1. Compelling Events for Automation
• Middleware Upgrades It’s great when new vendors
bring out new features - but often taking advantage of
them takes a good deal of time and effort to upgrade
the new infrastructure - and introduces risk. Automating
the upgrade project speeds it up, reduces the risk and
builds a more manageable platform in the future.
• Migrating off ‘Premium Product’ With the economy
as it is, more organizations are forced to tighten their
belts, and one area that has come under particular
scrutiny is the annual cost of maintaining installed
software. Some organizations have made the decision
to move less business critical applications off more
expensive middleware onto open-source platforms
such as JBoss and Tomcat. This type of project is
accelerated when it’s automated and an automation
tool makes managing hybrid or heterogeneous
environments much easier.
• Building a PAAS or a private cloud With pressure
on businesses to deliver more innovation to their
customers, faster, we see many of our customers
building Platforms As A Service and private clouds.
These are a lot faster and quicker to set up using an
automation tool, and a lot quicker to manage demand
once they are up and running.
• Core business application upgrades or migrations
Many of our customers occasionally need to upgrade
or even replace their core business applications - often
complex, multi-layered, integrated systems that have
evolved over time and have many integration points
and are absolutely critical to the minute by minute
operations of the business. Using an automation tool
can reduce the risk and time associated with such
a project.
WebSphere Application Server Insights
• WebSphere is a complex, highly configurable
product with literally thousands of interrelated
configuration items. The RapidDeploy™
WebSphere plugin supports deployment of code (in
the form of ear/war files) and configuration to the
WebSphere cell.
• The plugin includes tasks to install and patch
WebSphere binaries on target server and configure
profiles, federate nodes, configure cell security
configure soap.client.props and other files.
• The plugin includes modules for snapshotting
all configuration items in a WebSphere cell for
comparison over time to highlight configuration
drift. The exported configuration may also be
templated and used as the basis to reimport to this,
or another, WebSphere cell.
• The plugin also includes modules for WebSphere
configuration and code deployment via a Jython
scripting framework. This allows for an application,
its mappings and WebSphere configuration
items to be deployed in an idempotent way (The
deployment always brings the target up to the
desired state). All common configuration items are
supported in a simple to understand and use way.
• It is easy, for example, to set a cluster count and
topology with a couple of configuration lines, instead
of the (potentially) thousands of lines that would
be needed using an xml export definition. Then, to
create a package to increase the cluster count by
one cluster member on each node in the topology is
a single character change to the configuration file.
This will be rolled out and updated automatically on
the next deployment to this environment, along with
any other code and configuration changes bundled
into this package. Packages can be rolled forwards
and back as required.
RapidDeploy™ Plugin for IBM WebSphere
Application Server
RapidDeploy™TargetPlugin
RapidDeploy™ provides organizations with Application Release Automation capabilities
to reduce costs, improve productivity and time to value and assure compliance. There
is a range of plugins available to extend the core automation framework capabilities to
most available platforms and perform integrations throughout the DevOps toolchain.
This datasheet refers to the WebSphere Application Server plugin.
Plugins are downloaded through the Plugin Manager console in RapidDeploy™, or from the MidVision
website at www.midvision.com.

2. • Platform migrations Sometimes it’s time to move
from one platform to another - for instance, customers
sometimes feel that a UNIX based platform will
offer them performance advantages over an OS400
platform. But moving hundreds of middleware
applications might seem like a challenge too far -
without automation.
• Rearchitecting Change is a constant and businesses
need to continually evolve their IT infrastructure
and operations, build new environments for things
like Disaster Recovery and automating the build
and deployment of these new environments means
delivering them faster.
WebSphere Application Server
Plugin Overview
The RapidDeploy™ plugin for WebSphere Application
Server enables the automated deployment and
configuration management of application servers. You
may additionally, all without the use of scripts:
• Deploy and update the Enterprise applications or Web
archives, and their associated application and scoped
configurations such as JMS, JDBC, JVM resources
and configurations etc.
• Template standard, reusable configurations including
JMS and Database resources
• Snapshot your environments using JMX
• Compare these in order to detect configuration drift
• Create templates from your snapshots
• Promote these templates to create further downstream
environments
WebSphere Application Server
Plugin Templates
A ‘Create New’ template is available for environment
creation from the edit/promote panel using the New
Environment Definition function. This is a simple way to
get started with the configuration files for some common
use cases.
The available templates are:
• WebSphere Application Template - All settings required
to deploy the enterprise application.
• WebSphere Cluster Template - You can configure
Cluster settings, Web container, Session Replication,
Port Allocation, JVM log file, JVM process definitions,
Classpaths, JVM Transaction settings, Security
settings, trace service, ORB service etc.
• WebSphere Data Source Template - All settings
required to deploy one or more Database Libraries and
Data Sources.
WebSphere Application Server
Plugin Versions
The RapidDeploy™ WebSphere Application Server
Plugin supports WebSphere Application Server 5.x, 6.x
7.x and 8.x.
If you use a version of WebSphere Application Server
that is not listed here and you would like to manage it
using RapidDeploy™ please email sales@midvision.
com with the details. For future versions, we aim to have
support within two quarters of IBM announcing general
availability, although customer demand can accelerate
our development roadmap.
RapidDeploy™TargetPlugin
WebSphere Application Server
Plugin Task List
• RunIIPTask
• ManageProfileTask
• NifEnhancerTask
• SecureSoapPropsTask
• ModifyHeapTask
• DmgrChangeOwnerTask
• NodeChangeOwnerTask
• FederateNodeTask
• StopWASserversTask
• StartWASserversTask
• IsServerInstalledTask
• ConditionalBackupTask
• RestoreTask
• RemoveNodeTask
• UninstallWASTask
• WebSphere6ClusterStateChangeTask
• WebSphere6DeploymentTask - Deployments to
WebSphere 6+ via the Jython framework
• WebSphere6DeploymentTaskJms - Deployments
to WebSphere 6+ via the Jython framework
but including JMS QCF, TCF Queue and Topic
definitions.
• WebSphereConfigPropertiesExportTask
• WebSphereConfigPropertiesImportTask
• DeployConfigurationViaJmxTask
• DeployFileViaJmxTask
• EarExpanderWebSphereTask
• IbmWebsphereBaseInstallTask
• IbmWebsphereManageProfileTask

3. RapidDeploy™ Plugins
The RapidDeploy™ plugins extend the functionality of
the core automation framework and are categorised in
the following way:
• Toolchain plugins enabling integration with Build
Engines, Artifact repositories and Source Control
Management tools
• Transport plugins enabling use of SSH and
Agent capability
• Target plugins enabling connectivity with broad
range of Middleware Applications and Databases
• Cloud plugins enabling connectivity to cloud providers
• Business Intelligence plugins to extend the
CAF including for example, enhanced comparison
functionality and additional reporting capabilities
Plugins ship with:
• A Library of commonly used tasks
• Wizards extensive help information
• Predefined automation library elements
www.midvision.com©MidVision2013.Allrightsreserved.RapidDeploy™TargetPlugin
Want this plugin? Getting hold of it’s easy - either:
1) Go to the Plugin Manager in your installation of RapidDeploy™ and pick your plugin from the list or
2) Go to www.midvision.com Support Downloads RapidDeploy Plugin Downloads and select your
plugin from there. If you have any problems, please call or email your MidVision Account Manager.
You must license your plugin separately - please speak to your MidVision Account Manager
or email sales@midvision.com. If you are an IBM Rational Automation Framework customer and
would like access to this plugin, please contact us at www.midvision.com.