Preparing for installation of WebSphere Liberty operator

A cluster administrator prepares the environment before they WebSphere® Liberty operator.

Tip: WebSphere Liberty operator requires a Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform (OCP) cluster or a Kubernetes cluster. To prepare the environment and install WebSphere Liberty operator, familiarity with OpenShift or Kubernetes cluster administration is helpful.

Before you begin

Determine your deployment needs.

By default, the WebSphere Liberty operator uses the AllNamespaces installation mode. This installation mode supports single and multiple instances of WebSphere Liberty operator. For other installation modes, choose the namespace in which to install the operator. WebSphere Liberty operator supports installing multiple instances in the same cluster, but each instance must be in its own namespace.

Follow the instructions that apply to your installation configuration.

Completing prerequisites for an OpenShift cluster

Ensure that your OpenShift cluster meets the system requirements. In particular, ensure that sufficient worker node capacity is available and that compatible persistent storage is installed.
Create the catalog sources.
1. Create the IBM® Operator catalog source.
  Follow instructions in Adding the IBM operator catalog in the IBM Cloud Pak documentation to create a catalog source. A catalog entry is created in your Operator Hub.
2. Verify the CatalogSources installation.
  1. Check the CatalogSources operators.
```
oc get catalogsource -n openshift-marketplace
```
    The command output lists the installed operators for CatalogSources. Ensure the ibm-operator-catalog is listed.
```
ibm-operator-catalog     IBM Operator Catalog    grpc    IBM    1s
```
  2. Check that the pods for CatalogSources are running.
```
oc get pods -n openshift-marketplace
```
    You want the command output to show a Running status for the pods. Ensure the ibm-operator-catalog pod is listed and reaches Running status.
```
NAME                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
ibm-operator-catalog-r96r2        1/1     Running   0          1s
```

Completing prerequisites for a non-OCP Kubernetes cluster with Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM)

Ensure that your Kubernetes cluster meets the system requirements. In particular, ensure that sufficient worker node capacity is available and that compatible persistent storage is installed.
Create the catalog sources.
1. Create the IBM Operator catalog source.
  Follow instructions in Adding the IBM operator catalog in the IBM Cloud Pak documentation to create a catalog source. A catalog entry is created in your Operator Hub.
  Note: Use olm as the value for the namespace parameter instead of openshift-marketplace.
2. Verify the CatalogSources installation.
  1. Check the CatalogSources operators.
```
kubectl get catalogsource -n olm
```
    The command output lists the installed operators for CatalogSources. Ensure the ibm-operator-catalog is listed.
```
ibm-operator-catalog     IBM Operator Catalog    grpc    IBM    1s
```
  2. Check that the pods for CatalogSources are running.
```
kubectl get pods -n olm
```
    You want the command output to show a Running status for the pods. Ensure the ibm-operator-catalog pod is listed and reaches Running status.
```
NAME                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
ibm-operator-catalog-r96r2        1/1     Running   0          1s
```

Completing prerequisites for a non-OCP Kubernetes cluster without OLM

Ensure that your Kubernetes cluster meets the system requirements. In particular, ensure that sufficient worker node capacity is available and that compatible persistent storage is installed.
Ensure that the curl and sed programs are installed.

What to do next

Install the WebSphere Liberty operator with the OpenShift console, the OpenShift command-line interface (CLI), or the Kubernetes command-line interface.