Cloud Computing, DevOps, Google Cloud (GCP)

6 Mins Read

A Guide to Deploy RedHat OpenShift on GCP – Part 2

Overview

This blog will walk you through the process of creating an OpenShift cluster in Google Cloud using the automation scripts included in this project.

Containerized services are managed using Kubernetes or OpenShift. Upgrades, failover, and service provisioning can all be automated. Container deployment, operation, scaling, and maintenance are thus simplified and automated for administrators.

Prerequisites

  • GCP Account
  • RedHat OpenShift
  • Enabling API services in GCP

Table1

Table2

Table3

Note: If you plan to deploy your cluster in one of the following regions, you will exceed the maximum storage quota and are likely to exceed the CPU quota limit.

“Great Services come with great quota”

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  • Devops
  • AIML & IoT
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Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1 – Create Service Account, Assign Roles and Key

Create Service Account

1. Open GCP console > YOUR PROJECT NAME > IAM & Admin > Service Accounts > Create Service Account

2. Add Your Service Account Name

3. Add your Service Account ID

step1

4. Create and Continue

5. Assign rolls to your Service Account

step1b

  • compute admin
  • security admin
  • storage admin
  • service account admin
  • service account user
  • service account key admin
  • service Usage admin
  • DNS Administrator

6. Click on Done

7. Go to Your service account

a. Click on KEYS > Add Key > Create New

b. Select key type as JSON

step1c

Step 2 – Create DNS Zone

1. Open GCP console > YOUR PROJECT NAME > Network & Services > Cloud DNS > Create a DNS Zone

2. Click on Public

3. Add Zone Your Name

4. Add DNS name yourname.com (Your Base Domain)

5. Click Create

step2

Step 3 – Create Host VM to Deploy OpenShift Cluster

1. Open GCP console > YOUR PROJECT NAME > Compute > Create an Instance

2. Add your Name.

3. Choose Your Regions and Zone. (Page 4)

4. Select your Machine Configuration as E2-medium

step3

5. Change your Boot Disk

a. ubuntu

b. Size 50

step3b

6. Change the Access scopes to Allow full access to all Cloud APIs

7. Check the Firewall for Http & Https Traffic.

8. Click create.

step3c

Step 4 – Setup OpenShift on Host VM

1. Select your VM that was previously created

2. Click on SSH

step4

Your Host VM SSH Terminal

step4b

3. Enable the APIs needed to create a cluster

step4c

4. Create ssh-key for cluster

5. To check key is created

step4d

6. Copy your JSON key to your host VM

a. Copy your JSON file to Host VM

b. Create a file in Host VM vi key.json > paste the Keys

c. Check the File with cat key.json

step4e

7. Set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to the full path to your service account private key file.

step4f

8. To activate your service account in Host VM

a. Copy your service account email

b. Paste the command with your service account email and key

step4g

9. Now go to https://console.redhat.com/openshift/

a. Click on Clusters > Create Cluster > Click on GCP Platform > Select installer-provisioned infrastructure

https://console.redhat.com/openshift/install/gcp/installer-provisioned

b. copy link of Download Installer & Command line tool

c. Copy pull secrets

step4h

10. Download OpenShift Installer & Command Line Interface in Host VM

step4i

11. Extract the file and move it to

step4j

12. Now we have to create a configuration file for cluster

This command creates a template of install-config.yaml

step4k

13. Now create a directory as mkdir install

14. Now copy the config file inside the install directory & make changes as per your needs

step4l

15. Now run the command to create a cluster from your configuration file

step4m

You can see the 2 new nodes created by

step4n

To check cluster is created in the RedHat

console.

step4o

step4q

Step 5: Deploy the nginx server in OpenShift Cluster

1. Create nginx yaml script

2. Copy below nginx.yaml script save it

3. Now run the following commands

step5

4. Go to your browser and paste the External IP of the nginx server

step5b

Conclusion

The built-in Kubernetes support makes operating a PaaS environment very straightforward, and the powerful management tools make day-to-day management a breeze. The platform handles resource intensive workloads like elastic search and media streaming. It’s also worth noting that the platform performs exceptionally well under load. For example, I saw almost no latency when running tests that subjected the applications to excessive demand. However, there are some aspects of the platform that could be improved.

In particular, I would very much like to see additional support for additional cloud providers. Currently, only the RHEL ecosystems are supported, so organizations that prefer to host their platforms on other OS will need to look elsewhere for their solutions. Finally, the cost of maintaining the platform could be reduced if the platform were hosted in regions that are closer to customers’ locations. As we discussed in the last post, this would help to reduce latency and provide more consistent performance. All in all, though, the OpenShift on Google Cloud Platform is a great solution for organizations looking to deploy and operate complex multi-tier applications in the cloud.

I hope that this guide will be useful to anyone who is trying to deploy and run applications on the OpenShift in GCP.

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FAQs

1. Is OpenShift free to use?

ANS: – OpenShift offers a free starter tier for experimentation, testing, and development. When you are ready to put your application into production and make it available to others, or if you require more resources than the free tier provides, you can upgrade to the paid tier.

2. Is OpenShift open source?

ANS: – Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise grade open-source application platform that accelerates the development and delivery of cloud-native applications across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, all the way to the edge.

3. How do I install OpenShift on my computer?

ANS: – To quickly start up an OpenShift cluster locally inside of a virtual machine (VM), you can use Red Hat Code Ready Containers. CodeReady Containers requires a hypervisor to run the VM containing OpenShift.

  • VMware
  • Virtual Box

WRITTEN BY Navneet Nirmal Toppo

Navneet is a Research Associate at CloudThat. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Professional and a Certified Network Security Specialist and who has experience in AWS, Azure, GCP & vSphere. He is passionate about cloud computing, cybersecurity, and learning new cloud-native technologies who strives to provide the best cloud experience to clients through transparency.

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