About the Cloud Deployment Model

The ForgeRock Cloud Deployment Team has developed Docker images, Kustomize bases and overlays, Skaffold workflows, shell scripts, and other artifacts expressly to build the Cloud Deployment Model (CDM). The forgeops repository on GitHub contains the CDM artifacts you can use to deploy the ForgeRock Identity Platform in a cloud environment.

The CDM is a reference implementation for ForgeRock cloud deployments. You can get a sample ForgeRock Identity Platform deployment up and running in the cloud quickly using the CDM. After deploying the CDM, you can use it to explore how you might configure your Kubernetes cluster before you deploy the platform in production.

The CDM is a robust sample deployment for demonstration and exploration purposes only. It is not a production deployment.

This documentation describes how to use the CDM to stand up a Kubernetes cluster in the cloud that runs the ForgeRock Identity Platform, and then access the platform’s GUIs and REST APIs. When you’re done, you can use the CDM to explore deployment customizations.

Standing up a Kubernetes cluster and deploying the platform using the CDM is an activity you might want to perform as a learning and exploration exercise before you put together a project plan for deploying the platform in production. To better understand how this activity fits in to the overall deployment process, see Deploy the CDM.

Using the CDM artifacts and this documentation, you can quickly get the ForgeRock Identity Platform running in a Kubernetes cloud environment. You deploy the CDM to begin to familiarize yourself with some of the steps you’ll need to perform when deploying the platform in the cloud for production use. These steps include creating a cluster suitable for deploying the ForgeRock Identity Platform, installing the platform, and accessing its UIs and APIs.

Standardizes the process. The ForgeRock Cloud Deployment Team’s mission is to standardize a process for deploying ForgeRock Identity Platform natively in the cloud. The Team is made up of technical consultants and cloud software developers. We’ve had numerous interactions with ForgeRock customers, and discussed common deployment issues. Based on our interactions, we standardized on Kubernetes as the cloud platform, and we developed the CDM artifacts to make deployment of the platform easier in the cloud.

Simplifies baseline deployment. We then developed artifacts—Dockerfiles, Kustomize bases and overlays, Skaffold workflows, and shell scripts—to simplify the deployment process. We deployed small-sized, medium-sized, and large-sized production-quality Kubernetes clusters, and kept them up and running 24x7. We conducted continuous integration and continuous deployment as we added new capabilities and fixed problems in the system. We maintained, benchmarked, and tuned the system for optimized performance. Most importantly, we documented the process so you could replicate it.

Eliminates guesswork. If you use our CDM artifacts and follow the instructions in this documentation without deviation, you can successfully deploy the ForgeRock Identity Platform in the cloud. The CDM takes the guesswork out of setting up a cloud environment. It bypasses the deploy-test-integrate-test-repeat cycle many customers struggle through when spinning up the ForgeRock Identity Platform in the cloud for the first time.

Prepares you to deploy in production. After you’ve deployed the CDM, you’ll be ready to start working with experts on deploying in production. We strongly recommend that you engage a ForgeRock technical consultant or partner to assist you with deploying the platform in production.