How to prepare for a Hackathon with IBM Cloud?

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Today I want to address a common situation for developers: You want to participate in a hackathon, and you plan to use IBM Cloud, but you have never used it before. How to prepare? My motivation to write this: I will support the hacknext hackathon from 7-9 March 2019 in Munich as a coach. (http://ibm.biz/ibm4hacknext)
IBM Cloud provides a huge amount of different services, runtimes, and so on.
BTW (by the way): From my point of view, one of the most important objectives in a hackathon is, running your created application live! To do this you need a runtime 😉

Let’s start with the basics

Let’s get a basic understanding of what the major areas in IBM Cloud are and where to find how to’s?

IBM Cloud offers a good entry point with the getting started page , which is organized into these different topics:

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#BlueCloudMirror Game – highscores

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I am a part of the team along with @Niklas and @Harald , who created and developed the fun Blue Cloud Mirror Game. 

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This is my first blog  about this topic, and I will follow with future posts to detail the different parts of highscores (scores) and the technologies and components involved.

You can also take a look at other existing information:

The motivation for the highscores (scores)

If you play a game, you usually want to compare yourself with others. To do this, you simply have to save scoring information somewhere and provide access for the players who want to see the highscores, even if they do not play the game.

The high-level architecture overview on scores

The objective was to implement this on the cloud with state-of-the-art runtimes, services, security topics, to cover microservices, and to have an easy scalable cloud architecture.
I developed the scores part and the functions-api for users.

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The Game, Scores Service UI and the Highscores webapp are hosted on different runtimes and for the execution they will be loaded into a browser.

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Cloud Foundry on top of Kubernetes @IBM Cloud – a small test

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This blog is related to the topics Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment , serverless , code patterns and the IBM Coder Program.

I just want to move an existing Cloud Foundry app on IBM Cloud to the new IBM Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment,which instantiates Cloud Foundry on top of Kubernetes. You can find more details about this IBM Cloud offering in this blog post “An on-demand, single-tenant Platform-as-a-Service on IBM Cloud” from IBM.

Motivation

Maybe you noticed the section Combined Power in my blog post Operations and Developers side by side @“Continuous Lifecycle” and “Container Conf” related to Simon Moser’s session “CF3 – Combining the Power of Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes” ? In this blog post you can read more about the motivation to combine the power.  Also you can find out which open source projects ( eirini for example) are relevant.

Based on  Simon Moser´s speech, I was motivated to check out the Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment on IBM Cloud.

I started my test of moving an existing Could Foundry App. I have chosen to move the app instance from one of my modified code patterns . My selection was the Predictive Industrial Visual Analysis. This code pattern has a big focus on serverless, but I will write more about the serverless part in the near future.

Let’s get started: How do I move an existing Cloud Foundry app?

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How to enter your promo code in the newer IBM Cloud UI? (UPDATE)

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This is just a small update to my blog post Promo code and free Kubernetes Cluster @IBM Cloud specific to the topic promo codes.

Currently IBM Cloud provides two UIs to access the IBM Cloud.
But don’t be afraid, when entering your code, this will work for both of them.

You can access the newer unified UI, with more functionalities, via http://cloud.ibm.com and the traditional UI you can access with www.bluemix.net.

If you enter your promo code in the newer UI just follow these steps:

  • Open Manage->Account in the IBM Cloud UI menu
  • In Account select Account settings
  • Here you can enter your promo code in Feature (Promo) Codes

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The creation of the free Kubernetes Cluster has not changed.

I hope this was useful for you and let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

#ibmdeveloper #promocode #ibmcloud #free #ibmcloudiu

 

Operations and Developers side by side @“Continuous Lifecycle” and “Container Conf”

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Niklas Heidloff  and I  attended the combined software development conference for “Continuous Lifecycle”and “Container Conf” in Mannheim Rosengarten on 14.11. and 15.11.2018.

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The conference was sold out and had more than 700 attendees. This was a great place where developer and operation experts exchanged different perspectives.

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The talks at the conference were about Micro Services, Docker, Serverless, Tools, Security, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, and methods and more.

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Let‘s Code Pattern 02: Diversity and Inclusion – ensure loan fairness

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The good combination of IBM coder program  and code patterns motivated me to dig in into the data science area a little bit, relating to the real-world topic diversity and inclusion . Also it was interesting to see: How the AI Fairness 360 toolkit, which is an open-source library to help detect and remove bias in machine learning models, can be used for data science in this context.

The diversity and inclusion topic started with a good statement:

“Diversity and inclusion is more than a checkbox, it’s fuel for growth and success in any business or community.” IBM Coder Program.

This was one reason why I completed the challenges of the Diversity and Inclusion topic in the IBM coder program .

The IBM coder program

If you don’t know the IBM coder program, just visit this  link .
The program is about:

  • Growing skillset and reputation
  • Discovering and transparently discuss content 
  • Being rewarded with various tangible and intangible rewards

The code pattern Ensure loan fairness  was one of the challenges for Diversity and Inclusion topic.

Code pattern “Ensure loan fairness”

This code pattern is about machine learning with artificial intelligence, data science and python. It gives an introduction in how to use the AIF360 tool kit .

  • “The AI Fairness 360 toolkit is an open-source library to help detect and remove bias in machine learning models. The AI Fairness 360 Python package includes a comprehensive set of metrics for datasets and models to test for biases, explanations for these metrics, and algorithms to mitigate bias in datasets and models.“

In the related demo on IBM research-trusted UI, you can verify given ai models with different datasets and the bias mitigation algorithms .

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Promo code and free Kubernetes Cluster @IBM Cloud

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You may have received a promo code when you attended a conference, meetup, or hackathon, but you have no experience with IBM Cloud yet, and you want to access the free Kubernetes cluster in the IBM Cloud as soon as possible, because you can use the cluster for your own “playing” and “testing”.

In this situation you can educate yourself with the badge IBM Cloud Essentials related to IBM Cloud before you access the IBM Cloud. BTW, this way would be the best choice ;-). With IBM Cloud Essentials  you have free education and an official badge.

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Or you can enter your promo code and create a Kubernetes Cluster directly.
I created a short youtube video related to this fastpass :

  • How to enter a promo code?
  • How to instantiate a free Kubernetes Cluster ?

If you don’t want to watch the video, these are the simple steps you have follow:

Register:

Insert promo code:

  • Select “Manage->Billing” in the menu on the IBM Cloud WebUI
  • Insert your promo code

Create free Kubernetes Cluster:

  • Select the Kubernetes service from the catalog and press create
  • Choose the data center location, these indicate where the cluster will be instantiated
  • Select free cluster
  • Press create
  • Follow the instructions in the “Access” tab, to access your cluster with kubectl from your local pc.

I hope this was useful for you and let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

big open source players were “cap by hat” @w-jax

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I was at winter-jax 2018 in Munich last week. This was my first time I attended this big developer conference.

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As you can see in the headline picture, two big players in open source area with cap by hat and  IBM, RedHat booths and with Viada  😉

One major topic this week was the potential deal, IBM is planning to buy RedHat for 34 billion US dollars. This potential deal played a big part in Sebastian Meyen´s opening speech on the first day of the winter jax conference in Munich.

He highlighted the history and  Red Hat´s contribution to open source.

If you want to listen his speech in German, you can watch the sessionon youtube here  . His speech is before the keynote “Trust and confidence through chaos” from Russ Miles

By the way, I like Russ Miles´s approach to “chaos engineering” .

My very high-level free interpretation of “chaos engineering” is:

  • “Break the system, before it breaks your business!”

From my point of view “chaos engineering” is more or less comparable with testing. So, I defined more detailed, free interpretations:

  • “Don’t be afraid and learn from testing/failure”
  • “Bad news … yes, testers want to break your system, but the good news is: they will do it, before you run it in production 😉 “

Open source contribution

A very good match to the open source topic was the keynote from Christopher Ferris.

He asked the good question: Who pays for open source?  You can watch his session on youtube here

Christopher Ferris reminded us in his speech that IBM is a major player and contributer in open source, with a high involvement in Apache , Eclipse and Linux  during the creation and in development. These three projects are fundamental pillars for the open source business.

There are many other open source projects IBM contributes to, which you can find here  on the  IBM Developer site.

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Christopher Ferris during his keynote.

Open Source in AI

Also, Niklas Heidloff gave a session “Development of AI Applications without Machine Learning Skills”. In this session, Niklas also highlighted the topic open source with the Model Asset eXchange . The Model Asset eXchange contains free, deployable, and trainable code.

It is also very important to understand that these models on Model Asset eXchange are reusable for production, because they have licenses developers can verify.

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Image of the session from Niklas Heidloff. Here you can see some impressions from Niklas.

Open Source in Java

Steve Poole highlighted in his session “What’s new for Java in clouds?” that IBM open sourced OpenJ9 (Low memory footprint). Steve also reminded us in his session, that the Java community should be more active and should define the needs for cloud, machine learning and upcoming technologies like Quantum.

By the way Fernando Cejas did a session about Quantum Computing, you can check a sample here  “Quantum computing in action: IBM’s Q experience and the quantum shell game”.

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Moments

If you want to see our favourite moments of this conference, just visit the twitter moments from Miriam Oglesby.

Let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

“code pattern” – my point of view

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Today I want to focus on a interesting question I got:  “Why does IBM call something a code pattern and not just sample?” The question was related to my last blog.

Here is my personal point of view

First, there is no existing definition of the word pattern in combination with usage of the word code.

  • Based on the given definition, here is my free interpretation of the word pattern :
    “A pattern is something you can reproduce in different areas, and this interpretation is more less always comparable to a sample.  “
  • The main difference between sample and pattern from my point of view is: 
    “A pattern is always created to reproduce something which worked and will work again and this is not the case with a sample.”

Sure, a code pattern is NO design pattern  😉 . The combination of the words design and pattern has an official definition.

From my understanding, IBM uses the word pattern in combination with code, with the intention of showing you that you can reuse the code in the way you want.

A code pattern does NOT need to be related to IBM products or IBM services, but it should be related to one or more technologies and should contain code, which a developer is able to reuse under an apache license.

Structure of the code pattern

A code pattern should always contain:

  • Clear definition of the used technologies
  • Should contain code which can be used to instantiate an application
  • Should contain the possible deployment models (cloud, local, and so on) of the application

A code pattern should always have the following high level structure:

  • Summary (main objective),
  • Description (what it does)
  • Flow (how it works)
  • Instructions (how to instantiate)
  • … and for sure the code, which is available on github

This was my personal perspective on the definition of a code pattern, based on my experience with code patterns so far.

I hope this was helpful for you and feel free to provide feedback 😉

Let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

Let‘s Code Pattern 01: Use blockchain to track fitness club rewards

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What is Let‘s code pattern?

I am starting a blog series to explore blog series to explore some code patterns, like those which are available on IBM Developer. I will call these series Let‘s code pattern .

Definitions for Let‘s code pattern

On IBM Developer website, there are complete solutions to problems that developers face every day. Code patterns leverage multiple technologies to solve issues that our developer advocates have recognized as common use cases across multiple industries.

Do you want to add something about Open Source and the code is available??
For the  series Let‘s code pattern , I have defined three topics I will observe for each code pattern in the future.

  1. Did the code pattern work?
  2. Did I need to make changes to the readme?
  3. How complex was it for me?

I always will clone the code pattern to my own repository, to make any changes I want to apply.  For example; to add my simple git and cloud helper bash scripts or customisations to the code or in the readme.

Let’s start with the first code pattern

I am starting the Let’s code pattern series with the Blockchain code pattern  called “Use blockchain to track fitness club rewards”. The web app is designed to track and trace member rewards, using IoT and the blockchain. It’s a fairly recent code pattern, which was published just last week.

The code pattern “Use blockchain to track fitness club rewards” enables you to setup a blockchain  locally on your computer using Hyperledger Composer. The code pattern is based on an Angular web app. You can implement it and start to learn from this project, which is based on a fitness club use-case.

Here’s my customised GitHub version of the code pattern: https://github.com/thomassuedbroecker/Using-Blockchain-to-Track-fitness-Rewards#part00

Let’s begin! Let’s get down to business

Overall it was useful starting point for me to dig into this area without using a cloud instance. The local instance makes blockchain with Hyperledger composer simpler. But I notice, I have to read additional information to get a better understanding of the Hyperledger composer in more detail.

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