Chapter 4. Deploying Red Hat CloudForms

Any POSTGRES_* or DATABASE_* template parameters in the cfme-template.yaml file may be customized through the openshift_management_template_parameters hash in your inventory file..

Any POSTGRES_* or DATABASE_* template parameters in the cfme-template-ext-db.yaml file may be customized through the openshift_management_template_parameters hash in your inventory file..

External PostgreSQL databases require you to provide database connection parameters. You must set the required connection keys in the openshift_management_template_parameters parameter in your inventory. The following keys are required:

Your inventory would contain a line similar to:

[OSEv3:vars]
openshift_management_app_template=cfme-template-ext-db 1
openshift_management_template_parameters={'DATABASE_USER': 'root', 'DATABASE_PASSWORD': 'mypassword', 'DATABASE_IP': '10.10.10.10', 'DATABASE_PORT': '5432', 'DATABASE_NAME': 'cfme'}

The NFS storage class is best suited for proof-of-concept and test deployments. It is also the default storage class for deployments. No additional configuration is required for this choice.

This storage class configures NFS on a cluster host (by default, the first master in the inventory file) to back the required PVs. The application requires a PV, and the database (which may be hosted externally) may require a second. PV minimum required sizes are 5GiB for the Red Hat CloudForms application, and 15GiB for the PostgreSQL database (20GiB minimum available space on a volume or partition if used specifically for NFS purposes).

Customization is provided through the following role variables:

External NFS leans on pre-configured NFS servers to provide exports for the required PVs. For external NFS you must have a cfme-app and optionally a cfme-db (for containerized database) exports.

Configuration is provided through the following role variables:

The openshift_management_storage_nfs_external_hostname parameter must be set to the host name or IP of your external NFS server.

If /exports is not the parent directory to your exports then you must set the base directory via the openshift_management_storage_nfs_base_dir parameter.

For example, if your server export is /exports/hosted/prod/cfme-app, then you must set openshift_management_storage_nfs_base_dir=/exports/hosted/prod.

If you are using OpenShift Container Platform cloud provider integration for your storage class, Red Hat CloudForms can also use the cloud provider storage to back its required PVs. For this functionality to work, you must have configured the openshift_cloudprovider_kind variable (for AWS or GCE) and all associated parameters specific to your chosen cloud provider.

When the application is created using this storage class, the required PVs are automatically provisioned using the configured cloud provider storage integration.

There are no additional variables to configure the behavior of this storage class.

The preconfigured storage class implies that you know exactly what you are doing and that all storage requirements have been taken care ahead of time. Typically this means that you have already created the correctly sized PVs. The installer will do nothing to modify any storage settings.

There are no additional variables to configure the behavior of this storage class.

This example is the simplest, using all of the default values and choices. This results in a fully-containerized (podified) Red Hat CloudForms installation. All application components, as well as the PostgreSQL database, are created as pods in OpenShift Container Platform:

[OSEv3:vars]
openshift_management_app_template=cfme-template

This is as the previous example, except that instead of using local NFS services in the cluster, it uses an existing, external NFS server (such as a storage appliance). Note the two new parameters:

[OSEv3:vars]
openshift_management_app_template=cfme-template
openshift_management_storage_class=nfs_external 1
openshift_management_storage_nfs_external_hostname=nfs.example.com 2

If the external NFS host exports directories under a different parent directory, such as /exports/hosted/prod, add the following additional variable:

openshift_management_storage_nfs_base_dir=/exports/hosted/prod

This example overrides the persistent volume (PV) sizes. PV sizes must be set via openshift_management_template_parameters, which ensures that the application and database are able to make claims on created PVs without interfering with each other:

[OSEv3:vars]
openshift_management_app_template=cfme-template
openshift_management_template_parameters={'APPLICATION_VOLUME_CAPACITY': '10Gi', 'DATABASE_VOLUME_CAPACITY': '25Gi'}

In a test or proof-of-concept installation, you may need to reduce the application and database memory requirements to fit within your capacity. Note that reducing memory limits can result in reduced performance or a complete failure to initialize the application:

[OSEv3:vars]
openshift_management_app_template=cfme-template
openshift_management_template_parameters={'APPLICATION_MEM_REQ': '3000Mi', 'POSTGRESQL_MEM_REQ': '1Gi', 'ANSIBLE_MEM_REQ': '512Mi'}

This example instructs the installer to process the application template with the parameter APPLICATION_MEM_REQ set to 3000Mi, POSTGRESQL_MEM_REQ set to 1Gi, and ANSIBLE_MEM_REQ set to 512Mi.

These parameters can be combined with the parameters displayed in the previous example Override PV Sizes.

To use an external database, you must change the openshift_management_app_template parameter value to cfme-template-ext-db.

Additionally, database connection information must be supplied using the openshift_management_template_parameters variable. See Configuring Role Variables for more details.

[OSEv3:vars]
openshift_management_app_template=cfme-template-ext-db
openshift_management_template_parameters={'DATABASE_USER': 'root', 'DATABASE_PASSWORD': 'mypassword', 'DATABASE_IP': '10.10.10.10', 'DATABASE_PORT': '5432', 'DATABASE_NAME': 'cfme'}

See the following Red Hat CloudForms documentation for steps on manually adding your OpenShift Container Platform cluster as a container provider:

Automated container provider integration can be accomplished using the playbooks included with this role.

This playbook:

To run the container provider playbook:

# ansible-playbook -v [-i /path/to/inventory] \
    /usr/share/ansible/openshift-ansible/playbooks/openshift-management/add_container_provider.yml

To prepare the multiple provider script, complete the following manual configuration:

container_providers:
  - connection_configurations:
      - authentication: {auth_key: "<token>", authtype: bearer, type: AuthToken} 1
        endpoint: {role: default, security_protocol: ssl-without-validation, verify_ssl: 0}
    hostname: "<provider_hostname1>"
    name: <display_name1>
    port: 8443
    type: "ManageIQ::Providers::Openshift::ContainerManager"
  - connection_configurations:
      - authentication: {auth_key: "<token>", authtype: bearer, type: AuthToken} 2
        endpoint: {role: default, security_protocol: ssl-without-validation, verify_ssl: 0}
    hostname: "<provider_hostname2>"
    name: <display_name2>
    port: 8443
    type: "ManageIQ::Providers::Openshift::ContainerManager"
management_server:
  hostname: "<hostname>"
  user: <user_name>
  password: <password>

To run the multiple-providers integration script, you must provide the path to the container providers configuration file as an EXTRA_VARS parameter to the ansible-playbook command. Use the -e (or --extra-vars) parameter to set container_providers_config to the configuration file path:

# ansible-playbook -v [-i /path/to/inventory] \
    -e container_providers_config=/tmp/cp.yml \
    /usr/share/ansible/openshift-ansible/playbooks/openshift-management/add_many_container_providers.yml

After the playbook completes, you should find two new container providers in your Red Hat CloudForms service. Navigate to the Compute Containers Providers page to see an overview.