Installing the IBM App Connect Operator from the Red Hat OpenShift web console

OpenShift-only contentUse these instructions to install the IBM® App Connect Operator by using the Red Hat® OpenShift web console.

Before you begin

Procedure

To install and subscribe to the IBM App Connect Operator, complete the following steps:

  1. Log in to the OpenShift web console for your cluster.
  2. Ensure that you are in the Administrator perspective Administrator perspective of the web console.
  3. If you want to install the IBM App Connect Operator into an existing namespace or cluster wide, go to step 4. Otherwise, create a namespace to use for the IBM App Connect Operator as follows:
    1. From the navigation, click Home > Projects to open the Projects page.
    2. Click Create Project.
    3. Enter a namespace (or project) name; for example, ibm-appconn. Optionally add a display name and description.
    4. Click Create.
    Restriction: Do not install into any of these system namespaces, which might impose restrictions on assigning role-based access control (RBAC) permissions or security context constraints:
    • The default namespace
    • Any namespace prefixed with kube-
    • The openshift namespace or any namespace prefixed with openshift-

      The exception is the openshift-operators namespace, which is used for a cluster-wide installation.

  4. Install the IBM App Connect Operator:
    1. From the navigation, click Operators > OperatorHub.
    2. From the OperatorHub page, search for app connect, and then click the IBM App Connect tile.
      OperatorHub page with the IBM App Connect tile
    3. Click Install.
    4. From the Install Operator page, complete the fields as follows:
      • Update channel: The supported update channels are shown, with v8.2 selected by default. This indicates that an Operator subscription will automatically be created to keep the Operator up to date when new versions are delivered to the channel.
      • Installation mode: Choose whether to install the Operator into all namespaces in the cluster or into a specific namespace.
      • Installed Namespace: If you chose the option for a specific namespace, select a namespace from this list.
      • Update approval: Click Automatic (the default) to indicate that the installation should proceed with no additional approval. This option will also cause the running instance of your Operator to be automatically upgraded whenever new versions are delivered to the channel.

        Click Manual if you want to review a generated Install Plan for the Operator and then manually approve the installation. This option will also require you to review the Install Plan for each new Operator version that is delivered to the channel, and then manually approve an upgrade.

        Tip: If required, you can change the approval strategy later from the Subscription tab for the installed IBM App Connect Operator. You can access this tab by clicking Operators > Installed Operators in the navigation pane, and then clicking IBM App Connect.
        Subscription tab for the Operator
    5. Click Install to install the Operator.

      If you chose a Manual approval strategy, you will be required to review and approve the Install Plan of the subscription. No additional action is needed if you selected an Automatic approval strategy.

      Wait for the installation to complete and then click View installed Operators in Namespace. The IBM App Connect Operator is displayed on the Installed Operators page with a deployment status of Succeeded / Up to date.

      Installation status of the App Connect Operator
    6. Click IBM App Connect to view details about the APIs that are provided.
      "Operator details" page for the App Connect Operator

What to do next

  • Deploy License Service to track license consumption of IBM App Connect.

    For compliance with the licensing requirements, ensure that License Service is deployed on your cluster to monitor and measure license usage of App Connect. For more information, see Tracking license consumption of IBM App Connect.

  • Obtain an entitlement key and create your IBM App Connect authoring and runtime environments, and other resources.

    After you install the Operator, users with the relevant permissions will be able to use the provided APIs to create instances of the App Connect components. If you do not already have one, an entitlement key (supplied as a Kubernetes pull secret) will be required to pull the software images for these components from the IBM Entitled Registry. For more information, see Obtaining and applying your IBM Entitled Registry entitlement key and Creating your authoring and runtime environments, and other IBM App Connect resources.

  • Optionally enable monitoring.

    If you want to enable users to query metrics for their deployed instances from the OpenShift monitoring dashboard, you must additionally request the Monitoring service that is provided with IBM Cloud Pak foundational services and then enable monitoring for user-defined projects (namespaces). For more information, see Requesting the Monitoring service from IBM Cloud Pak foundational services.