Overview

Discover how to effectively manage globally-distributed applications with Pega Deployment Manager.

This webinar explored best practices for deploying applications across multiple projects and teams located in different regions. Participants learned how to establish efficient Routes to Live (RTL) that enable seamless deployment of reusable applications across various environments. Our experts demonstrated how to overcome common challenges in global deployments and shared strategies for maintaining consistency across distributed teams.

Below are the questions and answers from the webinar, organized by topic.

Cloud 2 and Cloud 3 Differences

Q: Is Route to Live only available in Cloud 3, and do we need to move all current VPC DevOps environments to manage from one RTL environment?

A: The Deployment Manager service is exclusively available for Pega Cloud v3 environments. If clients currently using dedicated Deployment Manager instances choose to migrate to the Deployment Manager service, they should use a single Deployment Manager service URL for all projects within the same geographical region.

Q: What are the prerequisites for using the feature to deploy reusable applications across RTLs?

A: The following conditions are required:

• Your RTLs must be on the latest version of Pega Cloud v3
• You must use Deployment Manager service
• Your RTL environments must have PegaDevOpsFoundation application, version 6.3 or higher

Q: Is Global Deployment available on Pega Cloud 2?

A: No, to use Deployment Manager Service with Global Deployment feature, client environments must be migrated to Cloud 3.

Q: Which access group can be used to access Deployment Manager in Cloud 3.0?

A: You need to use Pega Community credentials to log in to the Deployment Manager service.

PDM 5 to 6 Migration

Q: What version of Deployment Manager are you using for demo?

A: Deployment Manager 6.

Q: Is Global Deployment feature released?

A: Yes, Global Deployment is already available on the Deployment Manager service.

Q: Is Deployment Manager a separate service from the existing deployment manager? How do I request it?

A: On Pega Cloud 3, all environments are onboarded to Deployment Manager service. No explicit request is required.

Q: When moving to Deployment Manager as RTL, we need to migrate all pipelines into the RTL environment. Currently, we manage 100+ pipelines, and managing with the current UI will be difficult. Any improvements planned?

A: In the second half of 2025 (H2'25), we plan to release enhancements aimed at improving the homepage experience in Deployment Manager Service.

Global Deployments

Q: How different is this from the common deployment pipelines? Can we still create pipelines from one instance to another instance?

A: This doesn't change the normal pipelines functionality.

Q: How can I control when a microservice change is deployed to prevent the consuming application pipeline from triggering automatically?

A: As shown in the demo, automatic deployment can be configured only if required. Otherwise, you can trigger deployments manually.

Q: Is it important to deploy shared applications before consumer applications, or can it be done vice versa?

A: That's correct - you must deploy dependencies first.

Q: For multiple deployments of shared applications, is there a way to deploy only the latest version rather than all incremental updates?

A: No, this feature is not currently available. Instead, don't enable automatic deployments; manually select and trigger deployment for specific artifacts using the deploy artifact pipeline.

Pipelines Configuration

Q: Can we use PDM pipelines to deploy products, for example, to move reference data or multiple products of this type (like Admin Data, access groups, service packages)?

A: Yes, we can set up multiple pipelines for different purposes - rules, reference data, admin configurations, etc. It's all based on the product rule definition behind the pipeline.

Q: Is the Deploy Artifact action from the Environment in PDM Service a good way to deploy Products containing Reference Data?

A: Not really. It's better to use the normal deployment pipeline.

Q: After deployment, is there an option to revert back the deployment?

A: Yes, rollback is supported using application restore points. You can do this in the context of an active deployment or for an environment with completed deployments.

Q: Is it possible to have organization-wide pipeline templates? As a COE team, we'd like to enforce certain standards across all Pega apps in our organization.

A: Not fully. COE can create a "template" pipeline that teams can copy and adjust, but there's currently no feature to prevent teams from making changes (if they have the necessary privileges).

Q: What is the best way to load a product into the Pega Cloud Repository? Is using the Repository API the right approach?

A: Yes, using the Repository API is the right way.

PDM Roadmap

Q: Managing multiple pipelines can be challenging. Are there plans to improve the Deployment Manager Pipelines UI for better visibility?

A: In the second half of 2025 (H2'25), we plan to release enhancements aimed at improving the homepage experience in Deployment Manager Service.

Q: Are there plans to integrate with Azure DevOps test plans to trigger automation test suites directly from Pega Deployment Manager pipelines?

A: This is already available: https://docs.pega.com/bundle/deployment-manager/page/deployment-manager/dm/run-pipeline-azure-devops-task.html

Q: Is there integration with Azure DevOps to trigger automation pipelines with callbacks to PDM?

A: Yes, this is already available: https://docs.pega.com/bundle/deployment-manager/page/deployment-manager/dm/run-pipeline-azure-devops-task.html

Q: Is the Azure DevOps pipeline task only available for Pega Cloud deployments, or can it be used with customer cloud deployments of Pega Deployment Manager?

A: It's also available in the latest 5.6.x Patch-Release.

Q: Is there any out-of-the-box setup for automatically archiving Deployment History?

A: The Product team has roadmap items to archive deployment history. Currently, 365-day-old resolved deployments and task history will be purged.

Q: Will all these features be part of Deployment Manager as a service, or will they be available in the existing Deployment Manager through an upgrade?

A: The Global Deployment feature will only be available on the Deployment Manager service.

We hope this Q&A helps you better understand Global Deployments with Pega Deployment Manager. If you have additional questions, please post them in the comments section below.