Installing Red Hat OpenShift AI

Several IBM® Software Hub services require Red Hat OpenShift AI. If you plan to install services that use Inference foundation models, you must install Red Hat OpenShift AI to start and serve the models.

Installation phase

Setting up a client workstation
Setting up a cluster
Collecting required information
Preparing to run installs in a restricted network
Preparing to run installs from a private container registry
Preparing the cluster for IBM Software Hub
Preparing to install an instance of IBM Software Hub
Installing an instance of IBM Software Hub
Setting up the control plane
Installing solutions and services

Who needs to complete this task?

Cluster administrator A cluster administrator must complete this task.

When do you need to complete this task?

One-time setup Complete this task if you plan to install one or more of the following services:

IBM Knowledge Catalog Premium *
IBM Knowledge Catalog Standard *
Watson Speech services *
watsonx.ai™
watsonx Assistant *
Watsonx BI
watsonx Code Assistant™
watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible® Lightspeed
watsonx Code Assistant for Z
watsonx Code Assistant for Z Agentic
watsonx Code Assistant for Z Code Explanation
watsonx Code Assistant for Z Code Generation
watsonx.data™ Premium
watsonx.data intelligence
watsonx™ Orchestrate *

An asterisk (*) indicates that the service requires Red Hat OpenShift AI in some situations.

About this task

The commands in this task install Red Hat OpenShift AI with the minimum components needed to support IBM Software Hub services.

Review the following table to determine whether you need to install Red Hat OpenShift AI based on the services that you plan to install:

Service	Red Hat OpenShift AI
IBM Knowledge Catalog Premium	Required if you run the models on GPU. Not required if you run the models on: CPU A remote instance of watsonx.ai
IBM Knowledge Catalog Standard	Required if you run the models on GPU. Not required if you run the models on: CPU A remote instance of watsonx.ai
Watson Speech services	Required only if you want to enable enrichment.
watsonx.ai	Always required.
watsonx Assistant	Required only if you want to use features that require GPU.
watsonx BI	Always required.
watsonx Code Assistant	Always required.
watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed	Always required.
watsonx Code Assistant for Z	Always required.
watsonx Code Assistant for Z Agentic	Always required.
watsonx Code Assistant for Z Code Explanation	Always required.
watsonx Code Assistant for Z Code Generation	Always required.
watsonx.data Premium	Always required.
watsonx.data intelligence	Always required.
watsonx Orchestrate	Required if you run models locally. Not required if you use the AI gateway to access third-party models.

Use the following table to determine which version of Red Hat OpenShift AI you need to install:

Release	Red Hat OpenShift AI Version
5.3.0 (December 2025)	2.25

Procedure

Log in to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as a cluster administrator.
```
${OC_LOGIN}
```
Remember: OC_LOGIN is an alias for the oc login command.
Create the redhat-ods-operator project:
```
oc new-project redhat-ods-operator
```
The command returns the following response:
```
namespace/redhat-ods-operator created
```

Create the rhods-operator operator group in the redhat-ods-operator project:

cat <<EOF |oc apply -f -
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
kind: OperatorGroup
metadata:
  name: rhods-operator
  namespace: redhat-ods-operator
EOF

The command returns the following response:

operatorgroup.operators.coreos.com/rhods-operator created

Set the CHANNEL_VERSION environment variable based on the version of Red Hat OpenShift AI that you are installing:
Version 2.25
```
export CHANNEL_VERSION=stable-2.25
```

Create the rhods-operator operator subscription in the redhat-ods-operator project:

cat <<EOF |oc apply -f -
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: rhods-operator
  namespace: redhat-ods-operator
spec:
  name: rhods-operator
  channel: ${CHANNEL_VERSION}
  source: redhat-operators
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace
  config:
     env:
        - name: "DISABLE_DSC_CONFIG"
EOF

The command returns the following response:

subscription.operators.coreos.com/rhods-operator created

Check the status of the rhods-operator-* pod in the redhat-ods-operator project:

oc get pods -n redhat-ods-operator

Confirm that the pod is Running. The command returns a response with the following format:

NAME                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
rhods-operator-56c85d44c9-vtk74   1/1     Running   0          3h57m

Create a DSC Initialization (DSCInitialization) object named default-dsci in the redhat-ods-monitoring project:

cat <<EOF |oc apply -f -
apiVersion: dscinitialization.opendatahub.io/v1
kind: DSCInitialization
metadata:
  name: default-dsci
spec:
  applicationsNamespace: redhat-ods-applications
  monitoring:
    managementState: Managed
    namespace: redhat-ods-monitoring
  serviceMesh:
    managementState: Removed
  trustedCABundle:
    managementState: Managed
    customCABundle: ""
EOF

Check the phase of the DSC Initialization (DSCInitialization) object:
```
oc get dscinitialization
```
Confirm that the object is Ready. The command returns a response with the following format:
```
NAME           AGE     PHASE
default-dsci   4d18h   Ready
```

Create a Data Science Cluster (DataScienceCluster) object named default-dsc:

cat <<EOF |oc apply -f -
apiVersion: datasciencecluster.opendatahub.io/v1
kind: DataScienceCluster
metadata:
  name: default-dsc
spec:
  components:
    codeflare:
      managementState: Removed
    dashboard:
      managementState: Removed
    datasciencepipelines:
      managementState: Removed
    kserve:
      managementState: Managed
      defaultDeploymentMode: RawDeployment
      serving:
        managementState: Removed
        name: knative-serving
    kueue:
      managementState: Removed
    modelmeshserving:
      managementState: Removed
    ray:
      managementState: Removed
    trainingoperator:
      managementState: Managed
    trustyai:
      managementState: Removed
    workbenches:
      managementState: Removed
EOF

The Red Hat OpenShift AI Operator installs and manages the services that are listed as Managed. Services that are Removed are not installed.

Wait for the Data Science Cluster object to be Ready.
To check the status of the object, run:
```
oc get datasciencecluster default-dsc -o jsonpath='"{.status.phase}" {"\n"}'
```

Confirm that the status of the following pods in the redhat-ods-applications project are Running:

kserve-controller-manager-* pod
kubeflow-training-operator-* pod
odh-model-controller-* pod

oc get pods -n redhat-ods-applications

The command returns a response with the following format:

NAME                                         READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
kserve-controller-manager-57796d5b44-sh9n5   1/1     Running     0          4m57s
kubeflow-training-operator-7b99d5584c-rh5hb  1/1     Running     0          4m57s

Edit the inferenceservice-config configuration map in the redhat-ods-applications project:
1. Log in to the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform web console as a cluster administrator.
2. From the navigation menu, select Workloads > Configmaps.
3. From the Project list, select redhat-ods-applications.
4. Click the inferenceservice-config resource. Then, open the YAML tab.
5. In the metadata.annotations section of the file, add opendatahub.io/managed: 'false':
```
metadata:
  annotations:
    internal.config.kubernetes.io/previousKinds: ConfigMap
    internal.config.kubernetes.io/previousNames: inferenceservice-config
    internal.config.kubernetes.io/previousNamespaces: opendatahub
    opendatahub.io/managed: 'false'
```
6. Find the following entry in the file:
```
"domainTemplate": "{{ .Name }}-{{ .Namespace }}.{{ .IngressDomain }}",
```
7. Update the value of the domainTemplate field to "example.com":
```
"domainTemplate": "example.com",
```
8. Click Save.

What to do next

Now that you've installed Red Hat OpenShift AI, you're ready to complete Installing and setting up Multicloud Object Gateway for IBM Software Hub.