Introduction

Containerizing your software/applications is the new way of working. When developing in a bigger team it can be nice to perform a proof of concept on your own local machine using Docker when developing Boomi connections. This blog will explain how you can implement a Boomi Molecule within you local Docker environment. This tutorial creates the foundation for later tutorials that use Docker for other usecases in relation to middleware solutions like Boomi.

Implementation Steps

1. 1. Install Docker Desktop: For this tutorial you will install Docker Desktop on a Windows 11 machine using WSL 2 backend. You can follow the instruction from the official docker site HERE.
   2. Pull Boomi Molecule Docker Image: Pull the release version of the Docker Molecule Image to your machine. You can retrieve it here: https://hub.docker.com/r/boomi/molecule/tags. You have the option between Red Hat (RHEL) and Alpine Linux distribution.
   3. Get Molecule Token from your Boomi environment: Get a Boomi Molecule specific Boomi token from you Boomi atom management
   4. Run Image with Boomi configuration Replace below scripts variables with your specific variables.Find more information at https://hub.docker.com/r/boomi/molecule.

      docker run -p 9090:9090 -h <nodeId> -e BOOMI_TOKEN=<BoomiToken> -e BOOMI_ACCOUNTID=<accountId> -e BOOMI_ATOMNAME=<atomName> -e BOOMI_CLOUDID=<cloudId> -e ATOM_LOCALHOSTID=<nodeId> --name <atomName><nodeId> -v <hostDirectory>:/mnt/boomi:Z -d boomi/cloud:<version>

      You can now access your Boomi Molecule in the Boomi platform. You may want to consider using the following docker command to get the IP of the container running locally allowing you to use it behind the Boomi webserver:

docker inspect \ -f '{{range.NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' Molecule_Intersky

Validate the local runtime

First, open Atom Management and confirm that Boomi reports the Molecule as online. Next, inspect the container logs and verify that the runtime connects without token or account errors. Then, deploy a small test process and confirm that the local container handles the execution.

In addition, record the image version and the environment variables that you used. This makes the proof of concept repeatable. However, keep the local setup separate from production. Finally, use a pipeline, managed secrets and monitored infrastructure for the production runtime.