Red Hat recently announced the general availability of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes ( RHACM) v2.2. RHACM tool provides a central management console from where you can manage multiple Kubernetes-based clusters across data centers, public clouds, and private clouds. You can easily use the multicluster hub to create Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters on selected providers, or import existing Kubernetes-based clusters.
It becomes easy to take control of your application deployment with the management capabilities for cluster creation, application lifecycle, and provide security and compliance for all of them across data centers and hybrid cloud environments.
With Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, Clusters and applications are all visible and managed from a single console, with built-in security policies. It becomes easy to run your operations from anywhere that Red Hat OpenShift runs, and manage any Kubernetes cluster in your fleet.
The new release includes the Open Policy Agent (OPA) operator for tighter integration, added new Argo CD integration and more to help you manage and automate your Kubernetes clusters at scale. Below are some of the key features in v2.2 release:
- Import and manage Openshift clusters such Azure Red Hat OpenShift , OpenShift Dedicated, Openshift on Openstack and Openshift on IBM Z.
- Customized metrics and dashboards: Customization of Grafana dashboards based on metrics you define, along with the predefined metrics, to create personalized views of what is important to you.
- Contribute to and ship Open Policy Agent (OPA) as part of ACM: Support of OPA policies by distributing the OPA operator to the fleet.
- Compliance Operator support: Run OpenSCAP scans (via the Compliance Operator) against the fleet, and surface the compliance results in ACM.
- Argo CD integration: Utilize the fleet information from ACM and provide it to Argo CD, ensuring your applications are compliant and secure.
Install Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management on OpenShift 4.x
In the next steps we walk you through the process of installing Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management on OpenShift 4.x. You should have a working OpenShift 4.x cluster before you proceed with the installation steps.
Step 1: Create rhacm project
Let’s start by creating a new project for Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management deployment.
From CLI:
oc new-project rhacm
For UI project creation, it is done under Home > Projects > Create Project
Confirm the current working project is the one created.
Step 2: Install Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management Operator
Login to OpenShift Web console and navigate to Operators > OperatorHub and search for “Advanced Cluster Management”.
Click the Install button to begin installation of the operator.
Use Operator recommended namespace or create use the namespace we created in the first step.
Choose the “Update Channel” and “Approval Strategy” then hit the “Subscribe” button.
The Operator installation status can be checked under “Installed Operators” section.
Here is a screenshot of successful installation.
Step 3: Create the MultiClusterHub custom resource
In the OpenShift Container Platform console navigation, select Installed Operators > Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes
Select the MultiClusterHub tab.
Select Create MultiClusterHub then update the default values in the YAML file, according to your needs.
Wait for the installation to complete.
Upon completion the state should change to “Running“.
Step 4: Access Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes Console
Check the route for the Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes under “Networking” > “Routes“
Open the URL of your hub on a new tab and login with the OpenShift user credentials. You should be presented with a dashboard similar to below.
To access the local cluster use “Go to Clusters” link:
Important: The local-cluster namespace is used for the imported self-managed hub cluster. You must not have a local-cluster namespace on your cluster prior to installing. After the local-cluster namespace is created for the hub cluster, anyone who has access to the local-cluster namespace is automatically granted cluster administrator access. For security reasons, do not give anyone access to the local-cluster namespace who does not already have cluster-administrator access.
You can click on the listed cluster to view more details.
We have successfully installed and configured Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management on OpenShift 4.x. In our next guides we’ll discuss on Managing clusters, Applications, Security and Troubleshooting that will come in handy during clusters lifecycle management.
Other guides on OpenShift:
How to change pids_limit value in OpenShift 4.x
How To Deploy Ubuntu Pod in Kubernetes|OpenShift
Configure Static IPv4 Address in OpenShift 4.x CoreOS Servers
How To List and Approve Pending CSR in OpenShift 4.x
