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Setup IBM Process Automation Manager Open Edition (PAM/DM) in OpenShift

By Marco Antonioni posted Wed September 28, 2022 01:52 AM

  
IBM Process Automation Manager Open Editions


Special thanks to my colleague Chiara Venneri who helped me in reviewing the post and in running the verification tests for the installation and configuration in the OpenShift cluster.


Introduction

IBM Process Automation Manager Open Edition (PAM) and IBM Decision Manager Open Edition (DM) are application development platforms for developers to create highly customized, modern, cloud-native applications that automate business operations.
These platforms are built on open source projects: Drools, jBPM and Kogito.

IBM Process Automation Manager is an Open-Source platform for modeling and automating business processes, including case and decision support.
PAM characteristics:

Cloud-native development and execution of process automation apps
Collaborative modeling tools
Native support for BPMN 2.0
Ad-hoc case management
UX design tools
Includes full Decisions management support (IBM Decision Manager Open Edition)
Includes limited-use license of IBM RPA


IBM Decision Manager is a platform for modeling and automating business decisions with Decision Model & Notation (DMN) and business rules.
DM characteristics:

Cloud-native development and execution of decision automation apps
Collaborative modeling tools
Native support for DMN 1.4
ML models supported via PMML
Complex Event Processing
Includes limited-use license of IBM RPA


All components are available as container images, ready for deployment on OpenShift.
Deploy on the public cloud of your choice or on-prem without any change in functionality
Kogito-based serverless decision management.
Facts:
Improve scalability, reliability, responsiveness, agility and productivity
Deliver more features, faster
Avoid vendor lock-in
Ensure cost-effectiveness

The platform is developer friendly
Facts:
Limitless flexibility to build your apps exactly the way you want
Use modern, familiar Dev/Ops practices and tools:
IDEs (for example, VSCode)
Source code control (Git and Maven)
CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins)

Fully open-source software:
Includes latest innovations
Stability: fully tested, supported by IBM
Secure and transparent
Supports OMG standards (DMN1.4, BPMN 2.0)
DMN is written as spec – no custom code for the implementation
Ensure automation services integrate with legacy and 3rd party applications
Collaborate with business users
Mix and match solutions from different sources
Mitigate risk

IBM PAM is based on Kogito - Next-gen Cloud-Native Business Automation


Purpose of this article

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how easy it is to setup one or more development environments of "IBM Process Automation Manager Open Edition" in an OpenShift cluster.

We will use the "IBM Business Automation" operator from OperatorHub menu in OCP cluster.

The example assumes that the Openshift cluster has connectivity to the public network and therefore you will not need to perform any downloads; the operator already present in the Red Hat catalog will take care of all installation and configuration activities.

In these examples we will use the Red Hat Openshift console to install, configure and then use the development environment.


Prerequisites

A little bit of knowledge about OCP commands using the console.
An Openshift cluster (you will need a new namespace so if you don't have admin privileges ask to your admin for a new namespace administered by you).
Very little disk space and free memory on the cluster.
20 minutes of your free time to complete the setup and the scenarios


Install the operator

Log in to the Openshift cluster.
Create a namespace within which to deploy the development environment, for example 'ibamoe1'.

Select the OperatorHub menu, use the 'Filter by keyword' field and type 'businessautomation' as the search key.
Select 'IBM Business Automation' and then press the 'Install' button.
Choose option 'A specific namespace on the cluster' and select the namespace you created for the development environment.
Press the 'Install' button and wait for the 'Installed operator - ready for use' message to be presented, then select the 'View operator' button.


Create the first trial development environment

Select the 'KieApp' tab, press 'Create KieApp' button.
Enter 'my-trial-env' in Name field, select 'rhpam-trial' in Environment field.
Expand 'Common config' section and set your preferred password for the adminUser.
Leave untouched the other fields then press 'Create' button.
Then switch to Workloads -> Pods menu in namespace 'ibamoe1', you'll see four new pods named 'my-trial-env-env-...', two deployment jobs and two running servers (Business Central development server and the runtime Kie server).
Wait until the state of two pods (servers) became ready.

Note:
If you do not set the password for the 'adminUser' user, the operator will create one automatically; you can get the password by viewing the KieApp YAML format in the menu 'Operators -> Installed Operators -> Operator details -> KieApp (yaml view)'

...
status:

  applied:
    commonConfig:
      adminPassword: your-admin-password
...

for a trial environment the default password is 'RedHat'.


Create a second development environment (non trial)

Select the 'KieApp' tab, press 'Create KieApp' button.
Enter 'my-first-dev-env' in Name field, select 'rhpam-authoring' in Environment field.
Expand 'Common config' section and set your preferred password for the adminUser.
Leave untouched the other fields then press 'Create' button.
Then switch to Workloads -> Pods menu in namespace 'ibamoe1', you'll see four new pods named 'my-first-dev-env-...', two deployment jobs and two running servers (Business Central development server and the runtime Kie server).
Wait until the state of two pods (servers) became ready.

Note:
If you do not set the password for the 'adminUser' user, the operator will create one automatically; you can get the password by viewing the KieApp YAML format in the menu 'Operators -> Installed Operators -> Operator details -> KieApp (yaml view)'

...
status:
  applied:
    commonConfig:
      adminPassword: your-admin-password
...

Now you have two different development environment in the same namespace; each development environment has its own resources; you may create as many environments you need constrained only by cluster resources quota for your namespace.


Use Business Center to deploy a new app

We will now use 'Business Central' development environment using the url defined in KieApp resource, select your environment descriptor in 'Operators -> Installed Operators -> Operator details -> KieApp', select your KiaApp then look on the right side of details in section 'Business/Decision Central URL'.

To access the development environment use user 'adminUser' and its password.
Create your workspace with the 'Add Space' button.
Then enter your new space (click on the tile that shows the name of the space you just created).
To import the example demo use 'Import Project' button and fill Repository URL space, inside pop-up, with this provided link :

https://github.com/jbossdemocentral/rhpam7-order-management-demo-repo.git

Select the 'Order-Management' project and confirm with 'Ok' to complete the import operations.
Now you can browse the newly imported content.


Conclusions

As you have seen, starting to use the pre-installed development environment in a Docker type image is really simple and allows each developer to create multiple work environments with the possibility of working with different product versions, just use a different tag and keep on volumes or system files the various work workspaces.

Just to remind you that for production environments where support from the open source community cannot help you quickly resolve any defects, IBM offers paid support for the "IBM Process Automation Manager Open Edition (PAM)" and "IBM Decision Manager Open Edition (DM)".

Why should I pay for Open-source software – it’s free?!?

What an IBM payed support offers to you:
24x7 support for the software - not posting to a community for help
Your problems are our problems, and every fix does not require a migration (unlike what can occur in the community)
The Kogito community, as of now is by and large an IBM and Red Hat community - so product enhancements and asks will be directed through that channel for features. Customer Partnerships are essential to success!
Within Red Hat, the only way to utilize Red Hat Consulting was with enterprise software, not community with very few exceptions
Security and bug fixes are typically the biggest reason.
Remember Log4j back in December 2021
Avoids vendor lock-in – IBM must show value to customers to justify their continued purchase of support


References

IBM Expands Business Automation Portfolio with Open Source Process and Decision Automation
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/announcements/ibm-expands-business-automation-portfolio-with-open-source-process-and-decision-automation

Getting started with IBM Business Automation Manager Open Editions
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ibamoe?topic=getting-started-business-automation-manager-open-editions

IBM Business Automation Manager Open Editions 8.0 download document
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6596913

Deploying IBM Business Automation Manager Open Editions on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/ibm_business_automation_manager_open_editions/8.0/html/deploying_ibm_business_automation_manager_open_editions_on_red_hat_openshift_container_platform/index

Developing process services in IBM Business Automation Manager Open Editions
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/ibm_business_automation_manager_open_editions/8.0/html-single/developing_process_services_in_ibm_business_automation_manager_open_editions/index?_ga=2.175135970.1133731700.1663598949-1120342785.1663598949

My previous post for this topic 'Setup IBM Process Automation Manager Open Edition (PAM/DM) using docker images'
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/automation/blogs/marco-antonioni/2022/09/24/setup-ibm-process-automation-manager-open-edition




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