Installing Knative on IBM Cloud Private

Knative Opens in a new tab provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center.

Limitation: Knative does not support specifying a namespace to install. Before you install Knative, make sure you install istio on your IBM Cloud Private cluster.

Installing Knative on an existing cluster

Note: A IBM Cloud Private 3.2.0 cluster supports the knative chart version 0.2.x and 0.1.x. The knative charts are available in the ibm-charts repository: https://github.com/IBM/charts/tree/master/community/knative.

You can deploy Knative if you already have an IBM Cloud Private 3.2.0 cluster installed. The current Knative chart must use the CLI to install the knative crds Opens in a new tab first. Use the following command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IBM/charts/master/community/knative/all-crds.yaml

To install a Knative chart from the IBM Cloud Private management console, click Catalog and search for the knative chart. Choose the Knative chart that you want to install.

Installing Knative by using the CLI

Install knative crds with the following command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IBM/charts/master/community/knative/all-crds.yaml

Install the chart by using the Helm CLI:

helm repo add ibm-community-charts https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IBM/charts/master/repo/community
helm install ibm-community-charts/knative --name knative [--tls]

The command deploys knative on a IBM Cloud Private 3.2.0 cluster in the default configuration. The configuration Opens in a new tab section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Verifying the installation

After installation completes, verify that all the components you enabled for Knative are created and running. Monitor the Knative components until all of the components show a status of Running. For example:

kubectl get pod -n knative-serving
NAME                          READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
activator-74bc454c4b-tcpqs    2/2       Running   0          4m
autoscaler-8bd664478-pqhph    2/2       Running   0          4m
controller-7cbd5bdc88-9z6dq   1/1       Running   0          4m
webhook-7bcff85bf9-vz9hm      1/1       Running   0          3m

kubectl get pod -n knative-build
NAME                               READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
build-controller-d9584dcd6-hpb7b   1/1       Running   0          10m
build-webhook-5bfdbd4fb7-nn79w     1/1       Running   0          10m

If you enable the eventing, monitoring, and eventingSources parameters, you can view the status information. For example:

kubectl get pod -n knative-eventing
NAME                                            READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
eventing-controller-6f8f5698ff-mrvbq            2/2       Running   0          12m
in-memory-channel-controller-787865b86d-w78lv   2/2       Running   1          12m
in-memory-channel-dispatcher-78bfc7d88f-864wc   2/2       Running   1          12m
webhook-75dcb58956-5smqc                        1/1       Running   0          12m

kubectl get pod -n knative-monitoring
NAME                                  READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
elasticsearch-logging-0               1/1       Running   0          12m
elasticsearch-logging-1               1/1       Running   0          7m
grafana-744b8d4ccb-vsskd              1/1       Running   0          12m
kibana-logging-7d8bd66996-mx7rm       1/1       Running   0          13m
kube-state-metrics-68cd885bf7-sc7zs   4/4       Running   0          9m
node-exporter-pgv8h                   2/2       Running   0          13m
node-exporter-q8txs                   2/2       Running   0          13m
prometheus-system-0                   1/1       Running   0          12m
prometheus-system-1                   1/1       Running   0          12m

kubectl get pod -n knative-sources
NAME                   READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
controller-manager-0   1/1       Running   0          13m

Knative support for Linux on Power (ppc64le)

A knative installation on a IBM Cloud Private 3.2.0 cluster that is running on a Linux on Power (ppc64le) machine requires the following configurations:

build:
  buildController:
    image: ibmcom/knative-build-cmd-controller:0.5
  buildWebhook:
    image: ibmcom/knative-build-cmd-webhook:0.5
  credsInit:
    image: ibmcom/knative-build-cmd-creds-init:0.5
  gcsFetcher:
    image: ibmcom/gcs-fetche:0.5
  gitInit:
    image: ibmcom/knative-build-cmd-git-init:0.5
  nop:
    image: ibmcom/knative-build-cmd-nop:0.5
eventing:
  enabled: true
  eventingController:
    image: ibmcom/knative-eventing-cmd-controller:0.5
  inMemoryProvisioner:
    enabled: true
    inMemoryChannelController:
      controller:
        image: ibmcom/knative-eventing-pkg-provisioners-inmemory-controller:0.5
    inMemoryChannelDispatcher:
      dispatcher:
        image: ibmcom/knative-eventing-cmd-fanoutsidecar:0.5
  webhook:
    image: ibmcom/knative-eventing-cmd-webhook:0.5
eventingSources:
  enabled: true
  controllerManager:
    manager:
      image: ibmcom/knative-eventing-sources-cmd-manager:0.5
serving:
  activator:
    image: ibmcom/knative-serving-cmd-activator:0.5.2
  autoscaler:
    image: ibmcom/knative-serving-cmd-autoscaler:0.5.2
  controller:
    image: ibmcom/knative-serving-cmd-controller:0.5.2
  queueProxy:
    image: ibmcom/knative-serving-cmd-queue:0.5.2
  webhook:
    image: ibmcom/knative-serving-cmd-webhook:0.5.2

Save the configuration content in power-values.yaml. Install Knative crds with the following command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IBM/charts/master/community/knative/all-crds.yaml

Install the chart by using the Helm CLI with the option -f power-values.yaml

helm repo add ibm-community-charts https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IBM/charts/master/repo/community
helm install ibm-community-charts/knative --name knative -f power-values.yaml [--tls]

Limitation: Only the image in power-values.yaml supports a Linux on Power (ppc64le) machine.

Workaround: Pod state is Init:ImagePullBackOff

If your pod has the state Init:ImagePullBackOff, run the following commands as a workaround to the issue:

kubectl -n ${NAMESPACE} create secret docker-registry infra-registry-key --docker-server=${IMAGE_REPO} --docker-username=${DOCKER_USER} --docker-password=${DOCKER_TOKEN} --docker-email='icp@ibm.com'

kubectl -n ${NAMESPACE} patch serviceaccount default -p '{"imagePullSecrets": [{"name": "infra-registry-key"}]}'

Where: