Overview of managing Flowable BPM in Kubernetes environments. Deploying at scale and with ease, using Helm charts provided by FLlowable.

1. tim@knowprocss.com
@tstephen10
Tim Stephenson
Flowable on Kubernetes

2. tim@knowprocss.com
@tstephen10
Tim Stephenson

3. tim@knowprocss.com
@tstephen10
Quick poll of audience
experience

4. CLI Cloud native ‘BIOS’

5. CLI Cloud native ‘BIOS’
Cloud native operating system

6. CLI Cloud native ‘BIOS’
Cloud native operating system
Cloud native package manager

7. Setup the published 6.4 Flowable open source
‘all-in-one’ container connected to a postgres
database
If you want to use separate containers, the
steps are the same, just more of them
Demo scenario

8. Here goes!

9. Existing state
Control machine
➔ doctl -
(DigitalOcean cli)
➔ kubectl
Pre-built K8S cluster
➔ 2 worker nodes
➔ Each
◆ 2 vCPU
◆ 4Gb RAM
In order to save some time in the demo I’ve pre-provisioned a K8S cluster on
DigitalOcean (it only takes 5 minutes but it would be a pretty boring 5
minutes.

10. Setup Tiller on cluster
# create the tiller service account
kubectl -n kube-system create serviceaccount tiller
# bind the tiller serviceaccount to the cluster-admin role
kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller --clusterrole
cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller
# init tiller on cluster
helm init --service-account tiller

11. Verify Tiller is running
kubectl get pods --namespace kube-system

12. Setup an ingress controller
# ingress defines port forwarding so the outside world can
communicate to the services within the cluster
helm install stable/nginx-ingress --name nginx-ingress
--set controller.publishService.enabled=true
# check ingress service (after a minute or so):
kubectl --namespace default get services -o wide -w
nginx-ingress-controller

13. Create DNS A record
This is the external IP address of the Ingress
Controller

14. Setup a database (postgres)
# here we’re putting the database inside the cluster. See
end for pros and cons of this
helm install stable/postgresql

15. Edit and apply config map
kubectl apply -f cfg/flowable-configmap.yaml

16. Check we’re on track

17. Apply ‘all-in-one’ container deployment

18. Apply ‘all-in-one’ service

19. Apply ‘all-in-one’ ingress

20. Progress check
Database, Ingress and Flowable all up now

21. Let’s take it for a spin

22. Let’s take it for a spin

23. Summary of part 1
● Establishing an auto-scaling, resilient K8S
cluster is trivial with today’s cloud hosting
● Installing a functioning Flowable instance
requires:
○ a handful of YAML files
○ a very few kubectl and helm commands

24. tim@knowprocss.com
@tstephen10
But wait there’s more
Coming in 6.5...

25. ● Charts: encapsulate the YAML files and
permit many configurations via variables
● Repositories: a public URL where
snapshot and stable charts are published
● Release: Each time a new chart or chart
version is deployed it is captured allowing
reliable rollback and roll-forward
operations
● Tiller: Installed on the K8S cluster to
facilitate Helm client Going away in v3!
Helm terminology

26. Thanks Yvo!
Flowable 6.5 snapshot chart
available at
http://flowable.org/helm

27. Key findings
● Compared to previously non-containerised
deployment:
○ Comparable time though extra steps involved
■ Still fully automated
■ Dominant time is flowable start-up but by including
health check the server won’t switch the new service
into service while that happens
○ Trivial rollback = less nail-biting!

28. Key findings
● Jury still out on:
○ Treating database as part of process engine (same
chart)
■ nice to have the option for experimentation but a
K8S-external database seems more appropriate for
production
○ K8S namespaces for multi-tenancy offer greater
isolation
■ Currently still using Flowable tenant concept

29. tim@knowprocss.com
@tstephen10
… thank you!
Questions...