Hi,

I'm new to DataPower and kicking-off a project to deploy 4 XS40 instances. I have deployed many ESB (software based) projects to different customers, but DataPower does looks very different.

I have several general questions - I expect general answers ;-) - about the entire lifecycle datapower deployment and running...

We have planned 4 DP instances deployed over two geo sites and also planned creating multiple domains on these instances, such as dev, acceptance, and production.

We have many services to be deployed, and as well many of them have multiple versions.

So, do you have any tips and guidelines for a newbie?

- operations
- services management
- services monitoring
- development sourcing (integrator)
- services versioning
- source control
- organizational/processes
- architectural
- resources usage (ports, ip, network cards, etc - I want to minimize number of ports)
- test plan
- deployment plan
- service registry (can I use DP as UDDI registry?)
- capacity planning
- services promotion (dev->accept->prod)

I appreciate your input