maintenance on systems in the Network Deployment cell. This paper introduces CIM and shows you how to use it.

5. WebSphere Application Server V7: Administration Consoles and Commands

WebSphere Application Server properties are stored in the configuration repository as XML files. It is not a good idea to manually edit any of the configuration files because this bypasses validation of any changes and could lead to synchronization-related problems. Rather, WebSphere Application Server provides administrative tools that help you administer the environment. These tools manage modifications to the files in the repository.

6. WebSphere Application Server V7: Administration of WebSphere Processes

This IBM Redpaper publication provides information about basic administration tasks. The focus of this paper is on managing WebSphere processes, including the deployment manager, nodes and node agents, application servers, and application server clusters.

7. WebSphere Application Server for z/OS V7 Administration

This IBM Redpaper publication looks at the administration features unique to WebSphere Application Server for z/OS V7.

8. WebSphere Application Server V7: Administration with Scripting

The administrative console is sufficient for tasks that are non-repetitive, have a minimal number of administrative steps, and are relatively simple. For administration that requires many steps, which can be repetitive, and time consuming to configure, wsadmin combined with scripts is an ideal tool.

9. WebSphere Application Server V7: Accessing Databases from WebSphere

When an application or WebSphere component requires access to a database, that database must be defined to WebSphere as a data source. Two basic definitions are required. First, a JDBC™ provider definition defines an existing database provider, including the type of database access that it provides and the location of the database vendor code that provides the implementation. The second requirement is a data source definition that defines which JDBC provider is to be used, the name and location of the database, and other connection properties. This paper shows how to create these definitions.

10. WebSphere Application Server V7: Accessing EIS Applications from WebSphere

The J2EE™ Connector architecture (JCA) defines a standard architecture for connecting the J2EE platform to heterogeneous Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), for example, ERP, mainframe transaction processing, database systems, and existing applications not written in the Java programming language. By defining a set of scalable, secure, and transactional mechanisms, the JCA enables the integration of EISs with application servers and enterprise applications. WebSphere Application Server V7.0 provides a complete implementation of the JCA 1.5 specification, including the features of the JCA 1.0 Specification. This IBM Redpaper publication  discusses the various considerations for accessing EIS applications from WebSphere.

11.  WebSphere Application Server V7: Monitoring the Runtime

Being able to measure and monitor system interactions helps IT in providing business continuity. Monitoring capabilities play a key role in successfully managing enterprise systems. In WebSphere Application Server, there are a number of tools that can contribute to an organization’s monitoring strategy and provide insights into the performance of the application server. In this paper, we provide an introduction to these toolsets.

12. WebSphere Application Server V7: Session Management

Session support allows a Web application developer to maintain state information across multiple user visits to the application. This IBM Redpaper publication discusses HTTP session support in WebSphere Application Server V7 and how to configure it. Also discussed is the support for stateful session bean failover.

13. WebSphere Application Server V7: Understanding Class Loaders

Understanding how the Java and WebSphere class loaders work is critical to packaging and deploying Java EE5 applications. Failure to set up the class loaders properly most likely results in a cascade of the infamous class loading exceptions (such as ClassNotFoundException) when trying to start your application.

14. WebSphere Application Server V7: Packaging Applications for Deployment

Discusses packaging of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (JEE 5) applications using Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (EJB 3.0). We also provide a section on working with business-level applications, a new concept introduced in WebSphere Application Server v7.0. We cover the packaging of the following JEE artifacts: Enterprise Archives (EAR), EJB 3.0 modules, Web modules, JPA persistence units, and working with Enhanced EAR files. We also describe some of the IBM enhancements WebSphere Application Server v7.0 supports in addition to the JEE specification.

15. WebSphere Application Server V7: Deploying Applications

Discusses how to use the Rational Application Developer Assembly and Deploy Features for WebSphere 7.0 (RAD-AD) to perform common tasks for packaging an application.
In this paper, we show you how to deploy the application. We take you through setting up the environment for the application, and then deploying the application itself. Next, we explain how to deploy the client part of the application. The deployment tasks in this paper can also be automated using command-line tools.

IBM Business Agility Now! Interactive Seminar, November 26, Brussels, Belgium

IBM can put you on a path to working smarter by leveraging an instrumented, interconnected, intelligent world to drive agility throughout your dynamic business network with flexible processes and IT systems. Get started to enhance the business agility by viewing the upcoming Videocast or join us at an interactive seminar.

Register for the October 29th Videocast “Achieve Business Agility Videocast”
Maximizing Business Results with Highly Agile, Interconnected Processes
Join renowned author and business thought-leader Faisal Hoque of BTM Corp., and Craig Hayman, General Manager of WebSphere within IBM Software Group, for a 60 minute videocast on October 29 th at 8:00am AM PT / 11 AM ET.

Find an Interactive Seminar to attend in a city near you:

MQFTE – a well kept secret ?

3 recent redbooks on the MQ FTE (File Transfer edition), the most reliable file transfer you might need.

IBM WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition Solution Overview -
IBM WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition provides an enterprise-grade managed file transfer capability that is both robust and easy to use. WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition exploits the proven reliability and connectivity of WebSphere MQ to transfer files across a wide range of platforms and networks. WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition takes advantage of existing WebSphere MQ networks, and you can integrate it easily with existing file transfer systems.
This IBM Redpaper publication provides an introduction to the design, function, and use of WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition and describes how it relates to existing file transfer technologies and other business systems. Later sections of this paper describe the management, auditing, and reporting capabilities of WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition.
- 29 July 2009

Managed File Transfer for SOA using IBM WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition
For many organizations, the exchange of files between business systems remains a common and important integration methodology. Files are the simplest unit of data to exchange and often represent the lowest common denominator to connect disparate systems for an enterprise infrastructure.
A managed file transfer system introduces control, management, and auditabilty to address problems that arise when ad-hoc file transfers are used to integrate or connect business systems in the enterprise.
IBM WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition provides an enterprise-grade managed file transfer capability that is both robust and easy to use. WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition exploits the proven reliability and connectivity of WebSphere MQ to transfer files across a wide range of platforms and networks.WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition takes advantage of existing WebSphere MQ networks, and you can integrate it easily with existing file transfer systems.
- 03 August 2009

Getting Started with WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition V7
WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition provides an enterprise-ready managed file transfer capability that is both robust and easy-to-use. WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition exploits the proven reliability and connectivity of WebSphere MQ to transfer files across a wide range of platforms and networks.
In this IBM Redbooks publication, we provide a complete guide for getting started with WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition. In Part one of the book, we provide a technical overview of the product and provide installation, configuration, and administration guidance for distributed and z/OS platforms.
In Part two, we provide a series of scenarios to show how you can use WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition to create managed file transfer solutions. These scenarios range from simple point-to-point transfers through to resource monitoring and complex scripted transfers that include the use of Apache Ant. We describe each scenario step-by-step, which allows you to follow along in your own environment.
In Part three of this book, we discuss topics, such as security, user exits, and the integration of WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition with other products and solutions.
- 23 August 2009

Going Green: Building efficient, sustainable operations

Going Green: Building efficient, sustainable operations is about environmental sustainability as an imperative for 21st-century business.
Environmental sustainability encompasses four dimensions: environmental strategies, green branding, compliance management and cost-efficient sustainability. Unlocking the value in green depends on sustainable operational efficiency, green buildings and infrastructures, and intelligent ecosystems. Further, by systematically managing water and energy use, as well as greenhouse gas emissions, smart organizations can realize true sustainability while achieving real business benefits – driving growth at the individual, organizational and population levels. We must all work together to drive real progress in our world – to become green and beyond.

You can download the IBM Institute for Business Value study.

WSRR – set of redbooks and redpapers some finalized, some in draft

IBM Redbooks publication: Service Lifecycle Governance with IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository V6.3

IBM Redbooks publication: Service Lifecycle Governance with IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Advanced Lifecycle Edition

IBM Redpaper: Integrating WebSphere Service Registry and Repository with WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere ESB

IBM Redpaper: Integrating WebSphere Service Registry and Repository with WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Message Broker

IBM Redpaper: Integrating WebSphere Service Registry and Repository with WebSphere DataPower

IBM Redpaper: Integrating WebSphere Service Registry and Repository with Tivoli Security Policy Manager

zAAP on zIIP

August 2009, IBM announced and IBM System z Specialty Engine Update, Including zAAP on zIIP Capability. This feature is available on Z/OS v1.09, 1.10 and 1.11. Details can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions