Preparing your cluster

Before you install any of the automation containers, you must prepare a cluster for the patterns that you want to use.

About this task

Use the following checklist to prepare your cluster.

Table 1. Server requirements
Requirement More information
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.

  1. If you do not have an account, create an account on IBM Cloud.
  2. If you do not have a cluster, then create one. From the IBM Cloud Overview page, in the OpenShift Cluster tile, click Create Cluster. Refer to the IBM Cloud documentation to create a Kubernetes cluster. The cluster that you create includes attached storage.
IBM Entitled Registry entitlement key
  1. Log in to MyIBM Container Software Library with the IBMid and password that is associated with the entitled software.
  2. In the Container software library tile, verify your entitlement on the View library page, and then go to Get entitlement key to retrieve the key.
Remember: Take a note of the key so that the installer can enter it with the deployment script.
Capacity The administrator must make sure that the target cluster has the capacity for all of the capabilities that you plan to install. For more information, see System requirements.
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, see Storage considerations.

You must set a Default Storage Class for block type storage on your OpenShift Container Platform cluster. When you have multiple storage classes, make sure that you set a default storage class.

The available storage classes can be found by running the following command:

oc get storageclass

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:
  1. Move to a directory where you want to put the temp files.
    cd /home
  2. Install the htpasswd command.
    yum install httpd-tools
  3. Create a user.
    htpasswd -c -B -b users.htpasswd [username] [password]

    Replace [username] with the name of the non-admin user. Replace [password] with the password for the non-admin user.

  4. Verify that it worked.
    htpasswd -b -v users.htpasswd [username] [password]
  5. Create a secret to contain the htpasswd file. You must be logged in as the admin user to the cluster.
    oc create secret generic htpass-secret \
--from-file=htpasswd=./users.htpasswd \
-n openshift-config
  6. Create a config file with the htpasswd identity provider settings.
    cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1
kind: OAuth
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
 identityProviders:
 - name: admins_htpasswd_provider
   mappingMethod: claim
   type: HTPasswd
   htpasswd:
     fileData:
       name: htpass-secret
EOF
  7. Verify that it worked. It might take a few minutes for the update to complete.
    oc logout
oc login -u [username] -p [password]

    If you see an Unauthorized error, wait a few minutes more and try to login again.

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.
Multiple deployments When you install Cloud Pak for Business Automation, Cloud Pak foundational services is also installed in namespace-scoped mode. 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: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Install an instance of LDAP for your intended deployment. You can use IBM Security Directory Server, Microsoft Active Directory, or a custom directory server. For more information, see LDAP configuration.

What to do next

Go to and complete the next step in Preparing a client to connect to the cluster.