Planning for a CP4BA Process Federation Server production deployment
Before you install Process Federation Server, it is important to understand what you need.
Required components

Components | Installed |
---|---|
Application Engine (AE) (data persistence optional) | Optional |
Resource Registry (RR) | Installed if Application Engine is selected. |
Default foundational services, which include
|
Always |
OpenSearch | Always |
Business Teams Service (BTS) | Optional |
IBM Business Automation Navigator | Optional |
System requirements
Process Federation Server containers are based on Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI), and are Red Hat and IBM certified. To use the image, the administrator must make sure that the target cluster on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform has the capacity for Process Federation Server. For more information about system requirements for the optional components and system considerations, see Multi-pattern system requirements.
The Detailed system requirements page provides a cluster requirements guideline for IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation.
- Hardware architecture: Intel (amd64 or x86_64 the 64-bit edition for Linux® x86) on all platforms, Linux on IBM Z, or Linux on Power.
- Node counts: Dual compute nodes for non-production and production clusters. A minimum of three nodes are needed for medium and large production environments and large test environments. Any cluster configuration needs to adapt to the size of the project and the workload that is expected.
Based on your cluster requirement, you can pick a deployment profile
(sc_deployment_profile_size) and enable it during installation. Cloud Pak for Business Automation provides
small
, medium
, and large
deployment profiles. You
can set the profile during installation, in an update, and during an upgrade.
small
. Before you install the
Cloud Pak, you can change the profile to medium
or large
. You can
scale up or down a profile anytime after installation. However, if you install with a
medium
profile and another Cloud Pak specifies a medium
or
large
profile then if you scale down to size small
, the profile
for the foundational services remains as it is. You can scale down the foundational services to
small
only if no other Cloud Pak specifies a medium
or
large
size.The following table describes each deployment profile.
Profile | Description | Scaling (per 8-hour day) | Minimum number of worker nodes |
---|---|---|---|
Small (no HA) | For environments that are used by 10 developers and 25 users. For environments that are used by a single department with a few users; useful for application development. |
|
8 |
Medium | For environments that are used by 20 developers and 125 users. For environments that are used by a single department and by limited users. |
|
16 |
Large | For environments that are used by 50 developers and 625 users. For environments that are shared by multiple departments and users. |
|
32 |
You can use custom resource templates to update the hardware requirements. The following tables provide the default resources for each profile size.
Operator | CPU Request (m) | CPU Limit (m) | Memory Request (Mi) | Memory Limit (Mi) | Number of replicas |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Process Federation Server operator | 100 | 500 | 20 | 1024 | 1 |
Cloud Pak for Business Automation | 500 | 1000 | 256 | 2048 | 1 |
Cloud Pak for Business Automation Foundation operator | 500 | 1000 | 256 | 2048 | 1 |
Component | CPU Request (m) | CPU Limit (m) | Memory Request (Mi) | Memory Limit (Mi) | Number of replicas | Pods are licensed for production/nonproduction |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Process Federation Service | 200 | 1000 | 512 | 1024 | 1 | No |
OpenSearch Service | 500 | 800 | 820 | 2048 | 1 | No |
Component | CPU Request (m) | CPU Limit (m) | Memory Request (Mi) | Memory Limit (Mi) | Number of replicas | Pods are licensed for production/nonproduction |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Process Federation Service | 200 | 1000 | 512 | 1024 | 2 | No |
OpenSearch Service | 500 | 1000 | 3512 | 5120 | 3 | No |
Component | CPU Request (m) | CPU Limit (m) | Memory Request (Mi) | Memory Limit (Mi) | Number of replicas | Pods are licensed for production/nonproduction |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Process Federation Service | 200 | 1000 | 750 | 1512 | 2 | No |
OpenSearch Service | 1000 | 2000 | 3512 | 5128 | 3 | No |
Job | CPU Request (m) | Memory Request (Mi) |
---|---|---|
pfs-ums-job | 200 | 256 |
workplace-job | 200 | 128 |
Storage considerations
To run stateful applications, you need to store the persistent data in a managed storage that is backed by some physical storage. Volumes allow a state to persist across pods.
The supported storage providers for a deployment of Process Federation Server include the IBM Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks. For more information, see Why IBM Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks.
The following table lists the capabilities and disk space requirements for production deployments. Ranges are for small to large environments.
The following table provides storage requirements for the required components. Kubernetes access modes include Read Write Once (RWO), Read Write Many (RWX), and Read Only Many (ROX).
Deployment | Storage type | Disk space | Access mode | Number of persistent volumes for non-HA/HA | Posix compliance |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Process Federation Service | File | 6 GB | RWO | 2 (output store, log store) | Posix compliance not needed |
Open Search Service (for Cloud Pak) | File | 155 GB | RWO for data store, RWX for snapshot store | 2 (data store, snapshot store) | Posix compliance not needed |
OpenSearch Service (for stand-alone Business Automation Workflow on containers) | File | 40 GB | RWO for data store, RWX for snapshot store | 2 (data store, snapshot store) | Posix compliance not needed |
For storage considerations for the optional components, see Storage considerations.