Camunda 8 recommendations on Centralized or federated deployment

Camunda 8 Topics
1

Hi Team,

By using Camunda 8 on one of the cloud platform like Azure cloud, we need to deploy and execute different process applications under same organization but each process application belongs to different business UNIT.

which of below approach is Camunda 8 best practice/ recommended approach in terms of Identity & Access , Scale , secure , performance considerations.

Centralized or federated deployment .

If it is federated - is one Keycloak component can handle multiple other C8 components like Operate, task list, Identity, Optimize .

If it is Centralized - is one Keycloak component can handle multiple other C8 components like Operate, task list, Identity, Optimize

Please explain in detail of above,

Thanks in advance…

Thanks
Ramesh

2

@Niall ,

In Camunda 8 , if we cretae separate cluster for each department means that each department has separate Zeebe engine. then how keycloak will connect separate federated Zeebe engines.

Please share your thoughts or recommendations on this.

Thanks in advance.

Thaks
Ramesh Reddy Bolla

3

@Niall , @Daniel_Perilla

Please suggest on Camunda Platform Forum

Camunda 8 recommendations on Centralized or federated deployment

4

Ramesh, I don’t know why you tagged me, but I would say that it depens on the different process applicaitons being deployed.

If the processes are codependent then I would say that centralization is better, if they are not I would say that having them in a federal system is better.

In the case there is a combination of both, I would lean toward the centralization scheme.

Greetings

5

Hi @Ramesh_Reddy_Bolla

It depends.

What does it depend on? That’s what consultants get paid for, and how people write conference talks after doing it in production.

At a minimum, it will depend on the load. Complexity of deployment goes up with federated. Is it worth the additional complexity?

This is basically the microservices problem again: you move some of the system complexity into deployment.

It also depends on your human resources.

Given that you are asking the question (so I’m guessing that C8 expertise is a scarce resource), I would start with centralized and move to federated if you find that your scale is too large.

That way you start with one solution to your problem. You solve that solution, and if you find you have a problem with it, then solve that.

Otherwise you are trying to solve a problem that you are not sure you have using a solution that you are not familiar with.

Of course, if the problem that you are trying to solve is “my boss wants a white paper on the best architecture to use for this system”, then you need a crystal ball, a Camunda consultant, or to do a bunch of experiments to understand the complexity of the deployment and the resources required to do it, and the kinds of loads that you will be putting on the system.

For the experiments, you make a centralised system, with some mock services and bpmn; and you make a federated system, with the same. You have to get the expertise to answer the question somehow. Either by paying a consultant, or basically becoming an amateur one - for at least this aspect.

TLDR: its complicated.

Others may have production experience / war stories that they can share in this thread. That’s my contribution. Hope this helps, and good luck!

Josh