Chapter 7. Installing and running the headless Process Automation Manager controller

You can configure Process Server to run in managed or unmanaged mode. If Process Server is unmanaged, you must manually create and maintain containers. If Process Server is managed, the Process Automation Manager controller manages the Process Server configuration and you interact with the controller to create and maintain containers.

The Process Automation Manager controller is integrated with Business Central. If you install Business Central, use the Execution Server page to create and maintain containers. However, if you do not install Business Central, you can install the headless Process Automation Manager controller and use the REST API or the Process Server Java Client API to interact with it.

7.1. Installing the headless Process Automation Manager controller

You can install the headless Process Automation Manager controller and use the REST API or the Process Server Java Client API to interact with it.

Prerequisites

  • A backed-up Red Hat JBoss EAP installation version 7.1 or higher is available. The base directory of the Red Hat JBoss EAP installation is referred to as EAP_HOME.
  • Sufficient user permissions to complete the installation are granted.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the Software Downloads page in the Red Hat Customer Portal (login required), and select the product and version from the drop-down options:

    • Product: Red Hat Process Automation Manager
    • Version: 7.0
  2. Download Red Hat Process Automation Manager 7.0.0 Add Ons (the rhpam-7.0.0-add-ons.zip file).
  3. Unzip the rhpam-7.0.0-add-ons.zip file. The rhpam-7.0-controller-ee7.zip file is in the unzipped directory.
  4. Extract the rhpam-7.0-controller-ee7 archive to a temporary directory. In the following examples this directory is called TEMP_DIR.

  5. Copy the TEMP_DIR/rhpam-7.0-controller-ee7/controller.war directory to EAP_HOME/standalone/deployments/.

    Warning

    Ensure that the names of the headless Process Automation Manager controller deployments you are copying do not conflict with your existing deployments in the Red Hat JBoss EAP instance.

  6. Copy the contents of the TEMP_DIR/rhpam-7.0-controller-ee7/SecurityPolicy/ directory to EAP_HOME/bin. When asked to overwrite files, select Yes.
  7. In the EAP_HOME/standalone/deployments/ directory, create an empty file named controller.war.dodeploy. This file ensures that the headless Process Automation Manager controller is automatically deployed when the server starts.

7.1.1. Creating a controller user

Before you can use the headless Process Automation Manager controller, you must create a user that has the kie-server role.

Prerequisite

The controller is installed in the base directory of the Red Hat JBoss EAP installation (EAP_HOME).

Procedure

  1. In a terminal application, navigate to the EAP_HOME/bin directory.

  2. Enter the following command and replace <USER_NAME> and <PASSWORD> with the user name and password of your choice. 

    $ ./add-user.sh -a --user <USER_NAME> --password <PASSWORD> --role kie-server
    Note

    Make sure that the specified user name is not the same as an existing user, role, or group. For example, do not create a user with the user name admin.

    The password must have at least eight characters and must contain at least one number and one non-alphanumeric character, but not & (ampersand).

  3. Make a note of your user name and password.

7.1.2. Configuring Process Server and the headless Process Automation Manager controller

If Process Server will be managed by the headless Process Automation Manager controller , you must edit the standalone-full.xml file in both the Process Server and headless Process Automation Manager controller installations, as described in this section.

Prerequisites

  • Process Server is installed in the base directory of the Red Hat JBoss EAP installation (EAP_HOME) as described in Chapter 5, Installing Red Hat Process Automation Manager from ZIP files section.

  • The controller is installed in an EAP_HOME.

    Note

    You should install Process Server and the headless Process Automation Manager controller on different servers in production environments. However, if you install Process Server and the headless Process Automation Manager controller on the same server, for example in a development environment, make these changes in the shared standalone-full.xml file.

  • On Process Server nodes, a user with the kie-server role exists.

  • On the controller server nodes, a user with the kie-server role exists.

    For more information, see Section 5.4, “Creating users”.

Procedure

  1. In the controller EAP_HOME/standalone/configuration/standalone-full.xml file, add the following properties to the <system-properties> section and replace <USERNAME> and <USER_PWD> with the credentials of a user with the kie-server role: 

       <property name="org.kie.server.user" value="<USERNAME>"/>
   <property name="org.kie.server.pwd" value="<USER_PWD>"/>

  2. In the Process Server EAP_HOME/standalone/configuration/standalone-full.xml file, add the following properties to the <system-properties> section: 

      <property name="org.kie.server.controller.user" value="<CONTROLLER_USER>"/>
  <property name="org.kie.server.controller.pwd" value="<CONTROLLER_PWD>"/>
  <property name="org.kie.server.id" value="<KIE_SERVER_ID>"/>
  <property name="org.kie.server.location" value="http://<HOST>:<PORT>/kie-server/services/rest/server"/>
  <property name="org.kie.server.controller" value="<CONTROLLER_URL>"/>

  3. In this file, replace the following values:

    • Replace <CONTROLLER_USER> and <CONTROLLER_PWD> with the credentials of a user with the kie-server role.
    • Replace <KIE_SERVER_ID> with the ID or name of the Process Server installation, for example, rhpam-7.0.0-process_server-1.
    • Replace <HOST> with the ID or name of the Process Server host, for example, localhost or 192.7.8.9.

    • Replace <PORT> with the port of the Process Server host, for example, 8080.

      Note

      The org.kie.server.location property specifies the location of Process Server.

    • Replace <CONTROLLER_URL> with the URL of the headless Process Automation Manager controller
  4. Process Server connects to this URL during startup.

7.2. Running the headless Process Automation Manager controller

After you have installed the headless Process Automation Manager controller on Red Hat JBoss EAP, use this procedure to run the headless Process Automation Manager controller.

Prerequisite

The headless Process Automation Manager controller is installed and configured in the base directory of the Red Hat JBoss EAP installation (EAP_HOME).

Procedure

  1. In a terminal application, navigate to EAP_HOME/bin.

  2. Enter the following command:

    • On Linux or UNIX-based systems: 

      $ ./standalone.sh

    • On Windows: 

      standalone.bat

  3. To verify that the controller is working on Red Hat JBoss EAP, enter the following command where <CONTROLLER> and <CONTROLLER_PWD> is the user name and password combination that you created in Section 7.1.1, “Creating a controller user”. The output of this command provides information about the Process Server instance. 

    curl -X GET "http://<HOST>:<PORT>/controller/rest/controller/management/servers" -H  "accept: application/xml" -u '<CONTROLLER>:<CONTROLLER_PWD>'
Note

Alternatively, you can use the Process Server Java API Client to access the headless Process Automation Manager controller.