Overview
From IM 8.0, PIM instances are deployed through ArgoCD — see PIM Deployment 2.0 (ArgoCD). Part of this change is the latest infrastructure model: the deployment infrastructure your instance runs on always follows the latest infrastructure version, instead of a version pinned at the time the instance was created.
This page explains what that means and what changes for you. The short version: your instance now receives infrastructure security patches and fixes automatically, and we commit to introducing no breaking changes for existing instances.
How it worked before
Up to IM 7.x, the .gitlab-ci.yml in your PIM repository referenced a pinned infrastructure version:
include:
- file:
- im-lifecycle-gitlab-ci.yml
project: integration-k8s/deployment/gitlab-ci-templates
ref: <pinned infrastructure version>
The ref pointed to one infrastructure version, frozen at a point in time — and it was never updated afterwards. It is true that nothing ever changed: the deployment of your instance stayed exactly as it was on the day it was created.
That stability came at a price. A pinned, never-updated infrastructure is a security risk: no dependency updates and no fixes ever reached it. There was no practical way to patch the infrastructure of the many Integration Manager instances deployed months or years ago.
What changes with the latest infrastructure model
From IM 8.0, the infrastructure reference follows the latest version (ref: main), and the ArgoCD deployment always renders your instance with the current infrastructure code. In practice:
-
Security patches reach every instance, including older ones — instances are inherently more secure than under the pinned model.
-
Fixes for internal infrastructure problems arrive automatically. When we correct a defect in the deployment infrastructure, your instance benefits without any action on your side.
Why this is safe
We commit to introducing no breaking changes for existing Integration Manager instances through infrastructure updates. This commitment is backed by how the infrastructure is built:
-
New features are gated on the Integration Manager version. An internal mechanism activates new infrastructure behavior only for the IM versions that support it — an older instance never picks up behavior it was not built for.
-
The infrastructure code is written backwards compatible. Updates extend the infrastructure; they do not change what existing instances rely on.
For you this means: nothing needs to be updated from your side, and you do not need to worry about unexpected changes to your instance. The one thing you can expect is that fixes for internal problems — including security patches — are applied to your instance automatically.