Zero to Cloud Operations on OpenShift in Minutes

Some time ago, I walked through installing the cloud management solution known as CloudForms in a container.

While this was fun, it was not really feasible and quickly ran into limitations in use.

The real solution is pulling this example into the Red Hat Demo Central collection and putting it on a cloud solution based on open technologies.

This gives you the chance to go from your laptop to cloud installation and onwards to a cloud operations solution in just minutes.

Let's take a look at how this works, shall we?

Cloud Operations in Minutes?

So now that you have this great management tool, what next to get it installed in just minutes?

The basis is to first get your own private cloud installed on your laptop based on OpenShift Container Platform, the latest version. This is achieved with the project ocp-install-demo. Just follow the instructions, and in just a few minutes, you will be logged into your own private cloud.

The next step is to get the rhcs-cloudforms-demo in the Red Hat Demo Central and install CloudForms in a few more minutes.

Red Hat CloudForms Install Demo

Installation is easy as following the following steps. First, install the OpenShift Container Platform and then push a container version of CloudForms into the cloud.

1. First ensure you have an OpenShift container based installation, such as one of the following installed first:

• OCP Install Demo
• Or your own OpenShift installation.

2. Download and unzip.
3. Run 'init.sh':

   # The installation needs to be pointed to a running version
   # of OpenShift, so pass an IP address such as:
   #
   $ ./init.sh 192.168.99.100  # example for OCP.

4. Follow the displayed instructions to log into your brand new Red Hat CloudForms!

Be sure to wait for a bit so that the containers can populate and deploy properly. 

CloudForms uses a memcache and PostgreSQL container image that must be available for data persistence.

You can find the service route (the URL to access CloudForms management console) by looking up the application routes in the provide menu in OpenShift. 

Hope you enjoy this container install with CloudForms and can experience the management features on your very own local machine.

Comment and feedback welcome in the project.