Installing IBM Cloud Pak foundational services

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IBM Cloud Pak foundational services installation consists of an OpenShift cluster where one or more foundational services operators are installed, and one or more instances of foundational services are deployed.

Note: Each Continuous Delivery (CD) release is delivered through a dedicated channel. For more information, see Release types.

You can use the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services operator to install foundational services in your cluster, and manage the lifecycle of all foundational services operators. For more information about the names and versions of the operators, see Foundational services operators and versions.

Before you install foundational services, check your your product's documentation and detemine what version of foundational services your product supports. Make sure that you install the appropriate version.

Note: If foundational services that you are using are included in your IBM Cloud Pak deployment, you do not have to manually deploy the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services operator. The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services operator is deployed into the same namespace as your IBM Cloud Pak deployment by default.

Before you begin

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An OpenShift Container Platform cluster must be installed. For the supported OpenShift Container Platform versions, see Supported OpenShift versions and platforms.
Certificate Manager service must be installed. You can install any certificate manager service. See the following options:
Review the preparation steps for installing IBM Cloud Pak foundational services in your cluster. For more information, see Preparing to install foundational services .

Installation steps

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Complete the following steps to install IBM Cloud Pak foundational services.

Mirror the images

If your cluster is in a restricted (air-gapped) network environment, first mirror the images. For a complete procedure, see Mirroring images for an air-gapped cluster.
Add the catalog sources

To make the operators available to your cluster, add catalog sources to your cluster. For a complete procedure, see Adding catalog sources to a cluster.
Install the operators

You must install the operator for each instance type before it can be deployed. Use one of the following procedures:
Add the entitlement key

If you are using an internet-connected cluster, you need to add your entitlement key to the namespaces where you want to deploy instances so that the images can be pulled from the IBM Entitled Container Fulfillment Registry. For a complete procedure, see Applying your entitlement key for online installation.
Deploy the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services instances

Deploy and manage your foundational services instances. Use one of the following procedures:
- Deploying the foundational services instances by using the OpenShift console
- Deploying the foundational services instances by using the CLI