IBM Workload Deployer

Reduces costs

• Can help reduce hardware, power and cooling costs by using shared virtualized infrastructure and enabling higher hardware usage rates in a private cloud.
• Reduces the resources and time required to configure and administer the IBM middleware environment.
• Can significantly reduce software labor hours when compared with manual deployment.
• Can free developers to focus on application enhancements.
• Allows you to seamlessly extend your investment in service-oriented architecture (SOA) into a cloud services environment.

Increases agility and time to value

• Includes WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition virtual images, the IBM Web Application Pattern, IBM DB2® patterns and Hypervisor virtual images and common solution topologies.
• Provides a self-service virtual system management console that sets up and tears down deployed environments based on user input times. Also helps simplify environment setup with the click of a button, which makes running systems available within minutes.
• Supports virtual image customization to include binaries for monitors and corporate governance agents.
• Provides drag and drop tools. They allow you to assemble virtual images, scripts and topologies into customized patterns. They also allow you to create and deploy virtual applications without taking the underlying middleware or virtual images into consideration.
• Integrates fully with development and service management tools from IBM Rational® and IBM Tivoli® for support.

Reduces risk and increases repeatability

• Allows you to publish only best practice, accepted solution topologies for user deployment.
• Allows you to customize environments once, and then capture those exact configurations for redeployment with a single click. This enhances repeatability and reduces the potential for errors.
• Allows you to lock images, patterns and even specific parameters (such as memory size = 1024) to help support identical, repeated deployments.
• Allows you to apply updates to images and patterns once and republish for broader user access. This helps simplify maintenance and management.

Optimizes administration

• Offers reliability with added appliance failover IBM POWER7® support.
• Provides intelligent placement algorithms to optimize resource use based on cloud activity.
• Tracks and reports usage statistics based on user and groups using virtual images and patterns. Provides management reports for internal chargeback purposes.
• Supports Representational State Transfer (REST) application programming interfaces (APIs) for standards-based integration into existing data center management software including Tivoli.
• Provides an enhanced level of dynamics through service-policy-based management. This allows for the enforcement of health policies and response time goals, and managing the rollout of new application versions.

Enhances security

• Provides an appliance that serves as an encrypted vault where images, patterns and permissions are stored. This appliance is tamper-resistant and has a self-disabling switch, which is triggered if the appliance cover is removed.
• Provides granular access controls, allowing administrators to restrict visibility, pattern creation privileges and deployment rights to individuals and groups.
• Integrates with existing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directories to tie into existing access control lists.
• Allows passwords for virtual systems deployed to be set at the time of deployment. This helps guarantee that root access is only given to credentialed parties.