Preparing your cluster
About this task
Use the following checklist to prepare your cluster.
Requirement | More information |
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A cluster | Cloud Pak for Business Automation
includes entitlement to use Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. You can also use ROKS classic on IBM Cloud. Note: Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Generation 2 compute infrastructure is supported
if you use OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) as your storage provider.
Before you deploy an automation container on IBM Cloud® (your target cluster platform is ROKS), you must create an OpenShift cluster.
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IBM Entitled Registry entitlement key |
Remember: Take a note of the key so that the installer can enter it with the deployment
script.
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Capacity | The administrator must make sure that the target cluster has the capacity for all of the
capabilities that you plan to install.
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Secrets | You are going to need to create secrets to store and manage sensitive information, such as passwords and ssh keys. Storing confidential information in a secret is safer and more flexible than putting it in a pod definition or in a container image. For more information, see Security considerations. |
Dynamic and block storage classes | The installation needs a dynamic storage class and a block storage class. The administrator
must make a note of the storage classes to use, and provide the names to the user who runs the
deployment script. All the container images require persistent volumes (PVs) and persistent volume
claims (PVCs), so review the topics on preparing these PVs and PVCs. For more information about storage classes, see Storage considerations. You must set a The available storage classes can be found by running the following command:
The default storage class is marked as (default). The foundational services installer uses the default storage class to install MongoDB and Logging services. If you want to change the default storage class, see Change the default StorageClass. |
Users | You need a cluster admin and a non-admin user in the OpenShift identity provider to run the
scripts. Use the following steps to add a non-admin user:
For more information about users on OpenShift, see Understanding identity provider configuration. Tip: Go to the following technote for instructions on how to create a simple identity provider
for your starter environment How do I create a simple identity provider.
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Multiple deployments | When you install Cloud Pak for Business Automation, Cloud Pak foundational services is also installed in a namespace-scoped instance. The cluster admin script, by default, uses the same namespace for foundational services as the Cloud Pak for Business Automation deployment. You can install multiple instances of Cloud Pak for Business Automation in a cluster with multiple namespace-scoped Cloud Pak foundational services. |
Synchronized worker nodes clocks | Cloud Pak for Business Automation requires that the clocks on the worker nodes are synchronized. An OCP cluster that is installed in a restricted network is configured to use a public Network Time Protocol (NTP) server by default. To avoid clock skew, reconfigure the cluster to use a private NTP server instead. Time synchronization must be enabled on all hosts in the cluster, whether using NTP or any other method. For more information, see Configuring chrony time service. |
Optional: Proxy servers | If you plan to configure a proxy for outbound connections to external services, then set the
NO_PROXY environment variable in the cluster to "*.svc " to enable
all the CP4BA internal connections to work in a proxy-enabled environment. For more information, see
Configuring cluster security. |
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) | Install an instance of LDAP for your intended deployment. For more information, see LDAP configuration. |
What to do next
Go to and complete the next step in Preparing a namespace for the operator.