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Containerization requirements and limitations

This section describes the requirements to deploy the HCL Digital Experience 9.5 images to container platforms and current limitations.

Attention

Beginning with HCL Digital Experience 9.5 Container Update CF200, HCL has discontinued releasing the HCL Digital Experience (DX) Operator-based deployments and will provide support only for Helm-based deployments. There will be no further updates or code fixes provided for the Operator-based deployments. HCL requires all customers to migrate to Helm-based deployments for their DX installations. HCL will work with our customers as they transition from Operator-based to Helm-based deployments. For more information on the migration process, see Migrating from Operator-based to Helm-based deployments.

Consult the HCL Digital Experience 9.5 Support Statements on the HCL DX Support pages for the latest updates on supported platforms, components, and release levels.

Requirements for supported file systems

This section describes the requirements for supported file systems.

Requirements and limitations for Helm-based deployments

This section describes the requirements and limitations for HCL Digital Experience 9.5 Container Update CF200 and later deployments using Helm.

HCL DX 9.5 CF200 and later is designed to run on any certified Kubernetes platform (https://www.cncf.io/certification/software-conformance), provided that:

For the list of Kubernetes versions that are tested and supported by HCL, refer to the HCL DX supported hardware and software statements page.

Even though the platforms might be Certified Kubernetes platforms, you might find the environments varying slightly based on the vendors. HCL Support will make a reasonable effort to assist the customer in problem resolution in scenarios where the Kubernetes version is still under support by the vendor. If there are any unresolved issues, HCL Support will provide alternative implementation recommendations or open Feature Requests for the problem scenario.

Internally, HCL tests DX against a range of Kubernetes platforms that is regularly reviewed and updated. We do not test with every single platform vendor, but aim to cover a representative sample of popular Kubernetes implementations. See the HCL DX supported hardware and software statements on the HCL Support Knowledge Base for additional details.

To deploy HCL Digital Experience 9.5 CF200 to the supported Kubernetes platforms using Helm, the following are required:

  • Helm installation:

    Download and install Helm to your target environment. HCL DX 9.5 CF200 and later container deployment is tested and is supported with Helm v3. For more information regarding the supported Helm version for individual Kubernetes versions, refer Helm documentation.

  • Migration:

    For information about migrating from Operator-based to Helm-based deployments, see Migrating from Operator-based to Helm-based deployments.

  • Container platform capacity resource requirements:

The following table outlines the minimum possible amount of resource requests by the HCL DX 9.5 container components in Helm-based deployments and the minimum number of Pods required for each component.

If you want to use the minimal configuration, adjust the resource requests in your custom-values.yaml accordingly. If you want to deviate from these numbers, you can do so. Increasing any number is not an issue. In fact, in a production environment, it is recommended to increase these numbers to scale your specific needs. You can also decrease some of these numbers and still be able to start DX (for example, for deployment environments), but this is not officially supported.

All of the following CPU sizings relate to an environment with 2nd generation Intel Xeon scalable processors (Cascade Lake 8223CL) or 1st generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8000 series (Skylake 8124M) processors.

Note

Every Kubernetes node requires some headroom for Kubernetes-specific services. Ensure that your Kubernetes Node has enough capacity to host both the Kubernetes services as well as HCL DX. The overall requested amount of resources may vary based on disabled/enabled applications.

Pod name Minimum number of Pods Container Container Image Container CPU request and limit Container Memory request and limit
core 1 core core 4000m 4096Mi
system-out-log logging-sidecar 100m 64Mi
system-err-log logging-sidecar 100m 64Mi
prereqs-checker prereqs-checker 100m 64Mi
content-composer 1 content-composer content-composer 100m 128Mi
dam-plugin-google-vision 1 dam-plugin-google-vision dam-plugin-google-vision 100m 384Mi
dam-plugin-kaltura 1 dam-plugin-kaltura dam-plugin-kaltura 100m 128Mi
digital-asset-management 1 digital-asset-management digital-asset-manager 500m 1512Mi
prereqs-checker prereqs-checker 100m 64Mi
haproxy 1 haproxy haproxy 200m 300Mi
image-processor 1 image-processor image-processor 200m 2048Mi
license-manager 1 license-manager license-manager 100m 300Mi
open-ldap 1 ldap openldap 200m 768Mi
persistence-connection-pool 1 persistence-connection-pool persistence-connection-pool 500m 512Mi
persistence-node 1 persistence-node persistence-node 500m 1024Mi
persistence-metrics-exporter persistence-metrics-exporter 100m 128Mi
persistence-repmgr-log logging-sidecar 100m 64Mi
prereqs-checker prereqs-checker 100m 64Mi
remote-search 1 remote-search remote-search 250m 768Mi
system-out-log logging-sidecar 100m 64Mi
system-err-log logging-sidecar 100m 64Mi
prereqs-checker prereqs-checker 100m 64Mi
ring-api 1 ring-api ringapi 100m 256Mi
runtime-controller 1 runtime-controller runtime-controller 100m 256Mi
Overall 7950m 13184Mi

Note

Remember that the overall sums for CPU and memory include all components of HCL DX. In most cases, you will only want to deploy a subset of all components, therefore the minimal system requirements will decrease accordingly.