Enterprise Sakai: Creating a Robust Sakai Infrastructure

Mr. Josh Baron, Director, Academic Technology, Marist College

Mr. Chris Coppola, President, rSmart

Mr. Howard Baker, Project Manager, IBMMr. Austin Schilling,

IT Executive Consultant, IBM

MARIST COLLEGE• We are NOT a large research university! • Founded 1929 – small complex liberal

arts college• Approximately 5700 FTE student

population• 200 full-time faculty, 500 part-time• Long history of incorporating technology

into the teaching and learning process

Why do we need an enterprise solution?

Answer: We’ve learned our lesson from the past…

Learning from the past…

• In 1996 the digital horizon was foggy…• We have a better view today… watch out!• Use and production of digital media will grow

exponentially over next decade:– Electronic portfolios – Rich media learning objects – Social Podcasting– Next Up: Mobile authoring tools?

Colleges and Universities

A National Learning Grid

K-12 DistrictState and

Local Consortia

Museums, science

centers, etc.

Certification Exams

Online Courses

“Raw” Video Content

Student content

Schema for Provisioning the Sharing of Resources/ToolsSchema for Provisioning the Sharing of Resources/Tools

Sakai Repository

Marist/IBM Joint Study

• Well Established Relationship, First Project – 1988• Living Lab for New Technologies

– Research projects, IBM Academic Initiative support, Marist grant initiatives

• IBM program manager provides overall project management– IBM researchers, developers, business execs, and

Marist faculty, IT staff, and students collaborate on numerous projects

• Marist students hired as IBM interns– Opportunities for full-time positions

Marist Sakai Goals

• How do we create a scalable, enterprise version of Sakai capable of handling future xxx needs?– Port Sakai to IBM WebSphere (WAS) and DB2

Global CampusStudents

EducatorsAdministrators

Customized Portals

App 1

App 1

App 2

App 2

App 3

App 3

Collaborative Learning Environment

Sakai Tools &DevelopmentEnvironment

Distributed Environment

Core Services: content, user, security, site

Core Infrastructure

Sakai Vision

WAS Porting Issues

• Classloaders– Tomcat decided to go against specification

• Looks in local classloader first unless resource contains certain package keywords (javax, org.xml.sax, etc)

• If resource not found, request is delegated to parent classloader

– WebSphere is the opposite, but allows the administrator to adjust the classloading policy

WAS Porting Issues

• Deployment Descriptors– Tomcat is much more lenient with invalid

deployment descriptors• If a web.xml file does not match the servlet

specification it overlooks the error and allows the web application to function normally

– WebSphere is much more strict• Will not allow an application to be installed unless

there are no errors in the web.xml file

WAS Porting Issues

• Filters– The Servlet Specification states that any filter

that maps to a url-pattern should be applied before any filter that maps to a servlet name.

– Some Sakai components do not follow this spec• Tomcat applies filters in the order in which the Sakai

Application is expecting• WebSphere applies the filters according to

specification

WAS Porting Issues

• Need to create a single code base– Easy to install – regardless of app server

• Alternative build specified by global settings variable. One code base has necessary source for all versions.

• XML specifies build– Source files– Destination of compiled source

DB2 Porting Issues

• Work Involves:– Creating db2 versions of all sql/ddl scripts– Reworking issues from hibernate and legacy jdbc

services

• Common Hibernate Gotchas– Long names for indexes– Binary blob types

• Solution: Create hibernate dialect. This avoids changes to java source or hbm files.

DB2 Porting Issues

• Legacy JDBC Gotchas– No vendor specific abstraction in Sakai for

dealing with vendor specific issues

• Solution: rSmart is working with the community to move to vendor specific helper classes that can be set at runtime to make code more manageable and less error prone.

Marist iLearnx Near Term Status

• Port to WAS and DB2 near completion• June and July

– Migrate courses and test

• August – Create production infrastructure– Blade server based

• September – Move into production in Marist’s z/OS Certificate program

– NOTE: iLearn = Innovative Learning Environment and Resource Nework

Marist – rSmart – IBM Contribution

• QA environment running DB2 and WAS will be live in September with several “flavors” of Sakai.

• Hosted at Marist College• Marist will also be contributing several QA

resources for testing activities• COME JOIN US!

Bu

sin

ess

Val

ue

Ability to Dynamically Respond

Reduce costs

Increased utilization

Increased flexibility

Better IT – Public Service

Goals alignment

Future Directions - Dynamic Infrastructure to deploy, maintain, and support a Utility based model delivering Education

Services to Academic Communities

Simplify: Consolidate IT assets

Virtualize:Create logical asset pools

Provision: Automate Capacity & Workload Mgt

Orchestrate:Achieve Policy-based computing

IBM Dynamic Infrastructure

Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator

IBM DI On Demand Workplace – Demo Topology

De-/Provision App/Portal Server

Cluster

Usage

Utility BusinessServices

Reporting Objective Analyser

ODW OA & DAE

Tivoli Directory Server

(LDAP)WES

(ND)

User / Robot

UBSFilter

HTTP

Proxy

Metric Service

Server Pool

Update NDConfiguration

IBM Tivoli ProvisioningManager

Workflow

DataCenterModel

get/setPlugin

DCMPlugin

...Plugin

WorkflowWorkflow

A A A

Subscribe:Premium/Normal

Service

Evaluate Usage Context

WebSphere SOA Component Clusters

Solutions/AppsWPS

Sakai CLE

Web Services

J2EE Apps

rSmart OSPI

SeHS

J2EE Portal

ePortfolio

DB2Domino

SeHS/WPSProduct Stack

MeteringAggregation/Correlation

Two kinds of users: a) “premium”: subscribed to get classified requests based on SLOsb) “standard”: no SLOs

SPP & IDI Integration @ Marist• Approach

– Stage 1 (SPP PoC)• Start with SPP for base provisioning

– Integration of Slackware OS provisioning– TPM installation and setup

– Stage 2 (IDI for Education Landscape Mgmt PoC)• Implementation and deployment of IDI

– Leveraging SPP base provisioning– Implementation of Marist Education services Application Landscape Managment

(Sakai)

– Stage 3• Converged SPP and IDI solution for Marist Education Services (Sakai)

Landscape Management– Improved error recovery and compensation

Q & A

Technical Contacts