Preparing a client to connect to the cluster

A Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Service (ROKS) cluster and a private Red Hat OpenShift cluster have different requirements. Make sure that the client can connect to the cluster you want to use, and has the necessary CLI tools. Install the appropriate tools from the following list.

• Client-side requirements
• What else is needed before you run the installation scripts

Client-side requirements

Table 1. Client-side requirements step by step

Requirement	More information
(For OCP deployments) OCP CLI	For more information, see the OpenShift documentation and the download link. Download the latest version for your OCP cluster. The CLI has commands for managing your applications, and lower-level tools to interact with each component of your system. Place the oc binary in a directory that is on your PATH. To check your PATH, run the following command. echo $PATH When the CLI is in your PATH, it is available by running the oc command.
(For CNCF deployments) Kubernetes 1.16+ CLI	For more information, see https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/. You must use a kubectl version that is within one minor version difference of your cluster. Using the latest version of kubectl helps avoid unforeseen issues. Download the latest release with the command: export KUBECTL_VERSION=curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt curl -LO "https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/${KUBECTL_VERSION}/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl" To check the version, run the following command. kubectl version --client
Podman CLI	If you plan to use an OpenShift-based platform and want to download the container images to a private registry, you must install the Podman CLI. You can install Podman by running the following command. yum -y install podman Note: The podman CLI is needed on an OCP registry, as OCP does not support a Docker login. If you plan to run the scripts on macOS or you want to stick with docker, you must install the Docker CLI and add the following line to the /etc/sysconfig/docker file. INSECURE_REGISTRY='--insecure-registry=route' Where route is the name of the route for your image registry. For example, INSECURE_REGISTRY='--insecure-registry=default-route-openshift-image-registry.apps.<hostname>'. Use this solution for isolated testing or in tightly controlled environments only. For more information, see Deploy a plain HTTP registry.
Bastion host	Any virtual network or VLAN such as a VPC in AWS, a VNet in ARO, or a VPC in IBM Cloud, are configured with private IP addresses. You need to be inside the network to communicate with resources by using private IP addresses. If you are outside of the private network and you want to talk to the private IP addresses, you must have a tunnel into the private network. Otherwise, the resource needs to have a public IP address or an FQDN that can be discovered with public DNS for you to talk to from outside the private network.

What else is needed before you run the installation scripts

Table 2. Script requirements

Requirement	More information
Operating system	The FNCM prerequisites script can be run on any machine with Python 3.8 and later. For installation scripts, you need amd64/x86 based (SUSE/RHEL/MacOS) VM/machines.
Java™ version	The FNCM prerequisites script supports the following Java™ versions: FNCM container image version Supported Java version 5.5.8 Java™ 8 5.5.11 Java™ Semuru 11. For more information, see Semeru Runtimes getting started. 5.5.12 Java™ Semeru 17. For more information, see Semeru Runtimes getting started.