Yes - in two forms, with very different support statements:
- Supported: IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation / Business Automation Workflow on containers. Since 2019 (BAW 19.0.0.3 "Workflow Server on containers", then CP4BA 20.x+) IBM ships BAW as container images (Liberty based) for Red Hat OpenShift, installed and managed by the CP4BA operator with custom resources. This is the only container packaging IBM supports, and it needs OpenShift (or IBM's Workflow Process Service SaaS), not plain Docker.
- Not supported but possible: traditional BAW (WebSphere ND) inside a Docker image for a development sandbox - install WebSphere ND + BAW into an image with Installation Manager in silent mode, keep the profiles and the database (Db2 in another container) on volumes. It works for a single-server dev environment; IBM does not support the product in that packaging, and licensing counts the host's cores.
# CP4BA: the Workflow authoring environment is a custom resource, not a docker run
kind: ICP4ACluster
spec:
sc_deployment_patterns: workflow
sc_optional_components: baw_authoring,bai
workflow_authoring_configuration:
replicas: 1
database: { host: db2.example.com, name: BAWDB }Practical advice: for developers wanting a laptop environment, the traditional single-node install on a VM remains simpler than a hand-made Docker image; for anything shared or production, use CP4BA on OpenShift where images, upgrades and scaling are handled by the operator.
References