What is the ForgeRock CDK (Cloud Deployment Kit) and what does it provide?

The ForgeRock Cloud Deployment Kit (CDK) is a set of Kubernetes-native tooling, Helm charts, Kustomize overlays, and operator resources that enable automated, repeatable deployment of the ForgeRock Identity Platform (AM, DS, IDM, and IG) on Kubernetes clusters. It is the reference deployment architecture for teams running the ForgeRock stack on their own Kubernetes infrastructure — whether on-premises (OpenShift, Rancher) or in the cloud (GKE, EKS, AKS).

CDK provides:

• ForgeOps (Kustomize + Helm) — The open-source ForgeOps GitHub repository contains Kustomize profiles and Helm charts for deploying the entire platform stack. It includes pre-built profiles for development (minimal resources), cloud (production-grade) and CDQ (Continuous Delivery Quality) environments.
• DS Kubernetes Operator — A custom Kubernetes operator (CRD-based) that manages DS clusters: creates stateful sets, handles rolling upgrades, performs health checks, and manages replication topology automatically without manual dsconfig commands.
• Skaffold integration — Development workflows use Skaffold to watch for code changes in configuration files, automatically rebuild Docker images, and re-deploy affected components to a local or remote Kubernetes cluster.
• Secrets Management — Integration with Kubernetes secrets and cert-manager for certificate management; optional integration with HashiCorp Vault for external secret storage.
• Config Profiles — Pre-defined configuration overlays for common use cases: CDQ environments, standalone AM, or full platform stack.

CDK has largely replaced the older zip-file-based installation model for Kubernetes deployments. Teams no longer unzip AM and manually configure it; instead they define their configuration as code in the ForgeOps repository and deploy via Helm or Kustomize, achieving GitOps-compatible IAM infrastructure management.