Setting up OpenShift 4 Developer Preview
OpenShift 4 introduces automated installation, patching, and upgrades for every layer of the container stack from the operating system through application services.
Just a few days ago the public developer preview for OpenShift 4 was launched. You can preview OpenShift 4 yourself today and experience the ease of push-button cluster and service management.
Installing OpenShift 4 and accessing your cluster takes no more than 5, if I may say, simple steps. The developer preview wants to use Amazon AWS to provision the cluster, so make sure you have or register for an AWS account if you want to try it out.
The steps consist of:
- Configure your DNS
- Configure your AWS credentials
- Download the OpenShift installer
- Deploy the cluster
- Access your new cluster!
Each step is very well documented in the 1-page installation instruction page provided. Below is not meant to replace anything including in the installation instructions but intended to give you a preview of the preview ( :-) ) by providing some additional text and actual screenshots of the proces.
Let’s talk a little more about each step.
Step 1 — Configure your DNS
We need a DNS zone for our OpenShift environment. We want to use AWS Route53 (53 being a reference to the well-known port number for DNS) to register a new domain or configure an existing one.
Step 2 — Configure your AWS credentials
Configuring your AWS credentials means installing the aws client (AWS CLI) which you can download from the AWS portal and configuring your access key ID and secret access key. You can obtain this information by creating an access key for your user through the user pane in the IAM Management Console. Do not have a user yet? Create a new user, maybe even create a group and then get access to the access key ID and secret.
Step 3 — Download the OpenShift installer
In this step you’ll download the installer. It’s available for Linux and MacOS. A link to the download page on Github is provided in the instructions. Save the file in your working environment and make it executable (chmod +x).
Step 4 — Deploy the cluster
Alright, you’re ready to deploy the cluster. The cluster create process will initially create a Bootstrap instance and 3 Master (node) instances. It will use the AWS credentials provided in step 2 to do all the work. Later on in the process 3 Worker (node) instances are deployed and in the end the Bootstrap instance will be shutdown.
Make sure you have enough Elastic IP’s (VPC) available. You need to be able to allocate more than 5 (7?). If you only have 5 you can easily request more by requesting a limit increase by raising a support ticket.
Kick-off the cluster create command. You’ll be asked a few questions:
- The Pull Secret you’ll find in the Installation instructions.
- The region? Make sure to choose us-east-1 (N. Virginia). For example choosing Frankfurt will give you an error message stating it’s not supported, trying to fall back to the default us-east-1 and then the process will fail.
Now sit back and relax for the process to finish. You can find the output of the installer when doing a successful installation in the screenshot below.
Step 5 — Access your new cluster!
Step 5 is something you can do while waiting for step 4 to finish. It’s again something you have to download. This time it’s the version 4.0 of the OpenShift client (oc). The OpenShift client is available for Linux on all supported architectures (ARM, Power, s390x and x86), MacOS and Windows.
Extract the client with your favorite uncompress solution or use the command: gunzip < oc.tar.gz | tar xf — to extract to the current directory.
Please make sure you add the directory where you extracted the oc executable to your path by modifying your profile or executing from within the directory where you extracted the file: export PATH=`pwd`:$PATH
After the installation has finished follow the on-screen instructions. Now you are ready to access your OpenShift 4 installation through the CLI or through the browser.
Enjoy your developer preview of OpenShift 4!
Please leave your feedback in comments below. Love to hear what you think about the OpenShift 4 preview. (Don’t forget to submit your feedback using the official form for which the link is available in the first section of the installation instructions.)
