5900-AH1 IBM WebSphere Automation 1.4

IBM Europe Sales Manual
Revised: October 25, 2022

Table of contents

	Product life cycle dates		Description
	Program number		Operating environment
	Abstract		Planning information
	Highlights		Publications

Product life cycle dates

Program Number	VRM	Announced	Available	Marketing Withdrawn	Service Discontinued
5900-AH1	01.04.00	2022-06-14	2022-06-29	-	-
5900-AH1	01.02.00	2021-11-16	2021-11-18	-	-
5900-AH1	01.01.00	2021-04-20	2021-05-28	-	-

Program number

IBM WebSphere Automation 1.4.0 (5900-AH1)

Abstract

IBM WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps is renamed to IBM WebSphere Automation.

WebSphere Automation continues to be a stand-alone offering.
WebSphere Automation has no prerequisite or co-requisite dependencies on Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps.
No features, functions, or capabilities are changed.
WebSphere Automation packaging does not change.

IBM WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps helps clients realize immediate value for their existing WebSphere Application Server environment for both traditional WebSphere Application Servers and IBM WebSphere Liberty. WebSphere Automation offers clients smaller, achievable steps to gain value, while quickly gaining operational efficiencies and cost savings.

Highlights

IBM WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps 1.4 offers the following updates:

One-click installation of critical security updates for traditional IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty servers
Automatic download of security updates from IBM fix repositories
Ansible-based installation of security updates and fix packs to WebSphere Application Server environments on bare metal and virtual machines
Installation and rollback of applied security updates

IBM WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps offers the following features:

Automates tracking and notification of new security vulnerabilities of WebSphere platforms
Provides a single, consolidated dashboard that can help increase awareness and reduce response time to security vulnerabilities
Reduces the work effort of WebSphere administrators and operators to track their WebSphere inventory and correlate it with new and existing security vulnerabilities
Early detection of memory leaks provided by integration with Instana

Description

WebSphere Automation 1.4

WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps 1.4 integrates with Anisble to provide one-click installation of critical security updates for traditional WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty servers. Anisble is an increasingly popular choice for software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment among organizations that use WebSphere Application Server. Using the information WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps has about the registered traditional WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty servers, the appropriate security update is retrieved from IBM fix repositories. Installation of the security update is fully automated and includes retrieving the fix, installing the fix, and restarting the servers. The history of installation changes is tracked, and updates can be reverted if necessary.

WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps removes the need for WebSphere Application Server operations to perform the following manual actions:

Detection of unresolved vulnerabilities in traditional WebSphere Application Server servers, WebSphere Application Server Liberty servers, and IBM JDK
Identification of impacted systems in the WebSphere Application Server environment
Retrieval of security updates from IBM fix repositories
Manual installation of iFixes and fix packs for traditional WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty servers
Manual rollback of iFixes and fix packs for traditional WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty servers

WebSphere Automation 1.2

In version 1.2, WebSphere Automation integrates with Instana to provide early detection of memory leaks before they cause the system to crash or become unavailable. When the early detection of the memory leak occurs, WebSphere Automation can automatically gather and analyze the necessary problem diagnostic information needed to understand the root cause of the memory leak. The root cause information is provided in an analysis report, which can be exported and shared with the application development team or the third-party application vendor, in order to reduce the time needed to implement corrective changes to the application.

The automated detection and analysis of memory leaks delivered with WebSphere Automation 1.2 means that important details of the underlying memory leak can be gathered proactively, before the affected system becomes unavailable. Without this capability, system operators are usually notified too late to react and gather the necessary problem diagnostic information. Often times, memory leaks are only detected after the application server has crashed due to out- of-memory errors. The automatic detection and analysis of memory leaks means that WebSphere operations teams can be provided with a detailed problem analysis report, without being required to spend the time nor have the skills to do root cause analysis.

WebSphere Automation 1.1

WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps helps clients realize immediate value for their existing WebSphere Application Server environment. WebSphere Automation helps clients track unresolved security vulnerabilities across their WebSphere environment for both traditional WebSphere Application Servers and IBM WebSphere Liberty. This helps reduce and potentially eliminate the cost of tracking the security vulnerabilities that burden most WebSphere operations teams. WebSphere Automation offers clients smaller, achievable steps to gain value, while quickly gaining operational efficiencies and cost savings.

Working with the IBM Product Security Incident Response Team, WebSphere Automation provides automated tracking and alerts of new security vulnerabilities on the WebSphere platform. WebSphere Automation provides a single, consolidated, automated dashboard that can increase awareness and reduce response time to security vulnerabilities. This automation reduces the manual work effort of WebSphere administrators and operators by tracking their WebSphere inventory and correlating it with new and existing security vulnerabilities.

Accessibility by people with disabilities

Accessibility Compliance Reports (previously known as a VPAT) containing details on accessibility compliance to standards, including the Worldwide Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, European Standard EN 301 349, and US Section 508, can be found on the IBM Accessibility Conformance Report Request website.

Operating environment

Software requirements

WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps runs on an embedded, restricted use Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, which is included in the product. Detailed requirements for WebSphere Automation for IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps can be found in IBM Documentation.

The early memory leak detection capability of WebSphere Automation is provided using a webhook integration with Instana. Detecting of the memory leak is available in Instana Build 213, or later. For organizations looking to acquire Instana, it is available separately from IBM with IBM Observability by Instana Application Performance Monitoring (5737-N85).

Planning information

Customer responsibilities

Not applicable.

Publications

Documentation for WebSphere Automation, including how to configure integration with Instana, can be found in IBM Documentation.

Documentation for Instana can be found in Instana Documentation.

Trademarks

(R), (TM), * Trademark or registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

** Company, product, or service name may be a trademark or service mark of others.

Terms of use

IBM products and services which are announced and available in your country can be ordered under the applicable standard agreements, terms, conditions, and prices in effect at the time. IBM reserves the right to modify or withdraw this Sales Manual at any time without notice. This Sales Manual is provided for your information only. Additional terms of use are located at