10 Steps to Cloud Happiness (Step 1): Get a Cloud

Every journey starts at the beginning, and this journey's no exception.

As previously presented in the introduction to this series of articles, you'll be taken through the 10 steps to your cloud happiness.

This journey focuses on the storyline that you're interested in due to the push towards a digital transformation and the need to deliver applications to a cloud service.

This focus on application delivery and all the new moving parts, like containers, cloud, PaaS, and digital journeys might leave you searching for that simple plan to get started. There is nothing like getting hands-on to quickly leverage the experience you've acquired over the years, so let's dive right in.

The first thing you'll need is a cloud, but not just some service online that you don't really get your hands on. This cloud needs to run on-premise, meaning you're going to leverage it as a test platform for your application development and delivery. You'll need that right on your very own laptop, so let's see how that works.

Get a Cloud

The cloud making you happy needs to satisfy your container development needs and not interfere with your daily application delivery workflow.

A good start is looking towards open technologies that operate on open standards. The OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) does just that, working closely with open source projects to deliver a PaaS experience on your laptop like no other.

The OCP install project has been set up to make the local installation of your very own cloud as easy as possible. It includes checks that ensure you have the right prerequisites installed and if not, you're prompted where to find them. Everything is freely available, or you can raise an issue in the project repository.

Just follow the three easy steps to your very own cloud in just minutes:

1. Download and unzip project.
2. Run init.sh or init.bat to start installation (follow installation instructions on your screen)
3. When it finishes, follow instructions to log in to your new OpenShift Container Platform.

This installation provides not only the OCP platform, but it installs the containers you need through imagestreams for JBoss middleware, xPaaS containers, and such extras like support for .NET container development.

If you still need help, there is a workshop lab that walks you step-by-step through the installation:

So stay tuned as this list is tackled one-by-one over the coming weeks and months to provide you with a clear direction towards your very own application delivery in the cloud happiness.