You can govern asset collaboration and reuse by using IBM® Rational® Asset Manager on
the cloud or by using Rational Asset Manager capabilities
in a cloud environment.
You can use
Rational Asset Manager and
the cloud in the following ways:
- Rational Asset Manager on the cloud:
If you set up the product on the cloud,
you can control which communities can work with which assets.
- Rational Asset Manager in a cloud:
You can manage security and
support multiple user groups or tenants on a cloud by defining communities
and mapping communities to tenants.
- Rational Asset Manager capabilities for the cloud:
If you have a cloud environment,
you can use capabilities from Rational Asset Manager to
enable the development lifecycle and make deliverables available for
that environment. By implementing a portal from the cloud, you can
govern access to assets. You can ensure that only the definitive,
approved versions of services and images are reused, and you can prevent
teams from creating duplicate assets.
Rational Asset Manager on the cloud
When you use
Rational Asset Manager on
the cloud, you can set up an instance so that only users in certain
communities can work on assets. Using an instance of
Rational Asset Manager on
the cloud is like using the web client. Users log in, and depending
on their permissions, they can search, download, collaborate on, modify,
and create assets. For more information about working with the web
client, see
Collaborating on assets with the Rational Asset Manager web
client. To create an instance of Rational Asset Manager on
the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, see
Setting up Rational Asset Manager on the cloud.
Rational Asset
Manager in a cloud
You can use Rational Asset Manager in a cloud environment
to manage multiple tenants by defining communities.
A
tenant is
a team, organization, or other group of users that works on a specific
project or requires a specific level of access to a system. By defining
communities for each tenant, you can isolate assets from or share
assets with users. Asset communities are collections of assets that
are grouped by a common use and purpose. In a community, users interact
with related assets. Community administrators assign roles and permissions
to users and user groups to set different levels of access to the
community. For example, by defining communities, community administrators
can determine which users can access assets:
- For every tenant, administrators can create an asset community
in which the tenant administrator is the community administrator.
This asset community can be set as private so that it is visible only
within the tenant boundary.
- All of the registered users of the tenant become registered members
of the asset community and can publish and download assets.
- When users publish assets, they publish to the community by default.
- Optionally, each community administrator can set up additional
roles for users. For example, administrators might set up roles to
support an asset review or governance process.
You can specify and manage relationships between communities while
controlling visibility for security purposes. You can create communities
to manage these types of access and asset types:
- Public access: Access to assets that are approved for public use.
- Enterprise access: Access to specific communities for each group
of tenants.
- Documentation: A public community for informational assets that
can also be used for self-service, customizable help.
For information about isolating and sharing assets in
a multi-tenant environment and using public communities to connect
users of private communities, see Best practices for cloud-based asset-centric collaboration.
For more information about using the cloud as a platform, see IBM Smart Business
Development and Test on the IBM Cloud and Rational Asset Manager on
the cloud.
Rational Asset
Manager capabilities for the cloud
In addition to creating instances of the product
on the cloud and setting up instances for users, you can set up a
system that uses Rational Asset Manager capabilities
to be the platform for managing cloud services and images. You can
configure an instance of Rational Asset Manager on a cloud to be a
portal for asset types such as virtual machine images, deployment
topology models, and software bundles.
If
you use Rational Asset Manager to
define asset types for your deliverables, you can govern the lifecycle
management for those deliverables. You can also save images of cloud
instances as assets and make the images available for other projects
and future phases of projects. For example, you can make virtual machine
images or software services available as assets and automate the deployment
of those images or services.
You catalog services and virtual images as assets. Then,
instead of instantiating or duplicating instances of similar services
and images, you can use the assets to serve as cloud instances. For
more information, see Rational Asset Manager as a portal to assets on the cloud.
You
might use
Rational Asset Manager capabilities
in a cloud environment for the following purposes:
- Managing image development through asset lifecycles: Rational Asset Manager can
be a lifecycle engine to manage a system. For
example, before an image is available in a public community, you can
create a copy in a testing or staging community that inherits the
asset lifecycle.
- Making software bundles available: Rational Asset Manager can
be an asset catalog for software bundles. A bundle is an asset type
in the repository for a virtual image. You can create copies for rapid
deployment of virtual machine images and development environments.
For example, the IBM SmartCloud
Enterprise uses Rational Asset Manager to
retrieve libraries when you select an image and bundles.
- Provisioning a cloud instance and configuring it: You can provision
a configured instance of Rational Asset Manager and
other tools. These tools can be copied and then configured, deployed,
and used by a team in a community. The same instance can be used for
different development and test environments. You can list the points
of variability for consumers of the instance so that they can configure
it for their specific project.
In addition, using
Rational Asset Manager for
the cloud provides the following benefits:
- With images as assets, you can quickly and simply provision new
images from assets.
- Instead of maintaining written reports to summarize installation
and deployment steps, you can use deployment topology models by using
IBM Rational Software Architect.
- You can accomplish automated, repeatable, and reusable processes
with topologies by using IBM Rational Build
Forge projects.
- Instead of maintaining configuration files in various locations,
you can use lifecycle management in Rational Asset Manager and
the version control for source files in IBM Rational Team Concert™ to reuse
assets.
- You can use Rational Asset Manager as
the definitive software library to drive and govern changes beyond
assets. You can manage a whole system that comprises integrated tools,
processes, and deliverables, such as virtual machine images.
For more information about configuring
Rational Asset Manager on
the cloud to manage security for different levels and types of asset
access, see
Best practices for asset-centric collaboration.