The IBM® MQ Operator can be installed onto Red Hat® OpenShift® using the OpenShift console or command line interface (CLI).
Before you begin
To ensure that your installation goes as smoothly as possible, make sure that you understand all
of the prerequisites and requirements before you start your installation. See Planning for IBM MQ in containers.
Procedure
- Install Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
For detailed steps to install
OpenShift, see
Installing Red Hat software 4.6 or
later.
Important: Ensure that you install a supported version of
OpenShift Container Platform. For example, to use
IBM MQ Operator 2.0 or later, you must install
OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 or later. Also note that only the
OpenShift Container Platform
Extended Update Support (
EUS) releases are supported, which are the even-numbered
minor releases, for example
4.14 and
4.16. For more information, see
IBM Cloud Pak and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
compatibility.
For any steps that use the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform CLI, you must be
logged in to your OpenShift cluster with oc
login
. To install the CLI, see Getting started with the OpenShift CLI.
After you install OpenShift, you can verify and
gain access to your container software by using the IBM entitlement key that you create in Create the entitlement
key secret.
- Configure storage.
You must define storage classes in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and set
your storage configuration to satisfy your sizing requirements.
A list of known compliant and non-compliant file systems, and notes on other limits or
restrictions, can be found in the Testing statement for IBM MQ file systems.
Recommended storage providers can be found on the CP4I
Storage considerations page.
- Mirror images (air-gap only).
If your cluster is in a restricted (air-gapped) network environment, you must mirror the
IBM MQ images. Depending on your configuration, you might also
need to mirror some additional components. Read the following information, then mirror the images as required.
To create mirror images, see
Mirroring images for an air-gapped cluster.
- Add the IBM MQ Operator catalog
source.
- Install the IBM MQ Operator.
Choose one of the following two options (use the console, or use the CLI):
- Create the entitlement key secret (online installs only).
The IBM MQ Operator deploys queue manager images that are
pulled from a container registry that performs a license entitlement check. This check requires an
entitlement key that is stored in a docker-registry pull secret. If you do not
yet have an entitlement key in the namespace in which you will install queue managers, follow these
instructions to get an entitlement key and create a pull secret.
Note: The entitlement key is not required if only IBM MQ Advanced for Developers (Non-Warranted) queue managers are going to be
deployed.
You can create the entitlement key secret using either the OpenShift console or the CLI. The following example uses the
CLI:
- Get the entitlement key that is assigned to your IBM ID. Log in to MyIBM
Container Software Library with the IBM ID and
password that are associated with the entitled software.
- In the Entitlement keys section, select Copy key
to copy the entitlement key to the clipboard.
- From the OpenShift CLI, run the following command
to create an image pull secret called ibm-entitlement-key.
oc create secret docker-registry ibm-entitlement-key \
--docker-server=cp.icr.io \
--docker-username=cp \
--docker-password=<entitlement-key> \
--docker-email=<user-email>
\--namespace=<namespace>
Where
<entitlement-key> is the entitlement key that you copied in step b,
<user-email> is the IBM ID
associated with the entitled software, and <namespace> is the namespace that
you installed your IBM MQ Operator into.
- Optional:
Install CP4I and its dependencies.
There are some additional required components when you deploy at least one queue manager where
all of the following statements are true:
- You are using IBM MQ 9.3.4 or later.
- You are using a CP4I license.
- The IBM MQ Console is enabled.
- You are using the CP4I
Keycloak service for IBM MQ Console single sign-on (SSO) authentication and
authorization (the default).
If all the previous statements are true, then SSO is provided by
Keycloak and you must complete the following additional steps:
- Deploy the License Service.
- Deploy a queue manager.