Introduction to Operators

Deploying an Operator from Operator Hub using odo.

Introduction to Operators

What is an Operator?

An Operator is essentially a custom controller. It is a method of packaging, deploying and managing a Kubernetes-native application.

With Operators, odo allows you to create a service as defined by a Custom Resource Definition (CRD).

Odo utilizes Operators and Operator Hub in order to provide a seamless method for custom controller service installation.

Deploying your first Operator

Prerequisites

  • You must have cluster permissions to install an Operator on either OpenShift or Kubernetes.

  • Enable experimental mode for odo. This can be done by: odo preference set experimental true

Creating a project

Create a project to keep your source code, tests, and libraries organized in a separate single unit.

  1. Log in to your cluster:

      $ odo login -u developer -p developer

  2. Create a project:

      $ odo project create myproject
   ✓  Project 'myproject' is ready for use
   ✓  New project created and now using project : myproject

Installing an Operator

In our examples, we install etcd, a distributed key-value store from Operator Hub.

Important

Each Operator we install refers to the built-in metadata.annotations.alm-examples annotation in order to correctly deploy. If the Operator does not contain the correct metadata, you will not be able to correctly deploy. For more information, see the the upstream CRD documentation.

Kubernetes installation

For Kubernetes installation, you must install the Operator Lifecycle Manager and etcd from the etcd installation guide on Operator Hub.

OpenShift installation

For OpenShift installation, the etcd Operator can be installed through the administrative console.

Listing all available Operators

Before deploying your first Operator, have a look at what is available:

  $ odo catalog list services
  Operators available in the cluster
  NAME                          CRDs
  etcdoperator.v0.9.4           EtcdCluster, EtcdBackup, EtcdRestore

In above output, etcdoperator.v0.9.4 is the Operator while EtcdCluster, EtcdBackup and EtcdRestore are the CRDs provided by this Operator.

Deploying etcd to a cluster

In this example, we will be deploying our installed etcd Operator to an OpenShift / Kubernetes cluster.

  1. Create a etcd service from the etcdoperator.v0.9.4 Operator:

      $ odo service create etcdoperator.v0.9.4/EtcdCluster

  2. Confirm the Operator backed service was deployed:

      $ odo service list

It is important to note that EtcdBackup and EtcdRestore are not available for deployment as they require interactive parameters.

Deploying etcd to a cluster via YAML

In this example, we will be deploying our installed etcd Operator to an OpenShift / Kubernetes cluster.

However, we will be using the YAML definition where we modify the metadata.name and spec.size.

Important

Deploying via YAML is a temporary feature as we add support for passing parameters on the command line and interactive mode.

  1. Retrieve the YAML output of the operator:

      $ odo service create etcdoperator.v0.9.4/EtcdCluster --dry-run > etcd.yaml

  2. Modify the YAML file by redefining the name and size:

    apiVersion: etcd.database.coreos.com/v1beta2
kind: EtcdCluster
metadata:
  name: my-etcd-cluster // Change the name
spec:
  size: 1 // Reduce the size from 3 to 1
  version: 3.2.13

  3. Create the service from the YAML file:

      $ odo service create --from-file etcd.yaml

  4. Confirm that the service has been created:

      $ odo service list
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