Single node architecture and design

 New in 19.0.3  You can deploy IBM Business Automation Insights on a single node, instead of a Kubernetes cluster, in a production environment.

Architecture and design

When deployed to a single node, IBM Business Automation Insights is based on the same design and flow as presented in Architecture, Concepts, and Main steps of event processing for a Kubernetes installation, with the following specific points.
Deployment and use
  • IBM Business Automation Insights runs as Docker containers and operates on one computer without the need to configure a Kubernetes cluster. Events are processed as on a Kubernetes installation. All components run on the same computer as Docker containers.
  • It is suitable both for development and production environments.
  • For easier deployment and use, Elasticsearch and Kibana are bundled and automatically started. External installations of Elasticsearch and Kibana are not supported.
Security
  • Anonymization rules to secure sensitive data in HDFS are supported.
  • Communication between the containers is secured.
  • External communications for sending and receiving events, sending anonymization rules, and accessing Kibana dashboards are secured.
Visualization and data science applications
  • For output to visualization dashboards and data science applications, it can ingest BPMN (bpmn), BAW Adv (bawadv), Case Manager (icm), and decisions (odm) events only.
  • User authentication to HDFS is not supported.
For more information, see Known limitations and issues.
The diagram shows the architecture Business Automation Insights when installed in single node configuration

Installation

To deploy on a single node, download the .tgz archive from PPA. For step-by-step instructions, see Single node installation.

Capabilities

Note: Where no specific documentation is provided for single deployment features, the IBM Business Automation Insights specifics on Kubernetes documentation applies.
Command-line interface
Use the command line interface to start or stop IBM Business Automation Insights, and for other critical actions. For more information, see Command line interface for IBM Business Automation Insights on a single node.
Initialization
You can view the configuration from the .env file for possible modification. For more information, see List of environment variables.
Custom configuration
You can configure Open Distro for Elasticsearch security, Kibana multitenancy, Kafka server properties, and more. For more information, see Customizing your single node configuration.
Event emitter configuration
The supported event emitters require no specific configuration for a single node deployment, except the BPM emitter, which you configure slightly differently. For more information, see Configuring event emitters.
Troubleshooting
Use the container logs and the Flink web interface to identify and correct failures of the bai-start script while it is running or after it completes. For more information, see Troubleshooting IBM Business Automation Insights on a single node.