Middleware, such as WebSphere® ESB, requires that
you evaluate many aspects of your enterprise information system (EIS),
such as capacity and security before installing the product. Also,
you should plan ahead before exploiting the capabilities of WebSphere ESB, like error
prevention and recovery.
The answers to the following questions can help you design a deployment
environment to meet your needs:
- What are your business objectives and how can software help you
achieve those objectives?
- What applications must you integrate?
- Do you want to eliminate duplicate information?
- What are the requirements for system response time and availability?
- What financial, hardware, software, and human resources are available
for you to complete the installation?
- Do you require the services of other departments?
- What tasks must be performed? Who will perform them?
- What existing hardware do you need for the installation?
- Do you need additional hardware to achieve the business requirements?
- Can you use existing databases or do you require new databases?
- Can existing user IDs be used by WebSphere ESB components,
or do you require new IDs? What authorization do new IDs require?
- Are there financial considerations that limit the number of product
licenses you can purchase?
- How is your system going to evolve? For example, will it need
to handle increased load, or handle more concurrent users in the future?
Will you need to add additional resources in the future to meet additional
demands?
- Will your system need to dynamically add or remove resources to
handle daily fluctuations in demand?
- Does your system need to support fluctuations in load or number
of concurrent users, on a periodic basis?
Also, think about your current goals: are you planning a test or
production environment? Is it small-scale or large-scale? Do you want
to set up quickly, with default values, or do you want to customize
your environment? At the end of this section, there are planning suggestions
for several different scenarios, depending on what you are trying
to achieve.