Chapter 1. Saying Hello to IBM Bluemix

Ready to rock with IBM Bluemix? Not yet? Don't fret; we are here to take you through your exciting journey to embrace the whole new paradigm of application development on cloud.

Before we take the plunge, let us equip ourselves with an understanding of some of the concepts that are at the periphery but that are essential to build your know-how of IBM Bluemix.

Heard of cloud computing? No? Well, we highly recommend you have a basic understanding of what cloud computing is at this point, before we can move forward. If we were to define it in simple terms, cloud computing is the method of creating a pool of resources (compute, storage, and network) and offering it through a simple portal that allows users to request the resources they want and get them provisioned in minutes, all this at a cost that is charged against the actual usage metrics of the resources or on a period-based consumption model.

Did you get it? No? Let us simplify it further.

Think of resources as compute, storage, and networking.

Now think of these resources being pooled and shared in a data center by what we call cloud service provider or CSP.

As a user, you will need a certain compute, storage, and networking capacity to host your application. In a non-traditional cloud world, you would go to the URL of the CSP, which will take you to the self-service portal of his service. Through this portal, you will be able to look at the available resources offered by the CSP, look at the costs at which each of them is offered, and will also be able to request a combination of resources based on your requirements. This custom compute capacity will be provisioned to you inside your tenancy or account with the CSP cloud offering. You will then be able to access and work with your resources through public Internet calls. This is a typical scenario of using cloud computing on a public cloud. By public cloud, what is meant is that the resources are shared and accessible by anyone on the public Internet, once they have a tenancy or account established within the cloud offering. Tenancy will assure resource isolation between tenants. Public cloud platforms are a popular way to explain the concept of cloud computing; however, there are private and hybrid flavors of cloud computing that CSPs provide. We shall discuss this further along in this chapter.

In this chapter, we will be looking at the following topics:

• Understanding cloud service delivery models
• Getting a step closer to understanding IBM Bluemix
• Understanding Bluemix architecture
• Familiarizing with Bluemix deployment models
• Getting an account on public Bluemix
• Understanding the Bluemix dashboard