Cloud application developer certification preparation

For this course, you should have the following experience and knowledge: Working knowledge of IBM Bluemix and cloud application development Experience in at least one or more programming languages, for example, Java, Node.js, C#, Python, Ruby, or Go Understanding of basic web protocols such as HTTP, SSL/TLS Basic understanding of common data structures such as arrays and lists Be able to consume information in a database by using SQL in databases such as MySQL, DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server Understanding of JSON and REST APIs using cURL or Postman Experience using Linux shell commands and hypervisors, such as VMWare, KVM, or Xen Understanding of source code control concepts in Git-compatible services Understanding of basic Node.js applications that will be used to illustrate concepts in IBM Bluemix If you need more hands-on experience, take the free online course Bluemix essentials. You need an IBM Bluemix account. You also need the following software: Web browser supported by Bluemix such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari Bluemix command line interface, version 0.5.4 or later, it’s recommended that you use the latest release

In this part, you learn about IBM Cloud architecture in IBM Bluemix, including: Cloud service models such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS IBM Bluemix capabilities: Cloud Foundry, IBM Containers, virtual servers Components of Bluemix PaaS and compute options Bluemix management: organizations, domains, spaces, users, and quotas Bluemix Cloud Foundry runtimes and app deployment Using the Bluemix command-line interface (bx CLI) to manage applications Twelve-factor app methodology Apply IBM Cloud Reference architectures Functions as a Service and OpenWhisk

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IBM Bluemix offers a range of deployment models for you to build your applications: Cloud Foundry application runtimes Docker-based containers Serverless computing with OpenWhisk Virtual and bare metal servers IBM Bluemix Cloud Foundry applications IBM Bluemix uses Cloud Foundry to give instant access to runtimes for applications. Cloud Foundry is an open source PaaS that offers developers the ability to quickly compose their apps without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Bluemix extends Cloud Foundry with a number of managed runtimes and services, enterprise-grade DevOps tooling, and a seamless overall developer experience. IBM Bluemix Container Service IBM Containers allow portability and consistency regardless of where they are run—be it on bare metal servers in Bluemix, your company’s data center, or on your laptop. Easily spin up images from a public registry or your own private registry hosted by IBM by using the native Docker CLI or orchestrate containers using Kubernetes. IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk is a distributed, event-driven compute service also referred to as serverless computing or as function as a service (FaaS). OpenWhisk runs application logic in response to events or direct invocations from web or mobile apps over HTTP. IBM Bluemix infrastructure virtual servers and bare metal servers Bluemix infrastructure virtual servers and bare metal servers offer the most control over your applications and middleware. Bluemix virtual servers provide a choice of multi-tenant and single-tenant virtualized environments. Bluemix bare metal servers combine native hardware performance with cloud-managed convenience for the most demanding application workloads. Bluemix infrastructure services are available through IBM Cloud data centers located worldwide.

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Before you develop cloud applications, you should understand the three main types of IBM cloud service models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. IBM Bluemix infrastructure as a service (IaaS) IBM Bluemix infrastructure provides self-service deployment of virtual servers, dedicated bare metal servers, and related storage, networking, and security infrastructure in secure IBM Cloud data centers around the world. It provides the hosting infrastructure used by IBM Bluemix Public and IBM Bluemix Dedicated services. IBM Bluemix platform as a service (PaaS) IBM Bluemix platform as a service (PaaS) is an open standards cloud platform for building, running, and managing apps and services. It makes application development easier by allowing developers to focus on code and data alone. Bluemix platform as a service manages middleware, operating systems, and hosting infrastructure automatically. It has a rich catalog of cloud services that can be easily integrated with PaaS and IaaS to build business applications rapidly. Software as a service (SaaS) and IBM Marketplace The software as a service (SaaS) model provides business applications on a ready-to-use and self-service model. The IBM Marketplace is a place where enterprise cloud customers can discover, learn, try, and buy cloud services from IBM and Business Partners. IBM Cloud Garage Method The IBM Cloud Garage Method combines industry practices including IBM Design Thinking, Lean Startup, agile development, and continuous delivery, to build innovative solutions. It outlines a DevOps methodology that focuses around seven practice areas: culture, think, code, deliver, run, manage, and learn. Related links What is IBM Bluemix? IBM Bluemix Developers Community IBM Cloud Garage Method

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Bluemix Cloud Foundry key components The IBM Bluemix Cloud Foundry application environment is based on the combination of runtimes for specific languages, boilerplates that assemble runtimes with services an application code, services which are can be bound to applications to extend functionality. These services come in two forms: managed services provided through the Bluemix catalog, or created by a user as user-defined services to define services outside of Bluemix Bluemix Container Service key components The IBM Bluemix Container Service platform integrates components needed to operate containers in a hosted cloud environment. It provides a Docker engine to run containers, container groups and through kubernetes workers, clusters of containers. IBM provides a hosted private container registry for you to store your container images. Vulnerability Advisor discovers vulnerabilities and compliance problems in Docker images stored in the container registry. Also in the container registry are a collection of IBM provided and supported enterprise-ready container images for you to use in building your own application containers. OpenWhisk key components OpenWhisk provides an event-driven computing paradigm based upon actions which are code snippets implemented on action runtimes provided by Python, Swift, Node.js and Java or through a Docker container. Actions are run as a result of triggers caused by events. A rule provides a mapping between a specific trigger and the action to run. Sequences support the creation of a set of linked actions where the output of one action is fed as input to the next. Related links Creating Cloud Foundry Apps Getting started with IBM Bluemix Container Service OpenWhisk Getting Started

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In this lab, you’ll learn how to use the IBM Bluemix command-line interface (bx CLI) to log in to Bluemix, deploy an application, and add a service—all from the command line. Prerequisites You also need the following account and software: IBM Bluemix account A web browser supported by Bluemix Bluemix command-line interface 0.5.4 or later Use the most current version available The first section of this lab shows you how to install the CLI Git Bash (recommended)   Download the PDF version of this lab

Skip this section if you already installed the Bluemix (bx) command-line interface. Download the Bluemix CLI: https://clis.ng.bluemix.net/ Install it on Windows, Mac, or Linux: Windows Extract the ZIP file. Double-click the cf executable file. When prompted, click Install and answer any remaining prompts. Mac OS X Open the PKG file. In the installer wizard, click Continue. Select an installation destination and click Continue. When prompted, click Install and answer any remaining prompts. Linux Extract the package by using this command: tar –xf <packagename> Go to the Bluemix_CLI directory and run this command with root permission: ./install_bluemix_cli

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You should now have a better understanding of high-level concepts and strategies that will help you begin to build applications on IBM Cloud, including: Cloud service models such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS IBM Bluemix capabilities: Cloud Foundry, IBM Containers, virtual servers Components of Bluemix PaaS and compute options Bluemix management: organizations, domains, spaces, users, and quotas Bluemix Cloud Foundry runtimes and app deployment Using the Bluemix command-line interface (bx CLI) to manage applications Twelve-factor app methodology Apply IBM Cloud Reference architectures Functions as a Service and OpenWhisk

In this part, you’ll learn how to enhance and improve application performance. Specifically, you’ll learn how to: Improve performance and scalability of IBM Bluemix PaaS applications by using caching Enable loosely coupled integration for IBM Bluemix applications and components by using messaging services Take advantage of cognitive capabilities that you can use to process unstructured data and images in IBM Bluemix Store and retrieve files by using the IBM Object Storage service in Bluemix You also learn about key features and uses of data services in IBM Bluemix for the following data services: Cloudant NoSQL database SQL database services In-memory columnar database Key value-pair data stores IBM Bluemix Data Connect Lastly, you’ll understand how to secure your applications and data by using Bluemix PaaS capabilities: Using external authentication services in your application Implementing custom domains with SSL support Improve application and data security

You can improve performance and scalability of IBM Bluemix PaaS applications by using caching. Using the Compose for Redis service to store application data Compose for Redis supports distributed caching scenarios for web and mobile applications Compose for Redis  is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and message broker. It supports data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, and geospatial indexes with radius queries. It provides near linear scalability, predictable performance, and fault-tolerance through replication. It supports set, get, delete, and more operations on entries in a cache through multiple programming language SDKs. Using the Session Cache service to store and persist HTTP session objects The IBM Bluemix Session Cache service provides a distributed session cache for HTTP sessions. No code changes are required for applications that use J2EE standard HTTP sessions. Session data is replicated to provide fault-tolerance and persistence of session data. The Session Cache is a singleton service; only one Session Cache instance should be bound to an application. Related links Getting started with Compose for Redis Redis introduction Session cache overview

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In this lab, you’ll use IBM® Message Hub, which is a cloud-based messaging service. Prerequisites You need the following account and software: IBM Bluemix account or a developerWorks Premium subscription Web browser supported by Bluemix GitHub sample project access: https://github.com/ibmecod/mqlight-fishalive-node Note: Creating a topic with one or more partitions in the Message Hub service by using the Standard plan does have a fee in IBM Bluemix. If you have a subscription or pay-as-you-go account, check the service details to understand the cost. This lab does not take a long time to complete, and you can remove the service after completing the lab to minimize the service fees until you are ready to build your application with Message Hub.

You’ll add a Message Hub service to your dashboard and configure it with an MQ Light topic for use with MQ Light API applications. Log in to Bluemix and then click Catalog. In the search field, enter Message Hub. Then, click the Message Hub Keep the Connect to: field as “Leave unbound”. Assign a Service name of cadc-messagehub and then click Create. After the service is created, you automatically see the service dashboard. Click the plus icon to add a topic called MQLight leaving 1 partition and the default retention period and then click Create Topic.

Download the code (mqlight-fishalive-node.zip) from the following GitHub project: https://github.com/ibmecod/mqlight-fishalive-node Click Clone or download and select Download ZIP Extract the files from the zip file to an empty directory and navigate to this directory. Edit the manifest.yml file and update the services: entry for both applications to match the application name that you set in Step 1. Save the updated file. From the same directory, use the Cloud Foundry cf login command to log into Bluemix and select the organization and space with your Message Hub service. Push the backend and front-end apps by running the cf push During this deployment, the backend application is pushed to Bluemix and started first. Note the use of the no-route: true option for this application in the manifest file. This prevents Bluemix from creating an external route for this worker application. Also, notice that two instances of the worker will be started. When the deployment finishes, run the cf apps command or use the Bluemix dashboard to see that the applications are running. Use the cf apps to see the status of applications. Use the Bluemix Cloud Foundry Apps dashboard to check the status of the applications. Enter the URL shown in a browser or click the link from the dashboard to load the front-end application. Click Submit Work to send messages for processing by the back end. The backend converts words to uppercase and they are retrieved for display in the browser in the order received. Note that words might appear out of order from the original submission because the workers are asyncronous. Run this command: cf logs mql.fishalive.node.backend. Then, observe the output when you click Submit WorkObserve how the log shows both application instances for the worker receiving data from the front end.

With the application deployed, you can use these steps to experiment with adjusting the destination time-to-live to hold messages even if a subscribing application is temporarily offline. Stop the backend application:  cf stop mql.fishalive.node.backend From the front-end application, click Submit Work. Note that without the backend running, no capitalized words appear on the web page. Restart the backend application:  cf start mql.fishalive.node.backend If you click Submit Work after it has restarted, you will once again see the capitalized words, but what happened to the words sent when the back end was stopped? They are lost because the default destination time-to-live is 0. When the client subscription ends when the backend stops, the destination is removed. Next, you’ll change this in the application code. Open the backend/app.js file in an editor and update the subOpts parameter for the subscription to include a ttl of 300000 milliseconds (5 minutes). Save the file and then republish the application with cf push After the applications are restarted, reload the page for the front-end application. Notice that if you use the Submit Work button from the front-end application, it works identically to how it did before the change. Stop the backend application. Wait one minute and then click Submit Work Wait one or two minutes, but not more and then restart the application. What happens?If you add the --recent option to the cf logs command, notice that only one application instance is usually able to clear all of the work before the second instance starts. Try waiting longer than 5 minutes before restarting the backend or sending a message 4 minutes after stopping the backend. Then, wait 2 minutes after that to restart the backend. Do you think you will get different results? Have some fun!

By reviewing the frontend/app.js code, you can understand how to use Message Hub with the MQ Light API. First, the application determines whether it is running in Bluemix by checking for the presence of the process.env.VCAP_SERVICES variable. If the variable is found, the application then gets the necessary details from the environment variable. Otherwise, it uses the default local settings. if (process.env.VCAP_SERVICES) { var services = JSON.parse(process.env.VCAP_SERVICES); console.log('Running BlueMix'); for (var key in services) { if (key.lastIndexOf(mqlightServiceName, 0) === 0) { mqlightService = services[key][0]; opts.service = mqlightService.credentials.nonTLSConnectionLookupURI; opts.user = mqlightService.credentials.username; opts.password = mqlightService.credentials.password; } else if (key.lastIndexOf(messageHubServiceName, 0) === 0) { messageHubService = services[key][0]; opts.service = messageHubService.credentials.mqlight_lookup_url; opts.user = messageHubService.credentials.user; opts.password = messageHubService.credentials.password; } } if (!opts.hasOwnProperty('service') || !opts.hasOwnProperty('user') || !opts.hasOwnProperty('password')) { throw 'Error - Check that app is bound to service'; } } else { var fishaliveHost = process.env.FISHALIVE_HOST || 'localhost' opts.service = 'amqp://' + fishaliveHost + ':5672' } The application creates an MQ Light client by using this method, which is used for both publishing and subscribing to a topic: var mqlightClient = mqlight.createClient(opts, function (err) { ... } In the backend/app.js file, you can see the worker subscribing and specifying the processMessage as the callback that is called when a message arrives: mqlightClient.on('message', processMessage) var subOpts = { credit: 1, autoConfirm: false, qos: 1 } mqlightClient.subscribe(SUBSCRIBE_TOPIC, SHARE_ID, subOpts, function (err) { if (err) { console.error('Failed to subscribe: ' + err) } else { console.log('Subscribed') } }) For the worker, the subscription uses a credit of 1 and autoConfirm is set to false meaning that the worker deals with one message at a time until confirming that it has been handled.

After you complete this section, you should understand cognitive capabilities from Watson services. From analyzing images and video to understanding sentiment, keywords and entities from text, Watson services enable cognitive computing within Bluemix applications. Language processing Watson language-based services analyze text and allow developers to create applications that understand and interact with users in more natural ways Natural Language Classifier: analyze input text and match to specific user intent. Conversation: build chatbots and other chat-driven applications with a framework that allows developers to define intents, entities, and dialog flows. Natural Language Understanding: Identify content and features of text input including categories, concepts, emotion, entities, keywords, metadata, relations, semantic roles, and sentiment. Document Conversion: take PDF, Microsoft Word, and HTML-formatted documents and convert to normalized HTML, plain text, or a set of JSON-formatted units that can be used with other Watson services. Retrieve and Rank: Provide more relevant search results through the use of machine learning ranking algorithms. Personality Insights: gain insights from written text input to identify psychological traits that determine purchase decisions, intent, and behavioral traits. Tone Analyzer: use cognitive linguistic analysis to identify a variety of tones at both the sentence and document level. Language Translator: machine translation from one language to another and also identify the language of input text. Speech processing Watson provides trained services to convert speech to text and also to transcribe text to speech output. Visual processing Watson Visual Recognition service provides image processing capabilities able to recognize scenes, objects, faces in images and classify them. Data insights Watson Discovery service provides the ability to search content based on keywords and other enrichments. This service can work on user-provided text data or the Discovery News catalog which is updated continuously from over 100,000 sources. Related links Watson Developer Cloud

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Overview In this lab, add the Watson Natural Language Understanding service to a Bluemix application. You need to follow the instructions in a GitHub tutorial. The Natural Language Understanding service can analyze text to extract metadata from content, such as concepts, entities, keywords, categories, sentiment, emotion, relations, and semantic roles. Prerequisites IBM Bluemix account A web browser supported by Bluemix, such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, or Chrome Cloud Foundry command line interface, Version 6.5.1 or later; it’s recommended that you use the latest release Git Bash

From a command prompt, clone the following repository from GitHub: git clone https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/natural-language-understanding-nodejs.git Change to the directory of your natural-language-understanding-nodejs folder. In your browser, log in to Bluemix. Go to the Catalog dashboard, and search for “natural language.” Click Natural Language Understanding. Provide a unique Service name and Credential name, and click Create. Click Service credentials to get the username and password the for Natural Language Understanding Service. Copy the username and password in a text pad. Open the manifest.yml in the natural-language-understanding-nodejs folder, and update the application name, services, and declared-services. Copy .env.example to .env, and update the username and password copied in step 8.

Run npm install from the command line, from the natural-language-understanding-nodejs folder. Start the application: - npm start. Access the application at http://localhost:3000. Click Analyze, and select any of the buttons.

Open the command line tool and go to the directory of your natural-language-understanding-nodejs folder. Connect to Bluemix with the command line tool: bx api https://api.ng.bluemix.net bx login Push the application to Bluemix: bx app push Start a browser, and enter the URL of your application: lab_natural-language-understanding-demo.mybluemix.net The app will run on Bluemix now. You can also look at the application details on the Bluemix console.

The following code gets the instance of the NaturalLanguageUnderstanding and analyzes the text by calling analyze: const NaturalLanguageUnderstandingV1 = require('watson-developer-cloud/natural-language-understanding/v1.js'); const nlu = new NaturalLanguageUnderstandingV1({ version_date: NaturalLanguageUnderstandingV1.VERSION_DATE_2016_01_23 }); nlu.analyze(req.body, (err, results){})

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In this lab, you learn how to use the IBM SoftLayer Object Storage Services in IBM Bluemix as a cloud-based permanent storage repository that is accessible through a REST API. You’ll learn how to get the credentials required to access your Object Storage Service instance  via its REST API and use the Postman Chrome application to authenticate against your Object Storage service instance. Lastly, you’ll do some typical Swift API operations by using the Postman Chrome application. Prerequisites IBM Bluemix account or a developerWorks Premium subscription An IBM Bluemix supported web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, or Chrome Postman (for testing the Swift API in the Object Storage service)

In this section, you create an application and an instance of the Object Storage service in IBM Bluemix. Log in to Bluemix. Click Catalog. Then, click Cloud Foundry Apps under the Apps category. Click SDK for Node.js. Give your app a unique name by using alphanumeric characters and click Create. Click Connections on the left navigation. Click Connect New. Enter Object Storage in the search bar and click the service. Click Create to create a new instance of Object Storage.You might see a confirmation message and then you will be redirected to the Bluemix dashboard. From the dashboard, go to the Services section and select your Object Storage instance. Click the Select Action menu and select Create Container. Provide any name for the container and click Save. You will see the new container listed. Tip: These are storage containers and not to be confused with Docker containers or the IBM Bluemix Container service runtimes. Click the Connections tab for the Object Storage service and then click Create Connection. Select the application that you created from the list. Confirm the binding of the service to the app by clicking Connect. Click Restage to restage the application with the credentials added from the Object Storage service.

In this section, you’ll get the credentials required to access your Object Storage service instance  through its REST API. Use the Bluemix menu to open the Cloud Foundry Apps dashboard. Scroll down to the Cloud Foundry Apps section and click the item for the application that you created. On the left, select Runtime to open the application runtime information window. Select Environment variables to show the access information for your instance of the Object Storage service. Copy the values for the following fields (without the double quotation marks) in a file on your system so that you can cut and paste this information in subsequent steps: auth_url, userID, projectId, and password.

In this section, you’ll use the Postman Chrome application to authenticate against your Object Storage service instance. If it’s not already running, start Chrome. Click Apps and launch Postman. Select POST as the method and from the file where you saved the access credentials, copy the auth_url into the Enter request URL here field. Append a forward slash (/) to the URL that you just pasted. Then, append v3/auth/tokens to the URL making the full URL: auth_url/v3/auth/tokens Under Body, select raw and then set type to JSON(application/json) and enter the following code, replacing with your userID, projectID and password: { "auth": { "identity": { "methods": [ "password" ], "password": { "user": { "id": "your userID", "password": "your password" } } }, "scope": { "project": { "id": "your projectID" } } } } Click Send to send the request. Verify that the status indicates 201 Created and then click Headers. Save the value of X-Subject-Token from the returned header in your credentials file. Then, go back to the Body of the response and scroll down through the endpoints to find the one with type object-store and name swift. Copy the url for the entry matching the public interface and also save this to your credentials file.

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Managing instances of Cloudant Download a PDF of this presentation

Overview In this lab, learn the basics of managing the Cloudant NoSQL Database data service in IBM Bluemix. Prerequisites An IBM Bluemix account An IBM Bluemix-supported web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, or Chrome

From a browser, log in to Bluemix. From the Apps Dashboard, click Catalog to open the service catalog. Select the Data and Analytics section, and then click Cloudant NoSQL DB. Under Connect to, select Leave unbound. Click Create to create a new instance of Cloudant NoSQL DB. Click LAUNCH from the service console to launch the dashboard.

Click Databases to open the database panel. Click Create Database, enter mydatabase as the name, and then click Create. A confirmation window will open, and you will be taken to the database administration page for the new database.

Click the Add (+) icon next to All Documents, and select New Doc from the context menu. A new JSON document appears with a single attribute named _id. This is the unique identifier of your new document. Modify the _id value, and add the fields field2 and field3. Click Create Document to save your changes and return to the database view.

The database view now shows your document entry (but not all of the contents). Click the Edit (pencil) icon of the document to edit it. Click Clone Document in the document editor. You’ll be prompted to accept a system-generated unique ID for the new clone or to provide your own value. Change the ID to myuniqueid2. Click Clone Document. Your clone is added to the database. Click the database name to go back to the database view.

From the database view in the Dashboard, click All Documents. A summary of the documents in the database appears on the right. Click the Edit (pencil) icon of your document with the _id of “myuniqueid2” to edit it. Update the value for field2. Click Save Changes to save your changes and return to the database view.

From the database view in the Dashboard, click All Documents.A summary of the documents in the database appears on the right. Click Query Options > Include Docs > Run Query. Verify that all the fields in your two documents are present.

From the database view in the Dashboard, click the Add (+) icon for Design Documents. Click New View. In the Design Document field, enter myview1 as the name. Edit the map function to check whether a document has a field called field2 and, if present, to return the document id and the value of that field. Click Save Document > Build Index to create the index. The view is immediately opened and shows a set of returned documents from the index. Note how the returned documents in the view have a key that is equal to the original document ID and a value corresponding to the value that was set in the field2 field. To copy the URL for this view, click API in the upper right and paste that into another browser tab to view the results. Here are the results in a browser:

From the database view in the Dashboard, click the Add (+) icon for Design Documents. Select Query Indexes. In the Cloudant Query index editor, change the default field of foo to field2. Keep the index type set to json. Click Create Index. Cloudant will create the index and display status updates along the top of the Dashboard page. After confirmation that the index has been created, click on the database name to return to the database view. Click Query. In the Query editor, update the selector to choose documents where "field2" is equal to "value2." Simplify the query by removing the fields and sort options. Click Run Query to display the results of the query. The document matched by the query is shown with all of the document fields.

From the Cloudant dashboard, click the Replication Complete the form on the right side of the screen to create a new replication job with the following specifications: Replication Source: Remote database In this tutorial, you want to replicate a database from the Education account to your own personal account, so indicate that the source database is a remote database. Database URL: https://education.cloudant.com/foundbite For the target database, click New Database > Create a new database locally, and then specify the database name as foundbite. Tip: The source and target databases can be within the same account, between two different accounts, or one remote and one local. Replication type: One time Replication can be one time or continuous. Just like any document in any other Cloudant database, you can either use the auto-generated document ID, or provide your own. For this tutorial, type foundbite_replication. Click Replicate. Enter your password. Click Continue.You get the success message: Replication from sourceDb to targetDB has been scheduled. Click the Replication tab and look under Replicator DB Activity to verify that replication completed. Click the Databases tab, and verify that the foundbite database was created. Open one of the documents.

Data Connect Features Download a PDF of this presentation

This lab will show you how to use the IBM® Data Connect™ service in IBM® Bluemix® to filter and then transfer data from a dashDB database in Bluemix to a Cloudant Database in Bluemix. Note: If you have previously completed the course lab on managing data services in Bluemix and have not removed the dashDB for Analytics and Cloudant NoSQL data services from your Bluemix environment, you may skip steps 1 and 2 below and begin at step 3. Prerequisites IBM Bluemix account. A web browser supported by Bluemix: Chrome: latest version for your operating system Firefox: latest version for your operating system and ESR 38 Internet Explorer: version 10 and 11 Safari: latest version for Mac

From a browser, log in to Bluemix: http://bluemix.net. From the Apps dashboard tab click on Catalog to open the service catalog Select the Data and Analytics section and click Db2 Warehouse on Cloud. Accept the defaults and click Create to create a new instance of Db2 Warehouse on Cloud. The service will be configured asynchronously and you will be returned to the Bluemix dashboard

From the Apps dashboard tab click on Catalog to open the service catalog Select the Data and Analytics section and click Cloudant NoSQL DB. Under Connect to, select Leave unbound. Click Create to create a new instance of Cloudant NoSQL DB.

In this section, you’ll create an instance of the Data Connect service in IBM Bluemix. Return to the Bluemix Apps Dashboard. Click Catalog to open the service catalog. Select the Data and Analytics section and click Data Connect. Under Connect to, select Leave unbound. Click Create to create a new instance of Data Connect .

In this section, you’ll save the acccess credentials for Cloudant NoSQL DB and Db2 Warehouse on Cloud for later use. Go to the Bluemix Apps Dashboard and scroll to the services section where the Cloudant and Db2 Warehouse on Cloud services are listed: Click on the Cloudant NoSQL DB row to bring up the service control panel. Click on Service Credentials, if no credentials are shown, click on New Credential, use the defaults and click Add to add a new set of credtntials. Expand the View Credentials item to see the current credentials: Copy these credentials to a local file for use when configuring Data Connect. Return to the Bluemix Apps Dashboard and click on the Db2 Warehouse on Cloud row to bring up the service control panel. Click on Service Credentials (note if there are no credentials yet, click New Credentials to create a set.) Expand View Credentials to see a copy of the service credentials. 9. Copy these credentials to a local file for use when configuring Data Connect.

In this section, you’ll verify that the data was successfully copied to your Cloudant NoSQL Database instance. Return to the Bluemix Dashboard Scroll down to Services and click the row for your Cloudant NoSQL DB service instance. Click Launch to launch the Cloudant console. Click the Databases icon to open the databases panel Click the product database. Select the JSON view for the data. Inspect the documents transferred to verify that the PRODUCT_TYPE_CODE key has the value of 961 for all documents. You successfully used IBM Data Connect to filter and move data between Db2 Warehouse for Cloud and Cloudant.

Demo Data Connect Update

This lab introduces the IBM Single Sign On (SSO) service for IBM Bluemix that you can use to configure your web application to authenticate users from social media sites, enterprise directories through SAML federation, and also an LDAP-based cloud identity source. In this lab, you will modify a sample Node.js application to use the Bluemix Single Sign On service. Note: This service is only available as a paid plan and will not be available for Trial/Standard users. You can review the lab steps and sample code and watch the Lab solution video to see SSO in action. If you want to copy and paste code to move through the steps faster and avoid possible typos, use the app.js sample code at the end of this lab. Prerequisites IBM Bluemix account. The Bluemix Single Sign On service is not available to Free Trial users as of April 2017. If you do not see a Create button in the first section, step 3, you need to upgrade to your Bluemix account to complete the lab. A web browser supported by Bluemix You should use one browser for working with the Bluemix and Single Sign On control panel in one browser and a separate browser for testing your application. Chrome: latest version for your operating system Firefox: latest version for your operating system and ESR 38 Internet Explorer: version 10 and 11 Safari: latest version for Mac Node.js versions 4.6.x or 6.11.x Cloud Foundry command line interface, version 6.9 or later; it’s recommended that you use the latest release.

There might be a brief delay as the service instance is created and added to your active Bluemix space. After it’s complete, you will see the service control panel. In the configuration window, click the Cloud Directory icon to open a panel to configure a directory in the cloud for this lab. Optional: In the highlighted text, enter a new name for the identity source. The panel displays the current list of users. It’s empty at first, so click the Add icon. Add some information for a test user. This can be any user information that you prefer. However, make a note of the user ID and password because those credentials will be used when you test the external authentication service. Click Save on the Add user dialog and then click Save to close the Cloud Directory configuration panel. This will return you to the Single Sign On service control panel showing the Cloud Directory identity source as enabled. Click the Cloud Directory identity source to re-open the configuration panel.After you re-open the identity source configuration panel, you’ll see a Settings icon in the upper right section of the panel. To manage the password policy that is applied to users in this identity source, click the Settings icon for the identity source. Select Medium for the password policy. The Password Policy option allows you to select various levels of password quality and lifetime. Currently, these policies are fixed, and you must select from one of the three. Next, click Save. Click Save in the identity source configuration panel to return to the main Single Sign On service control panel. The name shown for the identity source will be the name that you selected or the default name of cloud directory. The toggle (shown as Enabled) next to the name allows the service administrator to enable or disable a particular identity source for use by applications. Leave the toggle as Enabled.

Return to or open a command prompt on your workstation. Log in to Bluemix by using the Cloud Foundry CLI and choose the organization and space where you created the application for the lab. Your Bluemix user, space, and application name will be different than what is shown in this screen capture. You will see output like this (except with your id, organization, and space): Push your application by using the command cf push. There will be a lot of output as the application is uploaded back to Bluemix and then started. If all goes well, you will see something like this at the end:

When testing with the Single Sign On service with the cloud directory, it can be easier to use a different browser security and cookie context (for example in a new private window in Firefox) to simulate the experience of a new user to your application. Or you can also use an entirely different browser. Open your application’s URL: https://<appname>.mybluemix.net. Be sure to use HTTPS. Note that your customized message is shown in the blue text and that there is a Login button. Click Login to see the Single Sign On identity provider login options. If Single Sign On is configured with multiple identity sources, a simple chooser list is shown. Because the Single Sign On service is configured with only one identity source in this lab, you will go directly into the Cloud Directory sign in page. Sign in as the user that you added to the directory previously and click Login. You will be prompted to change the user password. (This happens by default when you use the Cloud Directory.) Note that requirements for the password are displayed in the form. Enter in a new password that meets the requirements and click Change Password. The application will now display the unique ID returned by the Single Sign On service that combines the authentication realm with the actual user ID. You might see a slightly different message or format. Optional: Go back to the original page of the application page by clicking on the Login button, which should immediately take you to the welcome page for the duration of the browser session. Optional: If you added the route to support a logout, what happens when you append /logout to the host name in the URL? Afterwards, try clicking the Login button on the application home page again.

Now, you have an application that can use the Single Sign On service with a simple identity provider. You should next read the Bluemix SSO documentation to add a social media identity provider. You can find instructions for adding a social media identity provider and for configuring SAML Enterprise identity sources. To access the documentation, from the configuration window for the Single Sign On service, click Docs.

For Cloud Foundry apps and container groups, you can use a custom domain in the URL of your application instead of the default Bluemix system domain of mybluemix.net. Custom domains are defined at the organization level. To define a domain, register the domain with a name service provider, add a CNAME record to map host names for the domain to the Bluemix secure router, and then add the custom domain to the organization. After it’s defined, you upload a signed wildcard (all hosts) domain certificate and associated private key through the web UI or Bluemix CLI. These are the supported file formats for certificate files: PEM (.pem, .crt, .cer, and .cert) DER (.der or .cer) PKCS #7 (.p7b, .p7r, .spc) When using SSL with a custom domain, access to applications within the domain can be configured to be authenticated by client certificates. To configure this feature, the developer must upload a file that contains a set of client certificates, also known as the Client certificate trust store. The trust store must be in one of the supported file formats. The use of self-signed certificates is supported for testing and development scenarios. When using self-signed certificates, upload signer certificates to client browsers to avoid browser security exceptions. Related links Bluemix documentation: Securing Apps

Configuring custom domains and SSL Download a PDF of this presentation

IBM Bluemix Cloud Foundry applications provide built-in security for accessing bound services through the use of the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable. The credentials for externally managed services can also be added to VCAP_SERVICES by creating a Cloud Foundry user-provided service and then binding the service to the application. Safe management of API keys also includes implementation of REST APIs that accept keys. Avoid the use of API keys in URL strings and instead accept them in request headers or POST body arguments that are encrypted when using SSL. The Bluemix Key Protect service provides a secure cloud-based encryption key management solution for select Bluemix services and developer-created applications. API calls to the Key Protect service are available for audit through the Access Trail (also known as Activity Tracker) service. Bluemix data services include features for security. The dashDB sensitive data reporting feature provides information on table columns with sensitive data such as US social security numbers and credit card numbers as well as activities that access the data. The IBM DB2 on Cloud service supports native encryption of data that encrypts all database data before it is stored. To create an encrypted database in the default instance using the default keystore, issue the CREATE DATABASE command specifying the ENCRYPT parameter.

Application credential security and data security Download a PDF of this presentation

You should now have a better understanding of how to enhance and improve application performance. You should know how to: Improve performance and scalability of IBM Bluemix PaaS applications by using caching Enable loosely coupled integration for IBM Bluemix applications and components by using messaging services Take advantage of cognitive capabilities that you can use to process unstructured data and images in IBM Bluemix Store and retrieve files by using the IBM Object Storage service in Bluemix You also learned about key features and uses of data services in IBM Bluemix for the following data services: Cloudant NoSQL database SQL database services In-memory columnar database Key value-pair data stores IBM Bluemix Data Connect Lastly, you’ve seen how to secure your applications and data by using these Bluemix PaaS capabilities: External authentication services in your application Custom domains with SSL support

In this final part of the course, you learn about practices and tools to support application development, deployment, testing and management for the Cloud. This will allow you to apply agile processes in the development of applications and provide solutions that are reliable and scalable. Topics will cover the following areas: Features of IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery Source code management for Continuous Delivery toolchains Using code editors with Continuous Delivery toolchains Using Delivery Pipeline to build, test, and deploy applications Scaling applications dynamically both vertically and horizontally by using tools in the Bluemix dashboard and the Bluemix Auto-Scaling service Cloud load testing and using testing tools such as BlazeMeter and Load Impact Monitoring performance by using the Availability Monitoring, the Monitoring and Analytics service, and log files accessed from the Bluemix (bx) command line Debugging applications by using command-line and integrated development environment (IDE) tools

IBM® Bluemix® Continuous Delivery toolchains give development teams a flexible and modular system for supporting the application lifecycle. The Continuous Delivery toolchain accomplishes this by providing an integration framework for tools, with integrations for IBM tools as well as common third-party devOps tooling. Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are both supported with tools available through toolchain integrations. This allows development organizations to standardize and scale their CI/CD processes. Toolchains can be created from templates or built from scratch. Toolchain integrations include support for: GitHub GitLab repos hosted on IBM Bluemix Eclipse Orion Web IDE IBM Bluemix Delivery Pipeline Sauce Labs Pager Duty Slack IBM DevOps Insights For more information about toolchain integrations, see IBM Bluemix DevOps Continuous Delivery. Toolchain templates are available for these scenarios (with more added all the time): Microservices toolchain with DevOps Insights Secure container toolchain Simple Cloud Foundry toolchain Simple Cloud Foundry toolchain with DevOps Insights Deployment Risk Analytics with GitHub and Jenkins Related links IBM Bluemix DevOps Continuous Delivery IBM Cloud Garage Method

Continuous Delivery Toolchains Download a PDF of this presentation

Get started automatically creating a toolchain from an existing GitHub repository. Log in to Bluemix to proceed with the rest of this lab so that your browser session is authenticated. Navigate to one of the following regions: https://bluemix.net/ (Your default region) https://console.ng.bluemix.net/ (US South) https://console.eu-gb.bluemix.net/ (United Kingdom) https://console.eu-de.bluemix.net/ (Frankfurt) https://console.au-syd.bluemix.net/ (Sydney) Click Log In. Enter your login credentials on the IBM id page, and click Sign in.You will see your dashboard view. Click Menu > Services. From the Services menu, click DevOps to see the DevOps dashboard. Click Create a Toolchain. Select the Simple Cloud Foundry toolchain (v2) template. Select your organization and enter an appropriate name. Scroll down, and click Git Repos and Issues tracking. Select Repository Type as Clone and use the following source repository URL:http://github.com/IBM-Bluemix/nodejs-cloudant . Leave the repository name as is. Click Delivery Pipeline. Verify the deployment options: Bluemix region, organization, and space where the application should be deployed. Click Create.This action forks the code from the specified source repository, creates a local repository, and creates a delivery pipeline for the application. When you’re done, you should be able to view the toolchain. Click the icon for Delivery Pipeline.Depending on how quickly you do this, you might be able to see the Deploy stage still running. If it is, click View logs and history to follow along with the deployment. Use the browser back button to get back to the stage view.Alternatively, you might see two green bars over both stages to show that they have both completed. If you see in the Deploy Stage under the JOBS list that the Deploy job has a status of Passed, the application has successfully deployed. Click the link below the application name to open the application.

With Continuous Delivery toolchains, you can use popular distributed source code management (SCM) platforms like GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, and an IBM hosted version of Git Repos. Based on Git, these SCM platforms allow social collaboration in the development process and work with a range of clients: Local workstations with git terminal commands Eclipse Orion IDE Eclipse with the eGit plugin Other IDEs with built-in Git support You should also understand how to use git commands for common tasks: init: create a new repository clone: copy an existing repository to another system fork: use to work with code from a repository where you are not a contributor; creates a copy of the repository add: specify files that have been modified and need to be synchronized commit: group a set of changed files into an update for the repository push: synchronize from a local repository to a remote repository bisect: work through a commit history to find a commit that introduced a bug blame: identify changes to files, such as what changed and who made the change Related links Git Repos and Issue Tracking Fork a repo Debugging with Git Blame and Bisect

Source Code Management for CDT Download a PDF of this presentation

Overview Learn how to deploy and manage the sample application in Bluemix by using a continuous delivery methodology. Continuous Delivery toolchains can be used to automate the management of an application as you edit the application code, test changes, and then commit those changes to a repository. Prerequisites You need the following software: Git command line (see the installation instructions, if needed) SSH to clone the Bluemix Git repository Web browser supported by Bluemix

Locally initialize your code repository and clone from a remote repository. Log in to Bluemix. Navigate to the toolchain that you created in the previous lab. On the Overview page, click the Git icon to open your GitLab project for the application. Change the protocol to SSH, and copy the URL to notepad or a text editor. You will need this URL to clone the repository later.Note: You might need to set up the SSH key for the repository. From the command prompt, change to your working directory and initialize the repository: # cd cdc2-lab2 # git init Clone the remote Git repository using the git clone command and the URL that you previously copied: # git clone <remote git URL>You now have the source code locally available to edit and test. Now that you’ve cloned a remote repository onto your local one, next, you’ll make some changes and push those changes to the remote repository.

Learn how to synchronize your code changes with a remote repository by using Git commands. In your favorite editor, open this file: <your local repository>/views/index.html Change the text on line 15 to anything you want, and save the changes. Update the index with the content in the working tree: git add <files(s)>The index is a snapshot of the content that is staged for the next commit. After all the changes are done, use git commit to commit the index to the repository. The commit action requires a log message describing the changes to be recorded. Specify the log message by using -m argument: # git commit –m "<Log Message>" Synchronize the local repository with the remote one: # git pushThe changes are now visible in the remote repository. Open the GitLab project to verify. If you quickly go back to the toolchain Overview and then click the Delivery Pipeline, you might be able to see the pipeline in action.

You can use various Git commands to clone the remote repository into a local one, make changes, and synchronize the repositories after you locally test your changes. You can see the Delivery pipeline being triggered when you synchronize by using Git commands.

Because Continuous Delivery toolchains work with Git-based repositories, you have multiple options for editing code in projects managed through a toolchain. You can develop and test locally by using a local code editor the Eclipse IDE or the Atom text editor and publish to the repository for the toolchain by using Git commands. Alternatively, you can edit and test code in the cloud by using the Eclipse Orion Web IDE. Features of the Eclipse Orion Web IDE The Orion Web IDE provides content assist, tooltips, previews, validation, and syntax highlighting for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Markdown files. The Web IDE uses a workspace that is a clone of the toolchain repository. When you are ready to test changes to the application, the Web IDE provides a management interface to test deployments through a launch configuration. The launch configuration allows you to specify the attributes of a test copy of the application including region, organization, space, services, host name, and other properties that can be set through the manifest file. When deploying a Node.js application from the workspace, the Web IDE supports Live Edit mode that automatically synchronizes changes to the workspace to the running application instance. Debugging of the running application on Bluemix in Chrome is also supported. When you are ready to commit the application changes from the Web IDE to the project, the IDE provides a Git interface that allows synchronization to the repository for the toolchain. The Git interface provides a SYNC button that performs a bi-directional synchronization of the repositories, and it provides individual buttons for push, pull, and rebase commands. Related links IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery Web IDE

Code Editing with CDT Download a PDF of this presentation

Overview Learn about editing code using the Eclipse Web IDE and pushing changes to the code repository using the Git interface. Prerequisites You need a web browser supported by Bluemix.

With Bluemix Continuous Delivery toolchain, you can edit the application code in the browser by using Web IDE, test the changes by using the live edit feature, and commit to Git.

You can use the Delivery Pipeline in Continuous Delivery toolchains option to manage continuous integration and continuous delivery. In this section, you learn about: Delivery Pipeline service Role of stages in the Delivery Pipeline and stage configuration Stage input and options for the Stage Trigger Types of Stage jobs: Build, Test, and Deploy Continuation options when a job fails The Delivery Pipeline provides a modular framework where you can combine a series of stages to execute every time new code is committed to a repository. Stages execute one or more jobs to process application artifacts. Each job type includes a group of predefined job templates applicable to the task. The templates can be modified and saved to allow customization of the actions for the job. For example, a Cloud Foundry deployment could be customized to use a host name that is specified through a stage environment variable. Related links About Delivery Pipeline

Delivery Pipeline for CDT Download a PDF of this presentation

Overview See how to configure different stages of continuous delivery and integration in the delivery pipeline. Prerequisites You need a web browser supported by Bluemix.

You have seen how to use several aspects of Continuous Delivery toolchains, including source code management, editing with the Orion Web IDE, and customization of the Delivery Pipeline to change how the sample application looks when deployed.lab

Go to the Bluemix Dashboard and select the application that you want to scale to open the app Overview panel. Select the Connections panel and then click Connect New. From the Catalog, select the DevOps section and select the Auto-Scaling service. Confirm that the app that you want to scale is shown and click Create. If you see a message to restage, click RESTAGE.
Your new Auto-Scaling service will be created and bound to your application and the application will be restarted.

Scaling is the capability to alter computing resources to meet your load requirements. You can scale applications vertically or horizontally. You can also scale applications manually or automatically. Vertical scaling by increasing resources to an application instance Vertical scaling increases the resources available to an application by adding capacity directly to the individual nodes, for example, adding additional memory or increasing the number of CPU cores. Horizontal scaling by increasing the number of application instances Horizontal scaling is often referred to as scaling out. The overall application resource capacity grows through the addition of entire nodes. Each additional node adds equivalent capacity, such as the same amount of memory and the same CPU. Horizontal scaling typically is achievable without downtime. Manually scale applications through IBM Bluemix PaaS dashboard The IBM Bluemix PaaS Cloud Foundry application dashboard supports both vertical and horizontal scaling through increasing the amount of memory and increasing the number of instances of an application runtime. Automatic scaling in IBM Bluemix PaaS: Auto-Scaling service and scaling policy fields You can automatically scale an application by using the Auto-Scaling service and scaling policy fields and options such as available metric types for runtimes, breach duration, and cooldown periods. The Auto-Scaling service has control panels to define scaling policy, view metrics, and view scaling history. A scaling policy is based on thresholds for various metrics such as memory, JVM heap, throughput, and response time. The breach duration in the policy defines how long a threshold can be exceeded before a scaling event is performed. The cooldown period in the policy indicates how long to wait after a scaling event before processing further scaling requests. Related links Getting started with the Auto-Scaling service

Application Scaling Download a PDF of this presentation

IBM Bluemix account A web browser supported by Bluemix: Chrome: the latest version for your operating system Firefox: the latest version for your operating system and ESR 45 Internet Explorer: version 11 Safari: the latest version for the Mac   Select a Java application for this lab by using one of these options: Use an existing Java application to configure the Auto-Scaling service. Use the Java Cloudant Web Starter boilerplate to configure the Auto-Scaling service.

With an auto-scaling policy, you can create rules that determine when the Auto-Scaling service will increase or decrease the number of instances of your application. In this task, create and modify rules for your Java Liberty application. In your application, click the Auto-Scaling service shown in the Connections list. Click CREATE AUTO-SCALING POLICY. Enter the parameters for the policy: Enter minimum and maximum number of application instances: Use the following default configuration or configure or as needed: Minimum: If the number of the instances equals this value, the Auto-Scaling service will not scale in the application any more. Maximum: If the number of the instances equals this value, the Auto-Scaling service will not scale out the application any more. Scroll to the Rule 1 section and make these changes: Keep the Metric Type set to Memory. Change Scale Out percentage to 30 and change Scale In to 15. In the Advanced Configurations section, set the Statistic Window to 30 seconds. Then, set a value of 60 seconds for Breach Duration and both Cooldown periods. You’ll use these smaller time frames for testing later. These settings are much lower than in a typical production application. The values used are low enough to ensure that the Auto-Scaling service properly scales your application in a shorter test window during this lab. Click ADD A RULE to specify another rule. For Rule 2, set the Metric Type to throughput. Keep the other values as they were for Rule 1 Click SAVE to apply all changes for Rule 1 and Rule 2 Your application will now automatically scale based on the policies that you defined.

Load Testing Download a PDF of this presentation

IBM Bluemix account A web browser supported by Bluemix

In your browser, go the URL https://github.com/ibmecod/java-rediscache and click Deploy to Bluemix. Click LOGIN if prompted and provide the desired org and space for the application and then click DEPLOY to deploy the app to your Bluemix account. Wait for the message that says SUCCESS! You've added an instance of this app to your organization in Bluemix and then click the DASHBOARD link at the top of the page. You should see the newly deployed application shown as running:

In the Bluemix dashboard, click Catalog. Navigate to the DevOps section and select the Load Impact service. This service instance can be used across multiple applications. Unlike other services, it is not bound to a specific application. Accept the default values and click Create to create the service and add to your space. After the service is added to your space, use the Bluemix dashboard to find and click the Load Impact service. Click Open Load Impact Dashboard. You should see a dashboard where you can configure a simple load test without needing to register for a Load Impact user account. Optional: Create an account for the Load Impact service if you want to use more features of Load Impact. This account is not needed for this lab. Instead of entering the URL for your application, click Run a more realistic test, start here to go to the scenario page.

A load impact user scenario defines what actions a simulated user will take during the load tests of your application. The Load Impact service can create auto-generated tests from a URL, but to achieve more realistic tests for your application, creating your own tests is important. Click the User Scenarios icon on the left side. Then, click New user scenario. Select the Scripting option. This lab includes a sample script as an appendix. Download the script from http://ibm.biz/CertPrepLoadTest and paste into the text box. Change the target in the WEBSITE_URL variable to match your Bluemix application. Click Save Click Validate to make sure that the script does not have errors. You might see some URL warnings, which are OK. Optional: Change the name of the user scenario by clicking the Pencil icon and updating the name. Click OK to confirm and Save to commit all changes to the scenario. The user scenario provided in this lab was created with a combination of output from the Load Impact Chrome recorder extension and some custom Lua scripting. For more information about generating your own tests for other applications, see the Load Impact documentation: Load Impact Quick Start Guide Simulating realistic load using Load Impact Lua Quick Start Guide

A test configuration in Load Impact orchestrates how simulated users will act and behave during a Load Impact test. Here you define testing factors such as how many users will be simulated, how long the test will run, the number of servers used, and which user scenarios will be run during the test. Click the Tests icon on the left side. Then, click New Test. Select Custom configuration. Click the Pencil icon next to the words Test name to to enter a new name. Click Add user scenario and select the scenario that you created in the previous section. You see the proposed load test using the scenario. You can keep the Load zone at the default location. Scroll down and note that in the proposed test, the user load will ramp up to 50 users over the span of 5 minutes. Click Save changes. Begin the load test by clicking Run test. As your test runs, view the statistics that are displayed during the test. You will analyze these test results in the next section.

As the load impact test runs, data that is collected from load testing your application is generated. In this task, you access and view some of this information. Scroll through the Load Test page for the test that you just started and open the Metrics section. As the load impact runs, it generates graphs for your test. The first graph shows the number of active clients over time and the user load time. You can see whether the load time slows with the increased user load. Review the data visualizations are shown below the main chart. Optionally, adjust this panel by adding or removing other metric graphs. The Load Impact service provides external insights on how your application is performing. You can also use services in Bluemix that are bound to your application to gather further insights, such as Monitoring and Analytics, and also to take corrective action under load with the Auto-scaling service.

You can use several methods to monitor applications in IBM Bluemix, for example: The Availability Monitoring service provides distributed testing services from simple web application uptime checks to running Selenium test scripts. Measure application availability, CPU and heap memory usage, response time, and throughput by using the Monitoring and Analytics service. Monitor application logs by using the bx CLI tool during staging and when the application is running. Use the Bluemix dashboard to monitor network traffic, memory, and CPU use for single containers and container groups deployed on the IBM Bluemix Container Service. Related links Getting started with Availability Monitoring Getting started with IBM Monitoring and Analytics in Bluemix

Application Monitoring Download a PDF of this presentation

If your application does not already have the Monitoring and Analytics service, complete the following steps to add it. In the Bluemix Dashboard, select the space with the application that you want to monitor and click Catalog. In the search field, enter Monitoring and. Then, click Monitoring and Analytics. Select your application in the Connect to: field and then click Create. On the Restage Application dialog, click Restage. While the application is restaging, you will be taken to the application’s Connections page that shows all of the currently bound services, including the new Monitoring and Analytics service. Wait until the application is restaged by observing the application status. Click Visit App URL to open the application If you are monitoring an application created by using the Java Cloudant Web Starter boilerplate, add content to Favorites Organizerwhere you can add and upload files to be stored in a Cloudant database. Use the interface to add some content of any type and size to the Sample Category or add your own content. If you are monitoring a different application, spend 10-15 minutes in the user interface for the application to generate traffic that will be logged by the Monitoring and Analytics service before you proceed.

Because you added the Monitoring and Analytics service in the previous section, you now can see how your application is behaving at runtime. Return to the Bluemix dashboard and overview of the application. Click the Monitoring and Analytics Service item in the Connections list or page. Four tabs are displayed: Availability: Shows information about the availability of the application. Performance and Monitoring: Shows information about the performance of the application. Log Analysis: Shows information about the application logs. Events: A configurable set of critical events that can be displayed for the runtime. The following screenshot provides an example of the Availability view: Click the Performance Monitoring tab to see details on the performance of the application. Click the Advanced view button from the application catalog page to open a view of log data. This can be filtered by using various criteria.

Now that you have seen how to monitor and analyze the behavior of a sample application, you are ready to use this service with your applications. You can combine this service with a load test to understand the details of your application while it is under a simulated load. (See the “Load testing” lab.) With this information, you can create a responsive and highly reliable web application that runs on the cloud. So go to Bluemix, and create your own web app!

You can use several methods to debug applications in IBM Bluemix, for example: Use the Bluemix Cloud Foundry application logs available through the dashboard of streaming through the Bluemix or Cloud Foundry CLI Use the Eclipse tools for Bluemix to incrementally publish and interactively debug Java applications running on Bluemix Use the Live Edit features of the Continuous Delivery Web Editor to incrementally publish and interactively debug Node.js applications running on Bluemix Enable Bluemix App Management utilities that allow you to configure proxy, devconsole, debug, shell, inspector and trace capabilities for Java and Node.js runtimes Related Links Bluemix debugging Deploying Apps with Eclipse tools for Bluemix Bluemix Live Sync App Management utilities

Application Debugging Download a PDF of this presentation

In this lab, you will learn how to remotely debug a cloud application running in Bluemix. The steps here can be followed with an application of your own or the example boilerplates from the Bluemix catalog as shown in the lab. The lab shows you how to debug a Java application by using Eclipse and a Node.js application through the Bluemix debugging mode. Prerequisites IBM Bluemix account A web browser supported by Bluemix. Cloud Foundry command line interface, version 6.5.1 or later; it’s recommended that you use the latest release Eclipse Neon for Java EE Developers (4.6), or Eclipse Oxygen for Java EE Developers (4.7)

For debugging Java applications in IBM Bluemix, you need to install a copy of the IBM Eclipse Tools for Bluemix, and you need to run Eclipse by using the Oracle JDK 1.8 at a minimum level of u74, later versions are also supported. If you are installing on Microsoft Windows, avoid a space in the path name for both the JDK and Eclipse directories instead of using the default path. For example, install the JDK in c:\java\jdk1.8.0_74 and Eclipse in c:\java\eclipse. Install the Oracle JDK SE 1.8.0 u74 or later (if not already installed). Then, unpack the JDK installer and complete the installation. Download the JDK from: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads. If you already have Eclipse Luna (4.4.1), Mars (4.5) or Neon (4.6) installed, skip to step 3. This lab presumes you have an basic understanding of using Eclipse. To install eclipse Neon, go to https://eclipse.org and select the Download button. Select Eclipse Neon installer and when prompted by the installer, choose to install the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers. Install IBM Eclipse Tools for Bluemix by using Eclipse Marketplace: Start Eclipse on your workstation Click Help > Eclipse Marketplace. Search for Bluemix. Select the IBM Eclipse Tools for Bluemix entry and click Install. Click Confirm to accept the default selections. Accept the license agreement and click Finish.

In completing part 3, you should now understand: Features of IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery Source code management for Continuous Delivery toolchains How to use code editors with Continuous Delivery toolchains How to use Delivery Pipeline to build, test, and deploy applications How to scale applications dynamically both vertically and horizontally by using tools in the Bluemix dashboard and the Bluemix Auto-Scaling service Cloud load testing with tools such as BlazeMeter and Load Impact How to monitor performance by using the Availability Monitoring, the Monitoring and Analytics service, and log files accessed from the Bluemix (bx) command line How to debug applications by using command-line and integrated development environment (IDE) tools

In this course, you learned what it takes to build cloud native applications on the IBM Cloud. The course modules have covered Cloud service models that you can use to host applications Understanding features and planning for cloud applications Best practices and reference architectures for cloud applications Enhancing applications using services from Bluemix Cloud Data Services available from Bluemix Cloud application security Using Continuous Delivery toolchains to meet your cloud DevOps needs Manage applications running on IBM Bluemix

Get ready to take the IBM Certified Application Developer – Cloud Platform v2 professional certification exam by reviewing the exam objectivesand test preparation documentation. The certification exam Study Guide is a reference document that was used as a basis for many topics in this course. Sign up With developerWorks Newsletters, each month, we bundle up the best technical info on popular software development topics and deliver it to your inbox. Sign up to the dW digest newsletter to keep up to date with developerWorks content, including new and upcoming courses. Stay informed Keep up to date with the latest news and insights for developers, by developers. Visit the dW Blog. Watch videos on demos, insights, and interviews on the hottest technologies for developers via dW TV. Engage Get connected with developers via our developer centers. Get answers to your questions via our dW Answers forums. Discover Search developerWorks to find tutorials, tools, and communities for developers. Thank you for participating in this developerWorks course! You have completed the material.