- private and public cloud service providers can extend their solution by adding extensions to their environment. For example they may want support for specific network or storage use cases.
You will see extensions appear over the next weeks and months on the ISM library. - ISVs, SIs, customers and IBMers can contribute to the extension community by building and uploading their accelerators.
How you build Tivoli Service Automation Manager extension is described in the extensions guide.

Cloud/Virtualization Management

How extensions expand the reach of your Tivoli Service Automation Manager and IBM Service Delivery Manager solutionWith our 7.2.2 release we enhanced our extensibility model. What does this mean for you? |
IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager - Extensions for Firewall and Load Balancer are now available
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IBM® Tivoli® Service Automation Manager - Extension for Juniper SRX Firewall, and, IBM® Tivoli® Service Automation Manager - Extension for F5 BIG-IP Load Balancer
These network extensions deliver out-of-the-box automation in infrastructure cloud services for configuring security access (Firewall) and scalability and redundancy (Load Balancer).
This extension enables customers to configure network security settings automatically when a project is provisioned, and manage security configuration over the lifetime of the project. Through use of security zones and traffic management policies all virtual networks resources are secured and access to applications and VMs within a project is customizable throughout the project life cycle.
A Juniper SRX Firewall implementation was chosen because of its large diffusion among service providers who are either using or evaluating IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager.
The Juniper SRX Firewall extension provides the following functionality:
The screenshot below shows a typical firewall setup.
IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager - Extension for F5 BIG-IP Load Balancer
Load balancing is one of the key values of any cloud project. The load balancer extension enables the definition of rules to automatically distribute the workload amongst VMs in the project whilst providing a single entry point (Virtual-IP) to external users (i.e. it presents itself as a single powerful machine to the user).
The BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is the F5 product that performs load balancing across servers in a single data center providing intelligent load balancing and traffic management as well as advanced application security, acceleration, and optimization.
The F5 BIG-IP Load Balancer extension provides the following functionality:
The screenshot below shows one of the load balancer setup screens.
Leveraging Extensions These extensions can be leveraged and verified through testing with other Juniper and F5 devices (with the same use cases). If you have other devices and/or other use cases you may wish to create your own custom extension by using these extensions as a starting point or example.
The diagram below gives and overview of the extension plug-points.
Further Information
For more information about the Firewall and Load Balancer Extensions, please refer to the Information Center.
The extensions are available free of charge and can be downloaded from IBM’s Integrated Service Management Library (Firewall and Load Balancer Extensions). |
IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager - Extension for Additional Disk now availableIBM® Tivoli® Service Automation Manager (TSAM) has delivered a new extension to configure extra disks in addition to the boot disk when requesting virtual machines within a Project with VMWare servers. Downloading the installation package from the Integrated Service Management Library and installing it on top of TSAM 7.2.2 platform enables the cloud administrator to prepare and manage a multi-tenant, customer-segregated environment for hosting the additional disks. In particular, the cloud administrator can select the VMWare data stores that he wants to use for additional disks grouping them in TSAM storage pools that can be then associated with one or more customers (*), meaning that only those customers can carve storage from the data stores. She can also limit the amount of storage that each customer can use on a TSAM storage pool. Finally, the cloud administrator can flag this type of TSAM storage pool to be thin provisioned. Once the cloud administrator has prepared the environment, then the users of the cloud can request virtual machines equipped with extra disks – in addition to the boot disk, taken from one of the TSAM storage pools they are authorized to. The extension automatically formats and attaches the disks to the virtual machines, so when the users log in they can start working. The life-cycle of the extra disks is tied to the life-cycle of the virtual machine to avoid any inconsistency of data, which means that they are saved, restored, and deleted together with the boot disk. The Extension for Additional Disk has some gaps that should be filled in one of next releases: the users cannot expand extra disks and cannot modify the configuration of a virtual machine to attach or detach extra disks. (*) This article focuses on a public
cloud solution, where the service provider sells services to his customers. The cloud administrator is the administrator of the entire cloud platform. |
IBM SmartCloud Provisioning (aka IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud) started the open beta program
IBM SmartCloud Provisioning (previously known as IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud) fully embraces the transparent development philosophy.
Starting from today, you can join our open beta program. This Program is intended to raise awareness of IBM SmartCloud Provisioning with the widest possible
audience and provide a feedback mechanism to let you tell us what you like about the product, and what we could improve.
The code is downloadable from https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/tivoli/P2044/index.shtml
Due to the open nature of this beta program, the code is time bombed, you can use it until december 31st 2011.
You can discuss issues related to the code drop into this forum: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=2673
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Growing Number of Extensions for Tivoli Service Automation ManagerAs a quick update in connection with the blog entry How extensions expand the reach of your Tivoli Service Automation Manager and IBM Service Delivery Manager solution: With the most recent additions, there are now several extensions available for Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM) which you might find useful for extending your TSAM solution:
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2011 IBM Cloud Computing Technical Symposium in Europe The 2011 IBM Cloud Computing Technical Symposium will take place November 28-30, 2011, at Darmstadt, Germany. Attending this event is a smart and
efficient way to catch up on key messages and up to date technical
content in just 3 compact days. The symposium agenda offers a choice of more than 150 knowledge-packed technical sessions and hands-on training. |
IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud: wiki and forum available!If you are interested in IBM Service Agility Accelerator, if you would like to discuss technical topics related the product, join our forum. Users with all experience levels are invited to contribute. All
information is for community discussion and should not be considered IBM
support.
If you would like to easily access information related to IBM Service Agility Accelerator for cloud, visit our wiki |
Announcing new IBM SmartCloud Foundation capabilitiesToday IBM announced new SmartCloud Foundation capabilities to help organizations realize the potential of cloud computing. Watch the replay of the IBM SmartCloud launch webcast, to learn more about how the new announcements, including IBM SmartCloud Provisioning (delivered by IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud), can help customers move beyond virtualization to more advanced cloud deployments. |
IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud 1.1.0 releasedIBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud V1.1.0 delivers an entry-level cloud solution to fulfill demand for rapid deployment of virtual machines (VM) and associated server images in high-volume or low-volume environments. It enables VM deployment and low-touch characteristics for businesses to provide cloud services within dynamically changing environments.
IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud V1.1.0 capabilities for high-scale, low-touch VM deployment allows enterprises and cloud service providers to give their users fast and flexible access to VMs and storage on demand over the network. It is highly resilient both to failures of the service and to failures of the components underpinning the cloud infrastructure. Conflicts are reduced because load and demand balancing are carried out based on the real system state. Differentiating characteristics of IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud:
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Fixpack 5 for Tivoli Service Automation Manager 7.2.1 AvailableParticularly interesting to customers who are running a cloud solution based on Tivoli Service Automation Manager 7.2.1: Fixpack 5 for Tivoli Service Automation Manager 7.2.1 is now available for download from IBM Support Fix Central. This is an important quality fixpack which also contains performance improvements, for example in the area of IBM Tivoli Monitoring support. |
Tivoli zEnterprise Monitoring and Discovery Beta program
We are looking for customers and business partners who are interested in participating in a Beta program for Tivoli zEnterprise Monitoring and Discovery. The Beta program provides participants with the opportunity to get an early look at this future product capability with new problem solving capabilities for the IBM zEnterprise platform and provide feedback directly to the Development team.
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IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud Continuous Customer Interaction - Looking for Participants!The IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud 1.1.0 customer interaction program has just concluded. The program ran throughout the development phase of the product. Participants interacted with the development team via demo sessions and design reviews, and provided valuable feedback on the product's capability. Some participants engaged further in the beta program to try out the product in house and share their feedback and experience with the development team during this hands on experience. IBM will continue this flexible customer interaction program for the upcoming IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud release. The program is open to customers and business partners. To join the program please contact valory_batchellor@uk.ibm.com |