Static Content Service (Constellation Pega UI) Concerns with Pega 8.8 and Beyond
I noticed that Infinity 8.8 Constellation UI requires the deployment of a "Static Content Service" (aka "App Static Content Service" or "ASCS").
If you don't have it, Pega will give you an error like "Your static content service is configured but currently not reachable.".
Upon investigation, I found the following documentation: https://documents.constellation.pega.io/static/88/introduction.html
There is also a data flow diagram that I refer to - I added the numbered markers:
I am looking at this from the perspective of mostly on-prem / private cloud customers in Europe.
So far these are not urgent issues as many existing applications still use the Pega UI Kit. However, it may quickly become important, either because Pega uses more Constellation UI internally (Dev Studio, App Studio, Admin Studio) or because new applications are built on top of the new UI.
My questions and concerns:
(1) Does Pega plan to use Constellation UI in any of the standard platform portals (like Dev Studio, App Studio, Admin Studio, Deployment Manager...) anytime soon - or will this only affect customer ressources? Is there a public roadmap and where can I find it?
(2) While one installation of ASCS per organization sounds nice in theory:
I noticed that Infinity 8.8 Constellation UI requires the deployment of a "Static Content Service" (aka "App Static Content Service" or "ASCS").
If you don't have it, Pega will give you an error like "Your static content service is configured but currently not reachable.".
Upon investigation, I found the following documentation: https://documents.constellation.pega.io/static/88/introduction.html
There is also a data flow diagram that I refer to - I added the numbered markers:
I am looking at this from the perspective of mostly on-prem / private cloud customers in Europe.
So far these are not urgent issues as many existing applications still use the Pega UI Kit. However, it may quickly become important, either because Pega uses more Constellation UI internally (Dev Studio, App Studio, Admin Studio) or because new applications are built on top of the new UI.
My questions and concerns:
(1) Does Pega plan to use Constellation UI in any of the standard platform portals (like Dev Studio, App Studio, Admin Studio, Deployment Manager...) anytime soon - or will this only affect customer ressources? Is there a public roadmap and where can I find it?
(2) While one installation of ASCS per organization sounds nice in theory:
a) Can we have multiple systems connect to the same ASCS - even if there is a version mismatch between them?We have 40+ different systems, upgrade cycles will not be synchronous.
b) How can we make the ASCS highly available? We don't want another single point of failure.
c) I think we need to put extra effort into applications that are exposed to the Internet vs. those that are only accessible on the intranet. Would you recommend to have at least two ASCSs in this scenario? One could be in a secure network zone accessible from the Internet while another serves intranet-clients.
(3) The diagram suggests that some Pega static content is downloaded directly from a Pega CDN. Can this be avoided altogether? Concerns:
a) The Pega CDN may not be accessible from intranet clients at all times. Proxy, firewall and DNS addressing pose additional challenges.
b) Changes to static resources on Pega CDN could impact our applications. What is the policy for changes, versioning, release notes etc.?
c) Downloading resources directly from a CDN outside of Europe could cause GDPR issues. As an example of this, in Germany, there have been several lawsuits over downloading Google fonts without first getting permission from the user.
I am looking forward to your explanations and recommendations. Thank you.
***Edited by Moderator Rupashree to add Capability tags***
Pegasystems Inc.
US
Hi,
You can install as many instances of App-Static as you wish, they are referenced by url from each Infinity cluster. We do not recommend that. To minimise cost and avoid operational errors, 1 install is recommended. App-Static is independent of Infinity versioning, and a single App-Static can support all Infinity versions running Constellation. All of Pega production apps (this is what the company runs on) use a single App-Static deployment. For HA, you can install App-Static in a K8s cluster and run 2 instances. We did this initially. As App-Static is very simple, it is very reliable, and has never failed in several years. As the startup time is <200ms and it is stateless, we cut to a single instance for ease of operations and monitoring.
For customers with particular security concerns, the PegaCDN is available as a docker image to be installed in a network as a simple service.
Updated: 5 Oct 2023 7:13 EDT
W & W Informatik GmbH
DE
Hi Nigel @johnn,
Thanks for your concise response. We will look at the deployment model and decide what works for us.
Where can we find the PegaCDN docker image?
In another question (https://support.pega.com/question/there-docker-image-pega-js-static-content-which-currently-referred-pega-cdn) it was stated that it does not exist (yet)?
Thank you.
Malte
Pegasystems Inc.
US
Hi @MalteR,
For customers who have severe restrictions on internet access, a service that mimics the CDN(https://release.constellation.pega.io/) can be installed via https://documents.constellation.pega.io/static/88/nginx-cdn.html .
WellsFargo
US
@parmn @johnn I have similar concerns about CDN, with regards to security. Does this mean that both at run time and design time the pega CDN is constantly access to download JS required to render a screen?
Is this like a REST service call made to a PEGA hosted service ? Does it just return the JS components or more?
can you please clarify?
Pegasystems Inc.
GB
@Gowri Deivaraju @Anoop Krishna
Please could you take a look at the question Constellation - CDN call to see if this answers your questions?
Bits in Glass
IN
@NigelJohnson constellation app static service and pega CDN are having same js pega ootb components stored inside?
Pegasystems Inc.
US
Hi,
Use of additional services only applies if you are using Constellation UI. If you are not developing ConstellationUI you will not get Constellaiton errors and you will not need to install the Constellation services. To ease the installation, for ConstellationUI applications that do not include any customer authored UI assets (Custom Components, UI images, localisation files), you do not need to install App-Static. Just set the PegaStatic DSS to https://release.constellation.pega.io, and you are done.
1. Currently non of the Infinity development portals are Constellation based and no changes are planned.
2.
a. We run ALL of Pega internal systems and production applications on a single install of App-Static. These are production systems for AS and SA supporting all company wide engineering, product and sales. All Infinity development teams also use the same instance. This spans all all Infinity versions from 8.8 up. We have a separate instance that supports all test environments and during a busy week, up to 10000 Infinity environments use that instance. 40 is not a problem.
b. For HA, run a 2 pod deployment, or 2 docker container system using ALB for distribution. We run 2 pods and have never had an outage.
c. Separation of systems for external and internal is what we do.
3.
Hi,
Use of additional services only applies if you are using Constellation UI. If you are not developing ConstellationUI you will not get Constellaiton errors and you will not need to install the Constellation services. To ease the installation, for ConstellationUI applications that do not include any customer authored UI assets (Custom Components, UI images, localisation files), you do not need to install App-Static. Just set the PegaStatic DSS to https://release.constellation.pega.io, and you are done.
1. Currently non of the Infinity development portals are Constellation based and no changes are planned.
2.
a. We run ALL of Pega internal systems and production applications on a single install of App-Static. These are production systems for AS and SA supporting all company wide engineering, product and sales. All Infinity development teams also use the same instance. This spans all all Infinity versions from 8.8 up. We have a separate instance that supports all test environments and during a busy week, up to 10000 Infinity environments use that instance. 40 is not a problem.
b. For HA, run a 2 pod deployment, or 2 docker container system using ALB for distribution. We run 2 pods and have never had an outage.
c. Separation of systems for external and internal is what we do.
3.
a. We deliver the Pega authored client side content over a CDN as that is most effective for the customer and for us. It is cached world wide, giving fast browser upload everywhere. It is much lower cost. As documented an install is available, customers take the additional install, update and maintenance costs.
b. GA code is never touched once released. Hotfixes are delivered only to the customer raising the INC on a customer INC specific url.
c. You should put App-Static that hosts customer owned static UI assets in the same region as your Infinity. Our CDN content is regionally cached also.
Thanks
Nigel