You can simplify IT operations and automate system management tasks by deploying Pega Platform™ on Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) as a service broker. To deploy Pega Platform on PCF as a service broker, follow the instructions in this article to use the PCF Ops Manager to add the Pega Platform tile to your PCF environment. After you deploy the Pega service broker, application developers can use the Pega service broker to deploy Pega Platform clusters on PCF.

To have greater control over the deployment, use BOSH to deploy your Pega service broker. For more information, see Deploying Pega Platform on PCF using Ops Manager using BOSH.

To explore the latest information about the Cloud Choice deployment solution using Kubernetes across client-managed environments, see Cloud Choice.

Customization

You can customize Pega Platform deployment on Pivotal Cloud Foundry in the following ways:

• To streamline customization, Pega provides service plans that set the default number of web nodes, search nodes, and decisioning nodes. For more information, see Deploying Pega Platform as a Pivotal Cloud Foundry Service Broker.
• To customize your environment, use the PCF Ops Manager tool. The settings that you make in the PCF Ops Manager change the default settings in the service plans. For more information, see Configuring Pega Platform Service Plans.
• To create cluster-specific customizations, edit the custom_properties.json file. The values in this file override the settings in the PCF Ops Manager and service plan. When an array is included in the properties section of the file, the array overwrites the entire array that is defined in the manifest. The arrays are not merged. For more information, see Deploying Pega Platform clusters on Cloud Foundry.

Deploying Pega Platform clusters on Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Follow these general steps to deploy Pega Platform clusters on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. 

1. The system administrator creates the environment, edits the configuration files, and creates a service:

   1. Review the Pivotal documentation for Pivotal On-Demand Services SDK for background information.

   2. Prepare your environment. Obtain all the required files from Pega and Pivotal. For more information, see Preparing your environment.

   3. Use the PCF Ops Manager to customize your settings and to add the service plans to the CF marketplace. For more information, see Configuring Pega Platform Service Plans.

      If you do not customize the settings, the placeholder values in the service plans will override all other customization settings and your deployment will fail.

2. After the service is available, application developers can customize and deploy Pega Platform clusters. For more information, see Deploying Pega Platform clusters on Cloud Foundry.

Preparing your environment

Prepare for deployment by following these steps:

1. Download and extract the Pega Platform distribution file Pega-Service-PCF-Tile-Release-xxx.zip from Pega for Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

2. Configure a Pivotal Service Network. For more information, see the Pivotal documentation.

3. Review the Pivotal requirements: Operating an On-Demand Broker.

Configuring Pega Platform service plans

Use the PCF Ops Manager Installation Dashboard to configure the default settings for the service plans.

1. Add the Pega Platform tile to PCF to access the configuration interface:

   1. Log in to the PCF Ops Manager as an administrator.

   2. Open the Installation Dashboard and click Import a Product.

   3. Navigate to the Pega Platform tile. The title and version number of the tile are displayed on the left.

   4. Click the Plus icon to add the tile to the Installation Dashboard. The orange bar beneath the tile indicates that you must configure the tile before deploying Pega Platform.

2. In the Installation Dashboard, click the Pega Platform tile to open the configuration screen.

3. In the Assign AZs and Networks section, review the availability zones and networks. Follow the PCF documentation to set up your network. Click Save after you complete the screen.

4. Configure the global settings for all service instances in the Global Service Settings section.

   1. Enter the maximum number of service instances that can be deployed in the Service instance limit field.

   2. Optional: Configure the settings needed to download the Apache Tomcat tar file. 

   3. Optional: Configure the settings needed to download the JDK tar file.

   4. Optional: To configure the system to allow external connections to virtual machines, select Enable external connections for VMs.

5. Customize the service plan:

   1. Click the name of the service plan, Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced. If you plan to deploy the Pega Marketing application, you must use a DSM service plan. For more information about the required number of nodes, see the Pega Marketing Installation Guide and the DSM Operations Guide.

   2. Configure the service plan connection information. Use the screen text as a guide. The following table includes additional information for some complex fields. The default settings are included for PostgreSQL.

      Field name	Action
      Service plan name	A short name used to reference this service plan in Cloud Foundry CLI commands.
      Service plan description	A short description to help identify this service plan.
      Web archive locations	Optional: Enter the location and credentials used to retrieve web archives.
      JDBC driver location	Expand the current JAR file path to edit the path, or click Add to specify an additional JDBC driver. Enter the following values: JDBC Driver URI – Enter the URI source from which to download a JDBC driver over HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, or FTPS. Location Username and Location Password – Optional: If you are using basic authentication or FTP, enter a user name and password to download the JDBC driver.
      JDBC driver class	Enter the driver class for your database: IBM Db2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows – com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver Microsoft SQL Server – com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver Oracle – oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver PostgreSQL – org.postgresql.Driver
      JDBC URL	Optional: Enter the URL for the Pega Platform database: IBM Db2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows – jdbc:db2://host:port/dbname Microsoft SQL Server – jdbc:sqlserver://host:port;databaseName=dbName;selectMethod=cursor;sendStringParametersAsUnicode=false Oracle – Use either the service name or the SID: jdbc:oracle:thin:@host:port/service-name jdbc:oracle:thin:@host:port:SID ​PostgreSQL – jdbc:postgresql://host:port/dbname
      JDBC user name JDBC password	Optional: Enter the user name and password used to connect to the database.
      JDBC connection properties	Optional: Enter any custom connection properties in a semicolon-delimited list. For example: selectMethod=cursor;sendStringParametersAsUnicode=false
      Rules schema	Optional: Enter the name of your rules schema.
      Data schema	Optional: Enter the name of your data schema.
      Maximum total connections	Enter the number of total connections in the connection pool.
      Maximum idle connections	Enter the maximum number of idle connections in the connection pool.
      Maximum wait (ms)	Enter the number of milliseconds to wait for a database to become available.
      Additional datasource settings	Optional: Enter a space-delimited list of setting names and values in the format setting="value".
      Additional datasource configuration	Optional: Click Add to enter information about an additional datasource. If you plan to deploy Pega Marketing, add a datasource for ExternalMKTData named mktdatasource.
      JVM heap size (MB)	Enter the maximum JVM heap size. The recommended system heap size is 4096 MB - 8192 MB based on memory usage and garbage collection frequency.

   3. Configure the Pega Platform nodes for this service plan. The specific node names differ depending on your service plan. For each node type, complete the following fields.

      Field name	Action
      Node instances	Enter the number of Pega Platform nodes in this service plan. The minimum value is 1.
      Availability zones	Verify the availability zone for all Pega Platform nodes in this service plan.
      VM type	Enter the default Pega Platform node VM type. The VM type should have a minimum of 4 CPUs, 8 GB RAM, and 20 GB ephemeral disk space. The default setting for vSphere is xlarge; the valid settings depend on the infrastructure as a service (IaaS). For more information about valid settings, use the BOSH cloud-config command.

   4. For the Intermediate and Advanced plans, complete the following fields to configure the remaining nodes. 

      Field name	Action
      Node instances	Enter the number of the specific node type in this service plan. The minimum value is 1.
      Availability zones	Verify the availability zone for all of the specific node type in this service plan.
      VM type	Enter the node VM type. The VM type should have a minimum of 4 CPUs, 8 GB RAM, and 20 GB ephemeral disk space. The default setting for vSphere is xlarge; the valid settings depend on the IaaS. For more information about valid settings, use the BOSH cloud-config command.
      Persistent disk type	Enter the size of the persistent disk. The minimum is 5 GB.

   5. Click Save.

6. Repeat step 5 for all remaining service plans. You must edit all service plans.

7. Optional: Click Errands to view the default Pega Platform errands. As a best practice, do not edit the Errands settings.

   • Post-deploy errands:

     • Register Pega On Demand Service Broker registers the on-demand service broker with PCF.
     • Upgrade all Pega Platform service instances upgrades all existing Pega service instances.

   • Pre-delete errands:

     • Delete all Pega Platform service instances deletes the service instances.
     • Deregister the Pega Platform Service Broker unregisters the Pega Service Broker from PCF.

8. In the Resource Config section, review the Pega Platform Service Broker VM settings.

9. In the Stemcell section, click Import Stemcell and select the stemcell that you downloaded.

10. Click Installation Dashboard.

11. Click Apply Changes. The installation might take several minutes. Do not close the Installation Dashboard.

    If you see an error message, review the Apache Tomcat logs for troubleshooting information.
12. Optional: For more information about the installation, review the logs by clicking the following options:
    • Show verbose output
    • Installment issues
    • Change Log

          For more information about the logs, see Viewing log files in an external viewer.

Next step

After the service is available, customize and deploy Pega Platform clusters. For more information, see Deploying Pega Platform clusters on Cloud Foundry.