Deploy Mobile Foundation to an existing Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Learn how to install the Mobile Foundation instance on an OpenShift cluster using the IBM Mobile Foundation Operator.

There are two ways of getting the entitlement to OpenShift Container Platform.

• You have the entitlement to IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, which includes the OpenShift Container Platform entitlement.
• You have an existing OpenShift Container Platform (bought from Red Hat).

The steps to deploy Mobile Foundation on OCP are the same irrespective of how you have obtained the OCP entitlement.

Prerequisites

Following are the prerequisites before you begin the process of installing Mobile Foundation instance using the Mobile Foundation Operator.

• OpenShift cluster v3.11 or above.
• OpenShift client tools (oc).
• Mobile Foundation requires a database. Create a supported database and keep the database access details handy for further use. See here.
• Mobile Foundation Analytics requires mounted storage volume for persisting Analytics data (NFS recommended).

Architecture

Image below shows the internal architecture of Mobile services on Red Hat OpenShift.

Installing an IBM Mobile Foundation instance

Download the IBM Mobile Foundation package

Download the IBM Mobile Foundation package for Openshift from IBM Passport Advantage (PPA). Unpack the archive to a directory called workdir.

NOTE: Refer here if you want to validate the PPA package and verify the signature.

Setup the OpenShift project for Mobile Foundation

1. Log in to OpenShift cluster and create a new project.

   export MFOS_PROJECT=<project-name>
   oc login -u <username> -p <password> <cluster-url>
   oc new-project $MFOS_PROJECT
   

2. Unpack the IBM Mobile Foundation package for Openshift using the following command.

     tar xzvf IBM-MobileFoundation-Openshift-Pak-<version>.tar.gz -C <workdir>/
   

3. Load and push the images to OpenShift registry from local.

    docker login -u <username> -p $(oc whoami -t) $(oc registry info)
    cd <workdir>/images
    ls * | xargs -I{} docker load --input {}
   
    for file in * ; do
      docker tag ${file/.tar.gz/} $(oc registry info)/$MFOS_PROJECT/${file/.tar.gz/}
      docker push $(oc registry info)/$MFOS_PROJECT/${file/.tar.gz/}
    done
   

4. Create a secret with database credentials.

    cat <<EOF | oc apply -f -
    apiVersion: v1
    data:
      MFPF_ADMIN_DB_USERNAME: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_ADMIN_DB_PASSWORD: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_RUNTIME_DB_USERNAME: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_RUNTIME_DB_PASSWORD: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_PUSH_DB_USERNAME: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_PUSH_DB_PASSWORD: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_APPCNTR_DB_USERNAME: <base64-encoded-string>
      MFPF_APPCNTR_DB_PASSWORD: <base64-encoded-string>
    kind: Secret
    metadata:
      name: mobilefoundation-db-secret
    type: Opaque
    EOF
   

   NOTE: An encoded string can be obtained using echo -n <string-to-encode> | base64.

5. For Mobile Foundation Analytics, configure a persistent volume (PV).

    cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: PersistentVolume
    metadata:
      labels:
        name: mfanalyticspv  
      name: mfanalyticspv
    spec:
      capacity:
        storage: 20Gi
      accessModes:
        - ReadWriteMany
      persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
      nfs:
        path: <nfs-mount-volume-path>
        server: <nfs-server-hostname-or-ip>
    EOF
   

6. For Mobile Foundation Analytics, configure a persistent volume claim (PVC).

   cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
    metadata:
      name: mfanalyticsvolclaim
      namespace: <projectname-or-namespace>
    spec:
      accessModes:
        - ReadWriteMany
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 20Gi
      selector:
        matchLabels:
          name: mfanalyticspv
      volumeName: mfanalyticspv
    EOF
   

Deploy the IBM Mobile Foundation Operator

1. Ensure the Operator image name (mf-operator) with tag is set for the operator in deploy/operator.yaml (REPO_URL).

    sed -i 's|REPO_URL|<image-repo-url>:<image-tag>|g' deploy/operator.yaml
   

2. Ensure the namespace is set for the cluster role binding definition in deploy/cluster_role_binding.yaml (REPLACE_NAMESPACE).

    sed -i 's|REPLACE_NAMESPACE|$MFOS_PROJECT|g' deploy/cluster_role_binding.yaml
   

3. Run the following commands to deploy CRD, operator and install Security Context Constraints (SCC).

    oc create -f deploy/crds/charts_v1_mfoperator_crd.yaml
    oc create -f deploy/
    oc adm policy add-scc-to-group mf-operator system:serviceaccounts:$MFOS_PROJECT
   

Deploy IBM Mobile Foundation components

1. To deploy any of the Mobile Foundation components, modify the custom resource configuration deploy/crds/charts_v1_mfoperator_cr.yaml according to your requirements. Complete reference to the custom configuration is found here.

   IMPORTANT NOTE : To access the Mobile Foundation instances after deployment we need to configure ingress hostname. Please make sure ingress is configured in the custom resource configuration. Refer this link on configuring the same.

    oc apply -f deploy/crds/charts_v1_mfoperator_cr.yaml
   

2. Run the following command and ensure the pods are created and running successfully. In a deployment scenario where Mobile Foundation Server and push are enabled with 3 replicas each (default), the output looks as shown below.

      $ oc get pods
      NAME                           READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
      mf-operator-5db7bb7w5d-b29j7   1/1       Running   0          1m
      mfpf-server-2327bbewss-3bw31   1/1       Running   0          1m 20s
      mfpf-server-29kw92mdlw-923ks   1/1       Running   0          1m 21s
      mfpf-server-5woxq30spw-3bw31   1/1       Running   0          1m 19s
      mfpf-push-2womwrjzmw-239ks     1/1       Running   0          59s
      mfpf-push-29kw92mdlw-882pa     1/1       Running   0          52s
      mfpf-push-1b2w2s973c-983lw     1/1       Running   0          52s
   

   NOTE: Pods in Running (1/1) status shows the service is available for access.

3. Check if the routes are created for accessing the Mobile Foundation endpoints by running the following command.

    $ oc get routes
    NAME                                      HOST/PORT               PATH        SERVICES             PORT      TERMINATION   WILDCARD
    ibm-mf-cr-1fdub-mfp-ingress-57khp   myhost.mydomain.com   /imfpush          ibm-mf-cr--mfppush     9080                    None
    ibm-mf-cr-1fdub-mfp-ingress-8skfk   myhost.mydomain.com   /mfpconsole       ibm-mf-cr--mfpserver   9080                    None
    ibm-mf-cr-1fdub-mfp-ingress-dqjr7   myhost.mydomain.com   /doc              ibm-mf-cr--mfpserver   9080                    None
    ibm-mf-cr-1fdub-mfp-ingress-ncqdg   myhost.mydomain.com   /mfpadminconfig   ibm-mf-cr--mfpserver   9080                    None
    ibm-mf-cr-1fdub-mfp-ingress-x8t2p   myhost.mydomain.com   /mfpadmin         ibm-mf-cr--mfpserver   9080                    None
    ibm-mf-cr-1fdub-mfp-ingress-xt66r   myhost.mydomain.com   /mfp              ibm-mf-cr--mfpserver   9080                    None
   

Accessing the console of IBM Mobile Foundation components

Following are the endpoints for accessing the consoles of Mobile Foundation components

• Mobile Foundation Server Administration Console - http://<ingress_hostname>/mfpconsole
• Operational Analytics Console - http://<ingress_hostname>/analytics/console
• Application Center Console - http://<ingress_hostname>/appcenterconsole

Uninstall

Use the following commands to perform a post installation clean up.

oc delete -f deploy/crds/charts_v1_mfoperator_cr.yaml
oc delete -f deploy/
oc delete -f deploy/crds/charts_v1_mfoperator_crd.yaml
oc patch crd/ibmmf.charts.helm.k8s.io -p '{"metadata":{"finalizers":[]}}' --type=merge

Additional References

1. Setting up of Mobile Foundation databases
2. Using Oracle (or) MySQL as IBM Mobile Foundation database
3. Custom Resource configuration parameters for Mobile Foundation
4. Scenarios in enabling Ingress