TransformationAdvisorForACE

This blog provides details of how to use IBM Cloud Transformation advisor plugin that is useful during migration from IIB v10 to ACE v11.


IBM has introduced IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor IIB/ACE plugin(beta version)  starting from ACE 11.0.0.7  fix pack and the interesting fact is, it does not require any new installation, its part of the fix pack and is available as a command which can be directly used.

Now the first question that comes in everyone's mind is what does this transformation advisor do and how is it useful for any developer and in what way.


The answer is simple, IBM has provided this out of the box capability which provides support for the analysis of existing IIB v10 integration nodes and flows in it and with this data it provides possible potential issues when moving the current architecture to containers.

As part of the output of this command, it provides the potential complexity of the required transformations in Simple,Medium,Complex terminologies along with color coding of Green, Yellow, Red wherein Green indicates no changes needed, Yellow indicates minor changes and Red indicates major changes needed. 

Lets get started on execution part now..



Note: Since I am running these on my local machine which is windows based, I will be using IIB v10 and ACE v11 command console.

Below are the step by step process to run it.

Step 1: Go to the server/environment which has IIB v10 version which you want to migrate to ACE v11

Step 2: Open the IIB v10 integration console.

Step 3: Take a backup of the existing integration node(broker) using mqsibackupbroker command.

Syntax: mqsibackupbroker <NODENAME> -d <directory_where_you_want_to_store_the_zip_file> -a <name_of_the_zip_file>

Example: mqsibackupbroker IIBNODE -d E:\txAdvisor -a v10.zip

Step 4: Go to the server where you have installed IBM App Connect Enterprise v 11 (version should be >= 11.0.0.7 for txAdivsor command to be available)

Step 5: Now we have IIB v10 broker backup file which has to be analysed by this transformation advisor. For this to happen, we need to first set the Transformation advisor data collection directory to point to the location where you have the IIB v10 broker file [Since I have both versions in same machine, my directory will remain the same, but in reality, you may have to copy the backup zip from IIB v10 machine to ACE v11 machine and use ACE v11 machine directory further]

Syntax: set TADataCollectorDirectory =<directory_where_you_have_copied_or_backuped_IIB_v10_brokerfile>

Example: set TADataCollectorDirectory=E:\txAdvisor 

Step 6: Finally run the Transformation directory data collector command to view the report and other details

Syntax: TADataCollector ace run <name_of_the_zip_file> 

Example: TADataCollector ace run v10backup.zip

Upon execution of the above command, you will observe the below folders getting created in the path where from where you executed the command

-> A folder with name logs that has the logs that got generated while executing the command. 

-> A folder with name output, which has a folder with node name (IIBNODE in this case). The IIBNODE folder will contain a folder with integration server name(IS01 in this case) and the recommendations html report.

-> A folder name temp that has folders similar to the ones you find in C:\ProgramData\IBM\MQSI [screenshot provided for reference]

Step 7: Now to view the recommendations open the recommendations.html report present in output/<NODENAME>/ folder with name recommendations.html. 

Note: You will also see recommentations.json, environment.json and IS01 folder along with this .html file. The IS01(integration server) folder contains <integrationserver>.json file that contains details of application, configurations for each of the integration server like which you can view to look at the IIB v10 configurations.

Another sample report with more details

This report provides details with Green, Red, Orange status that helps us in identifying which applications needs more time and what changes to be done if we have to migrate to ACE v11. Since I am running on my local machine, I have only one integration server but in reality when you run this on actual production or other environments where you have multiple integration servers with many application deployed, you will be able to see detailed report with solutions.

Hope this blogs helps you to understand how to make use of transformation advisor option available in ACE v11.0.0.7 onwards.....