There are two options for installing Process Services using containers:

• For trials, testing and development it’s recommended to deploy with Docker for Desktop.
• For production environments, there’s a reference Helm chart available for installation into a Kubernetes cluster.

Note: See the Deployment and Containerization Support Policy for information regarding the supportability of Docker images and Helm charts.

Install with Docker

Process Services and Process Services Administrator can be deployed using separate Docker containers.

The Docker images for Process Services are available on Docker Hub.

To download the images from Docker Hub, use the following commands:

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docker pull alfresco/process-services:2.0.x

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docker pull alfresco/process-services-admin:2.0.x

Note: If a tag isn’t supplied then the latest version will be downloaded.

To run the containers locally using Docker for Desktop, use the following commands specifying a port for them to map to:

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docker run -p {port}:8080 alfresco/process-services

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docker run -p {port}:8080 alfresco/process-services-admin

For example, to run Process Services Administrator on port 8095 use the following:

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docker run -p 8095:8080 alfresco/process-services-admin

Once the containers have started up, visit the following URLs to access the applications:

• http://localhost:{port}/activiti-app
• http://localhost:{port}/activiti-admin

For example http://localhost:8095/activiti-admin if running the Administrator application on port 8095.

Note: Docker for Desktop is not a production environment.

It is possible to override the default environment variables for Process Services and Process Services Administrator, see next sections.

Configure Process Services variables

It is possible to override the default variable values used by the Docker container.

There are three options for specifying your own variables during a Docker deployment:

• Mount your own activiti-app.properties and optionally an activiti-identity-service.properties file in /usr/local/tomcat/lib using Docker volumes.

• Specifying environment variables for each properties file that points to an accessible location such as an S3 bucket:

  • Use the EXTERNAL_ACTIVITI_APP_PROPERTIES_FILE environment variable for an activiti-app.properties file.
  • Use the EXTERNAL_ACTIVITI_IDENTITY_SERVICE_PROPERTIES_FILE environment variable for an activiti-identity-service.properties file.

    Note: If you choose this option, the files will be automatically downloaded into the contextual folder.

• Configure the environment variables in the Docker container by overriding the default values.

Variables that correspond to the activiti-app.properties file:

Variables that correspond to the activiti-identity-service.properties file:

Configure Process Services Administrator variables

It is possible to override the default variable values used by the Docker container.

There are three options for specifying your own variables during a Docker deployment:

• Mount your own activiti-admin.properties file in /usr/local/tomcat/lib using Docker volumes

• Use the environment variable ACTIVITI_ADMIN_EXTERNAL_PROPERTIES_FILE to point to an accessible location such as an S3 bucket:

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    environment:
      ACTIVITI_ADMIN_EXTERNAL_PROPERTIES_FILE: https://your-s3-bucket.com/activiti-admin.properties
  

• Configure the environment variables in the Docker container by overriding the default values:

Install on Amazon EKS

Use the following information as a reference guide to deploy Process Services on Amazon’s Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS).

Important: Deployment on AWS such as with Amazon EKS, is only recommended for customers with a good knowledge of Process Services, and strong competencies in AWS and containerized deployment.

There are several prerequisites for deploying on Amazon EKS using Helm charts:

• An Amazon EKS environment. See Amazon’s EKS getting started Guide as a reference point.
• A Kubernetes namespace configured for Process Services.
• Helm and Tiller configured in the Kubernetes cluster. See Helm’s quickstart guide for reference.

Use the following steps to deploy Process Services, Process Services Administrator, a Postgres database and optionally the Identity Service:

1. Create a Kubernetes secret to access images in Quay.

   1. Sign into Quay.io with your credentials using the following command:

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       docker login quay.io
      

   2. Generate a base64 value for your dockercfg using one of the following commands:

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       # Linux
       cat ~/.docker/config.json | base64
      

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       # Windows
       base64 -w 0 ~/.docker/config.json
      

   3. Create a file called secrets.yaml and add the following content to it, using your base64 string from the previous step as the .dockerconfigjson value:

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       apiVersion: v1
       kind: Secret
       metadata:
         name: quay-registry-secret
       type: kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson
       data:
         .dockerconfigjson: <your-base64-string>
      

   4. Upload your secrets.yaml file to the namespace you are deploying into using the following command:

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       kubectl create -f <file-location>/secrets.yaml --namespace=$NAMESPACE
      

2. Create a Kubernetes secret for the Process Services license file with the following command:

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    kubectl create secret generic licenseaps --from-file=./activiti.lic
    --namespace=$NAMESPACE
   

3. Add the Alfresco Kubernetes repository to Helm with the following command:

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    helm repo add alfresco-stable https://kubernetes-charts.alfresco.com/stable
   

4. Update the properties for the Process Services chart.

5. (Optional): To enable the Identity Service:

   1. Enable the Identity Service in the alfresco-infrastructure section of the values.yaml:

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       alfresco-identity-service:
       enabled: true
      

   2. Set the Process Services environment variable IDENTITY_SERVICE_ENABLED to true.

   3. Set the Process Services environment variable IDENTITY_SERVICE_AUTH to http://$DNS/auth.

6. Deploy the chart using a command similar to the following:

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    helm install alfresco-stable/alfresco-process-services --set dnsaddress="http://$DNS" --namespace=$NAMESPACE --set license.secretName=licenseaps
   

The applications will be available at the following URLs:

• Process Services: http://$DNS/activiti-app
• Process Services Administrator: http://$DNS/activiti-admin
• Identity Service administrator console: http://$DNS/auth/admin

Note: To change the context paths of any of the applications, edit the ingress paths:

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ingress:
    path: /activiti-app

Helm properties

The following information details the properties that can be set for Process Services when deploying via Helm on Amazon’s Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS).

The following properties can be configured in the values.yaml file or overridden as environment variables: