Prerequisites for deploying HCL Commerce Version 9.0 with Docker Compose

The following steps highlight the minimum requirements before deploying HCL Commerce with Docker Compose.

Before you begin

Ensure that you are deploying on a machine that is not running an existing HCL Commerce environment.
- For versions of HCL Commerce 9.1.0.0 to 9.1.12.0, Install Docker Version 19.03.8 or later.
Install Docker Compose Version 2.3 or later.
Ensure that you are installing a version of HCL Commerce Version 9.0 9.0.1.18 or greater. For previous versions of HCL Commerce Version 9.0, see Deploying HCL Commerce Version 9.0.0.0 to 9.0.1.17 authoring and live environments with Docker Compose (for non-production usage)
Ensure that your machine meets the minimum hardware requirements. The minimum requirements for deploying HCL Commerce Version 9.0 are 8 CPU cores, 16 GB of memory, and 50 GB free disk space.

Procedure

Obtain the HCL Commerce Docker images and DevOps assets.

You can obtain the HCL Commerce Docker images and the HCL Commerce Devops package from the HCL License and Delivery portal.

For up to date release information, see HCL Commerce eAssemblies.
Extract the Docker images required for your deployment and load them into a Docker Registry where you can access them.
For example, run the following for each required image file.
```
docker load -i imagename
```
An authoring environment database is required.
You can also set up a second database for your live environment, which is utilized in the following demo deployments.

To quickly get started, you can deploy two copies of the sample IBM Db2 Database Docker image. One for the authoring environment, and one for the live environment.

The HCL Commerce sample DB2 database Docker image, which has the default authoring environment schema and sample bootstrap data loaded, can be used to explore HCL Commerce features and functionality. Its use as a live database has performance implications, but will work for demonstration and testing purposes.

For more information about using the HCL Commerce sample DB2 database Docker image, see Using the preconfigured IBM Db2 Docker image.

It is strongly recommended, however, to set up your database on its own dedicated server so that you can persist data, and explore performance tuning. See Setup prerequisites for an HCL Commerce production environment for more information on the requirements for an HCL Commerce production environment.

For more information on setting up a database for your production environment, review the following options:
- Using an IBM Db2 database
- Using an Oracle database
Important: If you are using the provided IBM Db2 Database Docker image, you must change the price mode to ensure that the price data shows up as expected in an Aurora-based storefront. For more information, see Using the preconfigured IBM Db2 Docker image.
If you are using Oracle as your database, obtain the respective JDBC driver,  ojdbc8.jar.

Place the driver into the volumes/jdbc/ directory.
If you are using a fresh database, load your database with the appropriate environment schema.
For more information on loading environment-based schemas, see Loading the HCL Commerce database schema.

Results

You are now prepared to deploy a demo production environment with the Docker Compose deployment method.