Red Hat Summit Red Hat SummitSupportConsoleDevelopersStart a trialContact

Chapter 1. Overview of Red Hat Process Automation Manager on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

If you have an OpenShift environment, you can deploy Red Hat Process Automation Manager into this environment.

In this solution, components of Red Hat Process Automation Manager are deployed as separate OpenShift pods. You can scale each of the pods up and down individually, providing as few or as many containers as necessary for a particular component. You can use standard OpenShift methods to manage the pods and balance the load.

The following key components are available as pods running in OpenShift:

  • Process Server, also known as Execution Server or KIE Server, is the infrastructure element that runs a process or a group of processes. All process logic runs on execution servers.

    A database server is normally required for Process Server. You can provide a database server in another OpenShift pod or configure an execution server on OpenShift to use any other database server. Alternatively, Process Server can use an H2 database; in this case, the pod cannot be scaled.

    You can freely scale up a Process Server pod, providing as many copies, running on the same host or different hosts, as necessary. As you scale a pod up or down, all its copies run the same processes and use the same database server. OpenShift provides load balancing and a request can be handled by any of the pods.

    To run a different set of processes, deploy a separate Process Server pod, which can also be scaled up or down. You can have as many separate replicated Process Server pods as necessary.

  • Business Central is a web-based interactive environment for authoring processes. It also provides a management and monitoring console. You can use Business Central to develop processes, deploy processes to Process Servers, and monitor the execution.

    Business Central is a centralized application. However, you can configure it for high availability, where multiple pods run and share the same data. (In the current version, the high-availability functionality is a technology preview).

    Business Central includes a Git repository that holds the source for the processes that you develop on it. It also includes a built-in Maven repository. Depending on configuration, Business Central can place the compiled processes (KJAR files) into the built-in Maven repository or (if configured) into an external Maven repository.

  • Business Central Monitoring is a web-based management and monitoring console. It can manage deployment of processes to Process Servers and provide monitoring information, but does not include authoring capabilities. You can use this component to manage staging and production environments.
  • Smart Router is an optional layer between Process Servers and other components that interact with them. It is required if you want Business Central or Business Central Monitoring to interact with several different Process Servers. Also, when your environment includes many processes running on different Process Servers, Smart Router provides a single endpoint to all client applications. A client application can make a REST API call requiring any process. Smart Router automatically determines which Process Server must be called for any particular request.

You can arrange these and other components into various environment configurations within OpenShift. You can use the templates provided with Red Hat Process Automation Manager to deploy the most common combinations.

The following environment types are typical:

  • Authoring: An environment for creating and modifying processes using Business Central. It consists of pods that provide Business Central for the authoring work and a Process Server for test execution of the processes. For instructions about deploying this environment, see Deploying a Red Hat Process Automation Manager authoring environment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
  • Managed deployment: An environment for running existing processes for staging and production purposes. This environment includes several groups of Process Server pods; you can deploy and undeploy processes on every such group and also scale the group up or down as necessary. Use Business Central Monitoring to deploy, run, and stop the processes and to monitor their execution. For instructions about deploying this environment, see Deploying a Red Hat Process Automation Manager managed server environment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
  • Deployment with immutable servers: An alternate environment for running existing processes for staging and production purposes. In this environment, when you deploy a Process Server pod, it builds an image that loads and starts a process or group of processes. You cannot stop any process on the pod or add any new process to the pod. If you want to use another version of a process or modify the configuration in any other way, you deploy a new server image and displace the old one. In this system, you can use typical container-based integration workflows and do not need to use any other tools to manage the pods. Optionally, you can use Business Central Monitoring to monitor the performance of the environment and to stop and restart some of the process instances, but not to deploy additional processes to any Process Server or undeploy any existing ones (you can not add or remove containers). For instructions about deploying this environment, see Deploying a Red Hat Process Automation Manager immutable server environment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

To deploy a Red Hat Process Automation Manager environment on OpenShift, you can use the templates that are provided with Red Hat Process Automation Manager. You can modify the templates to ensure that your environment suits your needs.

Back to top
Red Hat logoGithubredditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust. Explore our recent updates.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

Theme

© 2025 Red Hat