I this presentation I'm covering our learned lessons about running Pega in Kubernetes in Azure (AKS)

1. CatalinJora – 09/febr/2021
Lessons learned from
running Pega in Kubernetes

2. Who am I
2
Catalin Jora
• DevOps engineer inTribeWonen | SpecialAsset Management area
• Certified Kubernetes Admin *
• Docker community leader Netherlands
https://linkedin.com/in/jocatalin
https://twitter.com/jocatalin

3. Agenda
3
• Pega architecture in Kubernetes
• Lessons learned
• Provisioning
• Implementationdecisions
• Installationchoices
• App customizations(Docker &Config Maps)
• CI/CD
• Debugging

4. Why you should run Pega in K8s?
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Modern stack
Control over the entire lifecycle
Portability
Costs

5. Pega
Architecture
in K8s
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Source: https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/articles/client-managed-cloud/83/understanding-pega-deployment-architecture

6. On Provisioning
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Pre-requisites for running Pega in K8s:
• you need a K8s cluster

7. On Provisioning
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Pre-requisites for running Pega in K8s:
• you need a K8s cluster

8. On Provisioning
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Pre-requisites for running Pega in K8s:
• you need a K8s cluster (production ready)
• you need a (skilled)team that will manage the cluster(s)
• 2 - 3 engineer are needed to run a cluster that offers 24/7 SLA
• starting from scratch (what is Docker?) will take you +1 year to get to a production
ready cluster:
• level of automation
• implementation team skills (K8s, terraform, etc)

9. Implementation decisions to be made
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• container registry
• K8s implementation (managed or self-provisioned)
• proximity to DB
• ingress controller l traffic routing
• logging I monitoring
• secret management
• developer access

10. Installing Pega in K8s: how
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• Helm Chart :
https://github.com/pegasystems/pega-helm-charts
• Pega Docker images:
docker pull pega-docker.downloads.pega.com/platform/pega:<version>

11. Installing Pega in K8s: who
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• who will do the upgrade/install/deploy?
• How often?
• image vulnerabilities?
• what is their level of knowledge with K8s, Pega, helm, docker?

12. Installing Pega in K8s: how
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• Helm Chart :
https://github.com/pegasystems/pega-helm-charts
But is helm the right tool for this?
You can get the manifests out of the chart and deploy the yaml directly
(Kustomize)
Advantage: get rid of helm

13. On Database
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Are you also changing the database?
• NO:
• 1-on-1 migrationsis the simplestchoice(eg.Oracle-> Oracle, PostgreSQL ->
PostgreSQL)

14. On Database
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Are you also changing the database?
• YES
• You need to research the migrationtools
• Need to have peoplewho are familiarwith both DB's (source/target) and
businesslogic
• this can be a major pain
• live or offlinemigration

15. On customizing the Pega image
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• Docker image can be customized
• The base image is not open (Dockerfileis not available)
• Changes are applied in config maps objects

16. On customizing the Pega config maps
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• What can be changed in config maps:
• Prconfig.xml
• Context.xml
• Prlog4j2.xml
• Pega uses dockerize inside the image to inject real values at run time
into the templated files.
• In the docker entry point scriptonly the above filesare templated

17. On CI/CD
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• Azure DevOps Pipelines is logical choice for deployments to AKS
• There are predefinedtasks for deploymentsto k8s
• other tools will work as well (Jenkins, ArgoCD, Flux, etc)

18. On CI/CD
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19. On CI/CD
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• Changing a config map will not redeploy a pod in Kubernetes
• how to fix?
• redeploy when needed: Kubectl rollout restart
• helm annotationchecksum/config
• kind: Deployment
• spec:
• template:
• metadata:
• annotations:
• checksum/config: {{ include (print $.Template.BasePath
"/configmap.yaml") . | sha256sum }}
• [...]
•

20. Rollout strategies
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• rolling Updates:
• maxSurge: 25%
• maxUnavailability:25%

21. Speed up a
restart
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• tweak the
readiness probes

22. Debugging
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• based on developer access
• Kubectl + logs + MicrosoftCode(with K8s plugins)

23. Thanks
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• Learn K8s resources:
• https://www.katacoda.com/courses/kubernetes
• https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/
• Pega architecture for K8s: https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/articles/client-
managed-cloud/83/understanding-pega-deployment-architecture