Installing Streams Flows

A project administrator can install the Streams Flows service on IBM® Cloud Pak for Data. An application developer can use Streams Flows to develop streaming applications and deploy the applications to Cloud Pak for Data.

Before you begin

Required role: To complete this task, you must be an administrator of the project (namespace) where you will deploy Streams Flows.

Before you install Streams Flows, ensure that:

The Cloud Pak for Data control plane is already installed on your Red Hat® OpenShift® cluster. For details, see Installing IBM Cloud Pak for Data.
The cluster meets the minimum requirements for installing Streams Flows. For details, see System requirements for services.
You completed the steps in Preparing to install and upgrade services.

Common core services Streams Flows requires the Cloud Pak for Data common core services. The common core services are installed once in a given Red Hat OpenShift project. If the common core services are not installed in the project where you plan to install Streams Flows, the common core services will be automatically installed when you install Streams Flows. If the common core services need to be installed, it might take longer to install Streams Flows. For more information on the common core services, see:

If you are installing multiple services on your cluster, you must run the installations one at a time and wait until the installation completes before installing another service. You cannot run the installations in parallel.

Tip: For a list of all available options, enter the following command:

./cpd-cli install --help

Procedure

Complete the appropriate steps to install Streams Flows on your environment:
- Installing on clusters connected to the internet
- Installing on air-gapped clusters
Verifying that the installation completed successfully
Checking for available patches
Complete the tasks listed in What to do next

Installing on clusters connected to the internet

From your installation node:

Change to the directory where you placed the Cloud Pak for Data command-line interface and the repo.yaml file.
Log in to your Red Hat OpenShift cluster as a project administrator:
```
oc login OpenShift_URL:port
```

Run the following command to see a preview of what will be installed when you install the service.

Important: If you are using the internal Red Hat OpenShift registry and you are using the default self-signed certificate, specify the --insecure-skip-tls-verify flag to prevent x509 errors.

./cpd-cli install \
--repo ./repo.yaml \
--assembly streams-flows \
--arch Cluster_architecture \
--namespace Project \
--storageclass Storage_class_name \
--transfer-image-to Registry_location \
--cluster-pull-prefix Registry_from_cluster \
--ask-push-registry-credentials \
--latest-dependency \
--dry-run

Important: By default, this command gets the latest version of the assembly. If you want to install a specific version of Streams Flows, add the following line to your command after the --assembly flag:

--version Assembly_version \

The --latest-dependency flag gets the latest version of the dependent assemblies. If you remove the --latest-dependency flag, the installer will get the minimum version of the dependent assemblies.

Replace the following values:

Variable	Replace with
`Assembly_version`	The version of Streams Flows that you want to install. The assembly versions are listed in System requirements for services.
`Cluster_architecture`	Specify the architecture of your cluster hardware: For x86-64 hardware, remove this flag or specify `x86_64`
`Project`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.
`Storage_class_name`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.
`Registry_location`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.
`Registry_from_cluster`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.

Rerun the previous command without the --dry-run flag to install the service.

Installing on air-gapped clusters

From your installation node:

Change to the directory where you placed the Cloud Pak for Data command-line interface.
Log in to your Red Hat OpenShift cluster as a project administrator:
```
oc login OpenShift_URL:port
```

Run the following command to see a preview of what will be installed when you install the service.

Important: If you are using the internal Red Hat OpenShift registry:

Do not specify the --ask-pull-registry-credentials parameter.
If you are using the default self-signed certificate, specify the --insecure-skip-tls-verify flag to prevent x509 errors.

./cpd-cli install \
--assembly streams-flows \
--arch Cluster_architecture \
--namespace Project \
--storageclass Storage_class_name \
--cluster-pull-prefix Registry_from_cluster \
--ask-pull-registry-credentials \
--load-from Image_directory_location \
--latest-dependency \
--dry-run

Note: If the assembly was downloaded using the delta-images command, remove the --latest-dependency flag from the command. If you don't remove the --latest-dependency flag you will get an error indicating that the flag cannot be used.

Replace the following values:

Variable	Replace with
`Cluster_architecture`	Specify the architecture of your cluster hardware: For x86-64 hardware, remove this flag or specify `x86_64`
`Project`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.
`Storage_class_name`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.
`Registry_from_cluster`	Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.
`Image_directory_location`	The location of the cpd-cli-workspace directory. Use the value provided by your cluster administrator. You should have obtained this information when you completed Preparing to install and upgrade services.

Rerun the previous command without the --dry-run flag to install the service.

Verifying that the installation completed successfully

From your installation node:

Run the following command:
```
./cpd-cli status \
--assembly streams-flows \
--namespace Project
```
Replace Project with the value you used in when you installed Streams Flows.
- If the installation completed successfully, the status of the assembly and the modules in the assembly is Ready.
- If the installation failed, contact IBM Support for assistance.

Checking for available patches

Determine whether there are any patches available for the version of Streams Flows that you installed:

Clusters connected to the internet

Run the following command to check for patches:

./cpd-cli status \
--repo ./repo.yaml \
--namespace Project \ 
--assembly streams-flows \
--patches \
--available-updates

Air-gapped clusters

See the list of Available patches for Streams Flows.

If you need to apply patches to the service, follow the guidance in Applying patches.

What to do next

After the Streams Flows service is installed, you must provision a Streams service instance before you can run a streams flow. For more information, see Provisioning Streams.
For information about using Streams Flows to develop and deploy streaming applications, see Streams Flows.