X-INTEGRATE Cast Iron Management Tool

Why you need the Cast Iron Management Tool

IBM WebSphere Cast Iron provides out of the box two tools for development and administration of Cast Iron instances (Virtual and Physical Appliances).

1. Cast Iron Studio is the development environment for Cast Iron integration solutions, so called orchestrations, which are packaged as Cast Iron Projects. These Cast Iron Projects can be deployed onto Cast Iron runtime instances
2. The Cast Iron runtime instances can be managed via the Web Management console

With the Cast Iron Management Tool we want to embed the solution development and Cast Iron instance administration within structured processes which can be highly automated. This is a necessary feature in complex environments and environments with strict process guidelines. Cast Iron Management Tool therefore includes features which are not integrated in the Cast Iron Studio and Cast Iron Web Management Console but essential for good solution development.

Features of the Cast iron Management Tool

• Cast Iron Management Tool uses the Management API provided by each Cast Iron instance.
• Goal is to support Cast Iron solution development and administration via a tool which provides a graphical user interface and scripting capabilities
• The command line interface makes it possible to embed execution of administration tasks within automated processes
• Command line interface and graphical user interface use the same functions provided by the Cast Iron Management Tool core

Its features are:

• version management of projects
• encapsulating Management API Webservice calls
• backup, deploy & restore projects
• display deployed projects
• display & overwrite config properties
• deployment onto multiple Cast Iron instances
• HTTPS secured communication
• detailed user guide covering installation and usage

Examples where to use the Cast Iron Management Tool

Imagine you are a Cast Iron instance administrator in an environment hosting 3 Cast Iron virtual appliances. Because one integration solution is essential to your company you deployed version 1.0 of it on all 3 Cast Iron virtual appliances. Now a new version 1.1 is released which should be rolled out. You therefore have to login to each Cast Iron Web Management Console of all appliances, publish the new version and start it. But after the rollout of version 1.1 your supervisor contacts you and says the integration solution is still no longer working. So you have to uninstall all version 1.1 integration solution and redeploy version 1.0, again onto all appliances. That is not all. What about the backup and version management of all Cast Iron Projects?

This could all be done via the Cast Iron Management Tool!

• With the publishProject operation it is possible to deploy and start a Cast Iron Project on multiple appliances including a backup.
• With the rollbackPublishProject you could undeploy the Cast Iron Project which does not work and redeploy the predecessor which was backed up in the database

Cast Iron Management Tool in action

If you would like to see how the Cast Iron Management Tool works watch our YouTube video.
See the Cast Iron Community too, where a free part of the Cast Iron Management tool is available as a TIP. It is called "FTP2Appliance_PublishCastIronProjectOntoTwoAppliances".