Building and deploying custom Docker images to your HCL Commerce Version 9 production environment

The updated model for building and deploying to your production environment involves the creation and deployment of custom Docker containers that contain the various components of your HCL Commerce production environment. Once created, deploy the containers into your production environment to stand up your live HCL Commerce Version 9 site.

About this task

With HCL Commerce Version 9, you can customize HCL Commerce Docker images with the source code, configurations, and Docker container startup logic. Learn how to build Docker images with your customized code, and then deploy the images to your Docker containers.

Custom images can be built for the following:
  • ts-app – the Transaction server Docker container. Build the Transaction server application, with any migrated custom local Aurora-based stores.
  • search-app – the Search server Docker container. Build the Search server application with any custom search logic.
  • xc – the Customization server Docker container. Build the Customization server with any xC logic extensions.
  • ts-web – the Web server Docker container. Build the Web server with static assets from your custom local Aurora-based store.

Procedure

  1. Build your custom Docker images.
  2. Deploy your custom database assets to an environment.
    For more information, see Deploying custom database assets to an environment for deploying database assets to an environment.
    Note:
    • If you customize or change your HCL Commerce database, you must package and deploy the modified assets.
    • Deploying your database assets can involve various schema changes and access control policies.
    • Use the HCL Commerce loading utilities to load any modified assets, if any.
  3. Deploy your custom Docker images.
    For more information, see Deploying updated Docker images with Docker Compose (for non-production usage) to deploy updated custom Docker images.
    Note: Within the ports section of your docker-compose.yml configuration file, add port 443:443 for ts-web so that the local store can be accessed through the web server.
  4. Start your custom Docker images.

What to do next

  • Build the search index. For more information, see Building the HCL Commerce Search index.
  • Verify your production environment. This is the next topic, and final step, in the production environment migration flow.
  • If you are using the product variant feature in HCL Commerce Version 9, you must load additional data into the DISPENTREL table. For more information on enabling this feature on your storefront, see Displaying product variants in the storefront.