There are specific guides for deploying Mendix apps to the Pivotal Web Services and HP Helion Development Platform flavors of Cloud Foundry on our documentation page. This page will document the more low-level details and CLI instructions.

Install the Cloud Foundry command line executable. You can find this on the releases page. Set up the connection to your preferred Cloud Foundry environment with cf login and cf target.

We push an mda (Mendix Deployment Archive) that was built by the Mendix Business Modeler to Cloud Foundry.

cf push <YOUR_APP> -b https://github.com/mendix/cf-mendix-buildpack -p <YOUR_MDA>.mda

We can also push a project directory. This will move the build process (using mxbuild) to Cloud Foundry:

cd <PROJECT DIR>; cf push -b https://github.com/mendix/cf-mendix-buildpack

Note that building the project in Cloud Foundry takes more time and requires enough memory in the compile step.

The first push generates a new app, but deployment will fail because the buildpack requires an ADMIN_PASSWORD variable and a connected PostgreSQL or MySQL service. So go ahead and set this up after the first failed push.

Keep in mind that the admin password should comply with the policy you have set in the Modeler.

cf set-env <YOUR_APP> ADMIN_PASSWORD "<YOURSECRETPASSWORD>"

You also need to connect a PostgreSQL or MySQL instance which allows at least 5 connections to the database. Find out which services are available in your Cloud Foundry instance like this.

cf marketplace

In our trial we found the service elephantsql which offered the free turtle plan. All you need to do is give it a name and bind it to your application.

cf create-service elephantsql turtle <SERVICE_NAME>

cf bind-service <YOUR_APP> <SERVICE_NAME>

Note that not all database service set a DATABASE_URL value. If this is not done automatically you need to set this variable manually using the details included in the service, as the buildpack will look for this variable for the database connection string.

Now we need to push the application once more.

cf push <YOUR_APP> -b https://github.com/mendix/cf-mendix-buildpack -p <YOUR_MDA>.mda

You can now log in to your application with the specified password.

The default values for constants will be used as defined in your project. However, you can override them with environment variables. You need to replace the dot with an underscore and prefix it with MX_. So a constant like Module.Constant with value ABC123 could be set like this:

cf set-env <YOUR_APP> MX_Module_Constant "ABC123"

After changing environment variables you need to restart your app. A full push is not necessary.

cf restart <YOUR_APP>

The scheduled events can be configured using environment variable SCHEDULED_EVENTS.

Possible values are ALL, NONE or a comma separated list of the scheduled events that you would like to enable. For example: ModuleA.ScheduledEvent,ModuleB.OtherScheduledEvent

Mendix 5.15 and up can use external file stores with an S3 api. Use the following environment variables to enable this.

• S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID: credentials access key
• S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: credentials secret
• S3_BUCKET_NAME: bucket name

The following environment variables are optional:

• S3_PERFORM_DELETES: set to false to never delete items from the filestore. This is useful when you use the filestore without a backup mechanism.
• S3_KEY_SUFFIX: if your bucket is multi-tenant you can append a string after each object name, you can restrict IAM users to objects with this suffix.
• S3_ENDPOINT: for S3 itself this is not needed, for S3 compatible object stores set the domain on which the object store is available.
• S3_USE_V2_AUTH: use Signature Version 2 Signing Process, this is useful for connecting to S3 compatible object stores like Riak-CS, or Ceph.
• S3_ENCRYPTION_KEYS: a JSON string containing a list of keys which can be used to encrypt and decrypt data at rest in S3.
• S3_USE_SSE: if set to true this will enable Server Side Encryption in S3, available from Mendix 6.0

The default java heap size is set to the total available memory divided by two. If your application's memory limit is 1024M, the heap size is set to 512M. You might want to tweak this to your needs by using another environment variable in which case it is used directly.

cf set-env <YOUR_APP> HEAP_SIZE 512M

The default Java version is 7. If you want to run on Java 8, you can set the environment variable JAVA_VERSION to 8.

cf set-env <YOUR_APP> JAVA_VERSION 8

You can enable the Mendix Debugger by setting a DEBUGGER_PASSWORD environment variable. This will enable and open up the debugger for the lifetime of this process and is to be used with caution. The debugger is reachable on https://DOMAIN/debugger/. You can follow the second half of this How To to connect with the Mendix Business Modeler. To stop the debugger, unset the environment variable and restart the application.

Mendix apps in version 5.15 and up will automatically set JSESSIONID as the session cookie. In most Cloud Foundry configurations this will automatically enable session stickiness, which is required for running Mendix apps with more than one instance. For some distributions you might need to explicitly enable session stickiness in the HTTP router.

If you want to disable the session stickiness, you can set the environment variable DISABLE_STICKY_SESSIONS to true.

From Mendix 6 onwards it is possible to configure clustering support. With clustering support it is possible to run multiple instances of your application to achieve High Availability. Clustering support can be enabled by setting the environment variable CLUSTER_ENABLED to true.

To optimize performance it is possible to choose for REDIS as State Storage. To use that, add the RedisCloud service to your application and configure Mendix to use REDIS for State Storage by setting the environment variable CLUSTER_STATE_IMPLEMENTATION to redis. In case your selected REDIS service has limited connections available, configure the maximum amount of connections that REDIS can allocate per Mendix Business Server instance by setting the environment variable CLUSTER_STATE_REDIS_MAX_CONNECTIONS to the amount of connections available in your plan divided by the amount of instances you want to run.

NOTE: Clustering support is a BETA feature and as such not supported by Mendix for production usage. Settings and implementations may be changed in future releases!

NOTE: Enabling clustering support will automatically disable sticky sessions

If you are running Cloud Foundry without a connection to the Internet, you should specify an on-premises web server that hosts Mendix Runtime files and other buildpack resources. You can set the endpoint with the following environment variable:

BLOBSTORE: https://my-intranet-webserver.my-company.com/mendix/

The preferred way to set up this on-premises web server is as a transparant proxy to https://cdn.mendix.com/. This prevents manual work by system administrators every time a new Mendix version is released.

Alternatively you can make the required mendix runtime files mendix-VERSION.tar.gz available under BLOBSTORE/runtime/. You should also make the Java version available on /mx-buildpack/oracle-java8u45-jdk_8u45_amd64.deb available under BLOBSTORE/mx-buildpack/. The original files can be downloaded from https://cdn.mendix.com/.

To import Certificate Authorities (CAs) into the Java truststore, use the CERTIFICATE_AUTHORITIES environment variable.

The contents of this variable should be a concatenated string containing a the additional CAs in PEM format that are trusted. Example:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Please note, these are two internal Mendix CAs which you should not actually add to your trust store.

If you want to enable initializing your database and files from an existing data snapshot included in the MDA, set USE_DATA_SNAPSHOT to true.

Make sure your code complies with pep8 and that no pyflakes errors/warnings are present.

Rebase your git history in such a way that each commit makes one consistent change. Don't include separate "fixup" commits later on.