Rational Asset Manager as a portal to assets on the cloud

In a cloud environment, you can create a virtual image of an application development environment and use Rational® Asset Manager to make the virtual image available as an asset.

When IBM Rational Software Architect, Rational Asset Manager, and IBM Rational Team Concert are integrated, you can create a virtual machine image of an application development environment. You can run the virtual image on an instance of Rational Asset Manager on the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise.

The IBM SmartCloud Enterprise uses Rational Asset Manager to make software bundles available. Images are made available as assets through an asset catalog, which is a list of Rational Asset Manager assets. Each image has a version and a state, such as Approved, and comes from a community that can be defined to represent a user group or project.

In the following example, an image developer customizes an image, creates an asset for the image, and updates the image topology. When the asset is ready, a user can create an instance. A project administrator can use the running instance to invite developers. Developers can then access the asset and set up the virtual machine image for their own use.

Provisioning a virtual machine image

For a template topology asset type, an image developer can directly provision a virtual machine image by clicking the Request Image URL attribute to create an instance of the image. When the instance is created, the required settings are retrieved from the asset catalog.

Customizing the image

After the instance is available and its status is active, the image developer can connect to the image and customize it to make the image a development environment. For example, if the instance is an image of Rational Software Architect, the image developer can install Rational Asset Manager and Rational Team Concert™ and integrate them with the instance. Then, the Rational Software Architect virtual machine image can be configured as a complete development environment.

Creating an asset for the new image

The image developer works with the asset to customize the image. The image developer creates a private image from the virtual machine and makes the asset available in a community to share it with team members.

In the Control Panel of IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, the image developer selects Create private image for a cloud instance.

After the private image is available, it is visible to the image developer only. To share the image, the developer clicks Change Community and selects an available community, such as a private community for a development or test team.

Updating the image topology

To update the image topology, the image developer must install the Rational Asset Manager client and Rational Team Concert client. The developer follows these steps:
  1. In the Rational Asset Manager Eclipse client, download the image asset.
  2. In the Rational Software Architect topology editor, add the Rational Asset Manager and Rational Team Concert clients. This topology file is then available to provision the customized image with the three Rational products.
    Tip: Image developers can use the Rational Asset Manager Eclipse client to work with the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise asset catalog. To filter by community to find an image and download it to your workspace, select Import Asset With > Rational Asset Manager.
    The asset contains a .topology file that you open by selecting Open With > Topology Editor.
To add the installed software to the image topology, the image developer uses the Rational Software Architect editor:
  1. Right-click the image and select Add to Unit > Software Installation.
  2. Click the added component in the image and enter the required information.
  3. Select the Link with check box, and then click Close.
  4. From the topology picture, drag the new unit to add it to the image.
  5. After the units are added, save the file. The Rational Asset Manager client identifies that the asset and your workspace are out of sync.
  6. Right-click the product and select Update.
  7. Save the asset and update the image asset in the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise asset catalog by clicking Yes.

Inviting developers to use the image

After an updated image is published to the cloud as an asset, project administrators can make the image available to communities or specific developers.

The administrator can add a team member to a project area in Rational Team Concert and send an invitation with a link to the custom development environment. In the default team invitation text, the administrator adds the URL to provision a development environment. This URL is available as the value of the Request Image URL attribute on the template topology asset for the image.

Accessing the image

A developer accepts the team invitation to join the project area in Rational Team Concert. The developer creates a development environment virtual machine that is based on the custom image and loads the software components into their workspace.

The team area invitation includes the URL to create the development environment.

From the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, the developer replaces a portion of the URL with the string that is included in the team invitation, leaving the token portion of the URL. For example, this URL,
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/enterprise/user/control?csrftoken=abc123
is changed to this URL,
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/enterprise/user/control?autocreate={id:"1234567"}csrftoken=abc123

The second URL directs the developer to the custom development environment image that is available for creating an instance.

After the instance exists, it is displayed in the My Instances section of the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise Control Panel. This image is the developer’s virtual machine for application development. The developer uses a remote client application to connect to the virtual machine image and opens the instance of Rational Software Architect that is installed on it.

The developer opens the Jazz™ Administration perspective to confirm the enablement of Jazz Source Control, and then uses the Rational Team Concert client to accept the team invitation and load the workspace.

The developer can create a repository workspace, open the Web perspective, and begin working with the image.

Setting up an environment to develop applications

Application developers can use the virtual machine image to create a cloud-hosted test environment or to deploy an application.

With Rational Software Architect on the cloud, a developer can create a hosted test environment by creating an application server instance on the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. After the developer creates a server instance and starts it, the instance is provisioned and is displayed in the developer’s list of instances in the My Instances section of the Control Panel.

The developer can then deploy an application to the application server virtual machine for testing and application updates.


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