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Operaton Docker images

Use our GitHub issue tracker for bug reports or feature requests. For help requests, open a help request topic on the Operaton forum

This Operaton project provides docker images of the latest Operaton releases. The images can be used to demonstrate and test the Operaton or can be extended with own process applications. It is planned to provide images on the official docker registry for every upcoming release, which includes snapshot releases.

The Operaton Docker images are wrappers for the pre-packaged Operaton distributions. The pre-packaged distributions are intended for users who want a getting started experience. In case you want to use the Operaton Docker images in production, consider reading our security instructions.

Distributions

You can find more detailed documentation on the pre-packaged (community) distributions that Operaton provides at the following links:

Get started

To start a Docker container of the latest Operaton release:

docker pull operaton/operaton:latest
docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 operaton/operaton:latest

Tasklist, Cockpit, Admin web apps

The three Operaton web apps are accessible through the landing page: http://localhost:8080/operaton-welcome/index.html

The default credentials for admin access to the web apps is:

  • Username: demo
  • Password: demo

REST API

The Operaton REST API is accessible through: http://localhost:8080/engine-rest

See the REST API documentation for more details on how to use it.

Note: The REST API does not require authentication by default. Follow the instructions from the documentation to enable authentication for the REST API.

Supported tags/releases

Each distribution of Operaton - Self-Contained, Tomcat, and Wildfly - is published to its own Docker repository on Docker Hub. Below are the links to these repositories:

Tag Schema

Each of the repositories follows the tag schema below:

  • latest: Always points to the latest minor release of Operaton.
  • SNAPSHOT, ${VERSION}-SNAPSHOT: A nightly build of the latest or a specific revision of Operaton. These are not officially released versions.
  • ${VERSION}: A specific, officially released version of Operaton.

Operaton configuration

You can find the complete Operaton documentation at https://docs.operaton.org/.

If you prefer to start your Operaton Docker image right away, you will find the following links useful:

Operaton Docker image configuration

Configuration of the operaton distribution

Because operaton is a Spring Boot-based distribution, it can be configured through the respective environment variables. For example:

  • SPRING_DATASOURCE_DRIVER_CLASS_NAME the database driver class name, supported are h2 (default), mysql, and postgresql:
    • h2: DB_DRIVER=org.h2.Driver
    • mysql: DB_DRIVER=com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver
    • postgresql: DB_DRIVER=org.postgresql.Driver
  • SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL the database jdbc url
  • SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME the database username
  • SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD the database password

When not set or otherwise specified, the integrated H2 database is used.

Any other SPRING_* variables can be used to further configure the app. Alternatively, a default.yml file can be mounted to /operaton/configuration/default.yml. More information on configuring Spring Boot applications can be found in the Spring Boot documentation.

The following environment variables are supported for convenience and compatibility and are internally mapped to SPRING_DATASOURCE_* variables when provided:

  • DB_DRIVER
  • DB_USERNAME
  • DB_PASSWORD
  • DB_URL
  • DB_PASSWORD_FILE

The JMX_PROMETHEUS configuration is not supported, and while DEBUG can be used to enable debug output, it doesn't start a debug socket.

operaton supports different startup options to choose whether or not to enable the WebApps, the REST API or Swagger UI. By default, all three are enabled.

Passing startup parameters to enable them selectively can be done by passing any combination of --webapps, --rest or --swaggerui like in the following example:

Enable only web apps:

docker run operaton/operaton ./operaton.sh --webapps

Enable only REST API and Swagger UI:

docker run operaton/operaton ./operaton.sh --rest --swaggerui

Additionally, a --production parameter is supported to switch the configuration to /operaton/configuration/production.yml. This parameter also disables Swagger UI by default.

Java versions

Our docker images are using a LTS OpenJDK version supported by Operaton. This currently means:

  • Operaton 1.0 or later will be based on OpenJDK 17.

While all the OpenJDK versions supported by Operaton will work with the exceptions specified above, we will not provide ready to use images for them.

Java options

To override the default Java options the environment variable JAVA_OPTS can be set.

Use Docker Memory Limits

The Java JVM is container-aware by default, automatically adjusting to Docker container limits. Here's how to configure optimal memory settings for Operaton:

Recommended Memory Configuration

For most Operaton workloads, use these optimal settings:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
  --memory=2g \
  -e JAVA_OPTS="-XX:MaxRAMPercentage=70.0" \
  operaton/operaton:latest

This allocates about 1.4GB for the JVM heap, which provides sufficient memory for Operaton while leaving room for non-heap memory requirements (native memory, thread stacks, etc.).

For different workload sizes:

  • Light usage: 1GB container with 70% RAM allocation (~700MB heap)
  • Moderate usage: 2GB container with 70% RAM allocation (~1.4GB heap)
  • Heavy usage: 4GB container with 70% RAM allocation (~2.8GB heap)

Understanding JVM Container Behavior

Without explicit memory limits, the JVM assumes it can use all host resources:

  • The heap defaults to 25% of host system memory (often too small for Operaton)
  • Thread pools may scale to all available cores

For proper resource management, always specify container limits:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
  --memory=2g --cpus=2 \
  operaton/operaton:latest

Override CPU Core Detection

If needed, you can explicitly set how many CPU cores the JVM should assume using the -XX:ActiveProcessorCount flag:

-e JAVA_OPTS="-XX:ActiveProcessorCount=2"

This is useful in situations where container limits aren't accurately detected or you want to simulate a specific number of cores regardless of the environment.

Disable Container Awareness (Manual Tuning)

You can disable container support entirely and manage resources manually:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
  -e JAVA_OPTS="-XX:-UseContainerSupport -Xmx768m -Xms512m" \
  operaton/operaton:latest

Note on Container Platform Resource Management

In Kubernetes, resource limits are set in a Pod or container specification using the resources field, defining limits and requests for CPU and memory. In Podman, resource limits are configured using command-line flags like --memory, --cpus, and --cpu-shares when running containers. The JVM will automatically detect and adapt to these resource limits regardless of how they are configured in the container platform.

Inspecting JVM Configuration Parameters

To examine the actual JVM memory settings in use, you can display all configuration parameters when launching the container:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
  --memory=1g \
  -e JAVA_OPTS="-XX:+PrintFlagsFinal" \
  operaton/operaton:latest

Extract and analyze the memory configuration by filtering the container logs:

For Linux/macOS systems:

docker logs operaton | grep HeapSize

For Windows PowerShell:

docker logs operaton | Select-String "HeapSize"

For Windows Command Prompt:

docker logs operaton | findstr "HeapSize"

These commands filter for heap-related settings in the JVM configuration. You can also search for other important parameters:

# For thread pool settings (Linux/macOS)
docker logs operaton | grep "GCThreads\|ParallelGCThreads"

# For container detection (Linux/macOS)
docker logs operaton | grep "UseContainerSupport"

Database environment variables

The used database can be configured by providing the following environment variables:

  • DB_CONN_MAXACTIVE the maximum number of active connections (default: 20)
  • DB_CONN_MAXIDLE the maximum number of idle connections (default: 20)
    • ignored when app server = wildfly or run
  • DB_CONN_MINIDLE the minimum number of idle connections (default: 5)
  • DB_DRIVER the database driver class name, supported are h2, mysql, and postgresql:
    • h2: DB_DRIVER=org.h2.Driver
    • mysql: DB_DRIVER=com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver
    • postgresql: DB_DRIVER=org.postgresql.Driver
  • DB_URL the database jdbc url
  • DB_USERNAME the database username
  • DB_PASSWORD the database password
  • DB_VALIDATE_ON_BORROW validate database connections before they are used (default: false)
  • DB_VALIDATION_QUERY the query to execute to validate database connections (default: "SELECT 1")
  • DB_PASSWORD_FILE this supports Docker Secrets. Put here the path of the secret, e.g. /run/secrets/operaton_db_password. Make sure that DB_PASSWORD is not set when using this variable!
  • SKIP_DB_CONFIG skips the automated database configuration to use manual configuration
  • WAIT_FOR wait for a host:port to be available over TCP before starting. Check Waiting for database for details.
  • WAIT_FOR_TIMEOUT how long to wait for the service to be avaiable - defaults to 30 seconds. Check Waiting for database for details.

For example, to use a postgresql docker image as database you can start the as follows:

# start postgresql image with database and user configured
docker run -d --name postgresql ...

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 --link postgresql:db \
           -e DB_DRIVER=org.postgresql.Driver \
           -e DB_URL=jdbc:postgresql://db:5432/process-engine \
           -e DB_USERNAME=operaton \
           -e DB_PASSWORD=operaton \
           -e WAIT_FOR=db:5432 \
           operaton/operaton:latest

Another option is to save the database config to an environment file, i.e. db-env.txt:

DB_DRIVER=org.postgresql.Driver
DB_URL=jdbc:postgresql://db:5432/process-engine
DB_USERNAME=operaton
DB_PASSWORD=operaton
WAIT_FOR=db:5432

Use this file to start the container:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 --link postgresql:db \
           --env-file db-env.txt operaton/operaton:latest

The docker image already contains drivers for h2, mysql, and postgresql. If you want to use other databases, you have to add the driver to the container and configure the database settings manually by linking the configuration file into the container.

To skip the configuration of the database by the docker container and use your own configuration set the environment variable SKIP_DB_CONFIG to a non-empty value:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 -e SKIP_DB_CONFIG=true \
           operaton/operaton:latest

Waiting for database

Starting the Operaton Docker image requires the database to be already available. This is quite a challenge when the database and Operaton are both docker containers spawned simultaneously, for example, by docker compose or inside a Kubernetes Pod. To help with that, the Operaton Docker image includes wait-for-it.sh to allow the container to wait until a 'host:port' is ready. The mechanism can be configured by two environment variables:

  • WAIT_FOR_TIMEOUT: how long to wait for the service to be available in seconds
  • WAIT_FOR: the service host:port to wait for. You can provide multiple host-port pairs separated by a comma or an empty space (Example: "host1:port1 host2:port2"). The WAIT_FOR_TIMEOUT applies to each specified host, i.e. Operaton will wait for host1:port1 to become available and, if unavailable for the complete WAIT_FOR_TIMEOUT duration, will wait for host2:port2 for another WAIT_FOR_TIMEOUT period.

Example with a PostgreSQL container:

docker run -d --name postgresql ...

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 --link postgresql:db \
           -e DB_DRIVER=org.postgresql.Driver \
           -e DB_URL=jdbc:postgresql://db:5432/process-engine \
           -e DB_USERNAME=operaton \
           -e DB_PASSWORD=operaton \
           -e WAIT_FOR=db:5432 \
           -e WAIT_FOR_TIMEOUT=60 \
           operaton/operaton:latest

Volumes

Operaton is installed inside the /operaton directory. Which means the Apache Tomcat configuration files are inside the /operaton/conf/ directory and the deployments on Apache Tomcat are in /operaton/webapps/. The directory structure depends on the application server.

Debug

To enable JPDA inside the container, you can set the environment variable DEBUG=true on startup of the container. This will allow you to connect to the container on port 8000 to debug your application. This is only supported for wildfly and tomcat distributions.

Prometheus JMX Exporter

To enable Prometheus JMX Exporter inside the container, you can set the environment variable JMX_PROMETHEUS=true on startup of the container. This will allow you to get metrics in Prometheus format at <host>:9404/metrics. For configuring exporter you need attach your configuration as a container volume at /operaton/javaagent/prometheus-jmx.yml. This is only supported for wildfly and tomcat distributions.

Change timezone

To change the timezone of the docker container, you can set the environment variable TZ.

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
           -e TZ=Europe/Berlin \
          operaton/operaton:latest

Build

You can build a Docker image for a given Operaton version and distribution yourself.

Build a released version

To build a community image specify the DISTRO and VERSION build argument. Possible values for DISTRO are:

  • operaton
  • tomcat
  • wildfly

The VERSION argument is the Operaton version you want to build, i.e. 1.0.0.

docker build -t operaton \
  --build-arg DISTRO=${DISTRO} \
  --build-arg VERSION=${VERSION} \
  .

Build a SNAPSHOT version

Additionally, you can build SNAPSHOT versions for the upcoming releases by setting the SNAPSHOT build argument to true.

docker build -t operaton \
  --build-arg DISTRO=${DISTRO} \
  --build-arg VERSION=${VERSION} \
  --build-arg SNAPSHOT=true \
  .

Build when behind a proxy

You can pass the following arguments to set proxy settings to Maven:

  • MAVEN_PROXY_HOST
  • MAVEN_PROXY_PORT
  • MAVEN_PROXY_USER
  • MAVEN_PROXY_PASSWORD

Example for a released version of a community edition:

docker build -t operaton \
  --build-arg DISTRO=${DISTRO} \
  --build-arg VERSION=${VERSION} \
  --build-arg MAVEN_PROXY_HOST=${PROXY_HOST} \
  --build-arg MAVEN_PROXY_PORT=${PROXY_PORT} \
  --build-arg MAVEN_PROXY_USER=${PROXY_USER} \
  --build-arg MAVEN_PROXY_PASSWORD=${PROXY_PASSWORD} \
  .

Override MySQL and PostgreSQL driver versions.

By default, the driver versions are fetched from https://github.com/operaton/operaton/blob/master/database/pom.xml. That can be overriden by passing MYSQL_VERSION and POSTGRESQL_VERSION build args

docker build -t operaton \
  --build-arg DISTRO=${DISTRO} \
  --build-arg VERSION=${VERSION} \
  --build-arg POSTGRESQL_VERSION=${POSTGRESQL_VERSION} \
  --build-arg MYSQL_VERSION=${MYSQL_VERSION} \
  .

Use cases

Change configuration files

You can use docker volumes to link your own configuration files inside the container. For example, if you want to change the bpm.xml on Apache Tomcat:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
           -v $PWD/bpm.xml:/operaton/conf/bpm.xml \
           operaton/operaton:latest

Add own process application

If you want to add your own process application to the docker container, you can use Docker volumes. For example, if you want to deploy the twitter demo on Apache Tomcat:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
           -v /PATH/TO/DEMO/twitter.war:/operaton/webapps/twitter.war \
           operaton/operaton:latest

This also allows you to modify the app outside the container, and it will be redeployed.

Clean distro without web apps and examples

To remove all web apps and examples from the distro and only deploy your own applications or your own configured cockpit also use Docker volumes. You only have to overlay the deployment folder of the application server with a directory on your local machine. So in Apache Tomcat, you would mount a directory to /operaton/webapps/:

docker run -d --name operaton -p 8080:8080 \
           -v $PWD/webapps/:/operaton/webapps/ \
           operaton/operaton:latest

Extend Docker image

As we release these docker images on the official docker registry it is easy to create your own image. This way you can deploy your applications with docker or provided an own demo image. Just specify in the FROM clause which Operaton image you want to use as a base image:

FROM operaton/operaton:tomcat-latest

ADD my.war /operaton/webapps/my.war

Branching model

Branches and their roles in this repository:

  • next (default branch) is the branch where new features and bugfixes needed to support the current master of operaton-repo go.
  • 7.x branches get created from next when a Operaton minor version is released. They only receive backports of bugfixes when absolutely necessary.

License

Apache License, Version 2.0

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