WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment

WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment provides a flexible, secure server runtime environment for large-scale and mission-critical application deployments. It is available on premises or for public, private, or hybrid cloud. Whether you are seeking to reduce costs, unlock new value from your investment in WebSphere, or speed time to market, this product has the correct fit for every business need.

WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment is a bundled application. For more information about bundled applications, see Bundled applications.

WebSphere Application Server features and benefits

• Optimize your application infrastructure to reduce costs with hybrid capabilities that provide the flexibility to deploy and manage apps across any cloud and any container service.

• Connect existing Java™ applications to the cloud and unlock new value with API lifecycle management and cloud services, such as IBM Watson or IBM Cloud Product Insights.

• Create and deploy cloud-native and web-based apps and microservices quickly with a lightweight and composable production runtime that features a single administrative console for Java and Node.js apps and APIs.

• Launch within the cloud and get support for Java Platform, Standard Edition 8, and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 7 frameworks.

Deploying WebSphere applications to Kubernetes

Deploying your WebSphere applications to Kubernetes requires that you gradually refactor your monolithic applications to a microservice-based architecture. As you refactor your code, you can use the Strangler Application pattern of transform, coexist, and eliminate to lift-and-shift your application to virtual machines (VMs) on IBM® Cloud Private.

The Application Modernization bundle contains several products that facilitate the transition from a traditional on-premises deployment to a Kubernetes-based private cloud environment. Use WebSphere Connect with API Connect to expose pieces of your applications and data as APIs. As you replace parts of your monolithic applications with microservices, use Cloud Automation Manager with WebSphere Application Server VM Quickstarter to provision your older application in a VM that shares networking infrastructure with your new application in Kubernetes. By using this deployment model, the two applications interoperate cleanly and securely.

The two applications coexist until your microservice-based application is fully ready to overtake the old one. At that point, while your new application is deployed to Kubernetes, the management code from your WebSphere traditional deployment can continue to run unaltered in a VM from Cloud Automation Manager.

Use the following process overview as a guide to modernize your WebSphere applications to run in Kubernetes:

1. Use WebSphere Connect to create APIs that can access a piece of application code in its current form. Because the IBM Cloud Private Enterprise bundle has WebSphere and API Connect, you can create secure new APIs from existing applications. For more information, see the WebSphere Connect developerWorks tutorials.

2. Reengineer existing code as microservices by removing pieces of code, one piece at a time. Use the WebSphere Connect APIs to call between old and new code. With this approach, you start with running monolithic applications in WebSphere over VMs, and gradually move each piece of code to microservices in your new application in Kubernetes.

3. When your new microservice-based application can successfully fulfill your production requirements, its existing counterpart can be retired.