Chapter 7. OpenShift Ansible Broker Configuration

A production broker configuration is designed to be pointed at a trusted container distribution registry, such as the Red Hat Container Catalog (RHCC):

registry:
  - name: rhcc
    type: rhcc
    url: https://registry.access.redhat.com
    tag: v3.9
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"
  - type: local_openshift
    name: localregistry
    namespaces:
      - openshift
    white_list: []

However, a development broker configuration is primarily used by developers working on the broker. To enable developer settings, set the registry name to dev and the dev_broker field in the broker section to true:

registry:
  name: dev

broker:
  dev_broker: true

The broker configuration determines how the broker should read any registry credentials. They can be read from the user and pass values in the registry section, for example:

registry:
  - name: isv
    type: openshift
    url: https://registry.connect.redhat.com
    user: <user>
    pass: <password>

If you want to ensure these credentials are not publicly accessible, the auth_type field in the registry section can be set to the secret or file type. The secret type configures a registry to use a secret from the broker’s namespace, while the file type configures a registry to use a secret that has been mounted as a volume.

To use the secret or file type:

A mock registry is useful for reading local APB specs. Instead of going out to a registry to search for image specs, this uses a list of local specs. Set the name of the registry to mock to use the mock registry.

registry:
  - name: mock
    type: mock

The dockerhub type allows you to load APBs from a specific organization in the DockerHub. For example, the ansibleplaybookbundle organization.

registry:
  - name: dockerhub
    type: dockerhub
    org: ansibleplaybookbundle
    user: <user>
    pass: <password>
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"

APBs can be filtered out by their image name using a combination of the white_list or black_list parameters, set on a registry basis inside the broker’s configuration.

Both are optional lists of regular expressions that will be run over the total set of discovered APBs for a given registry to determine matches.

For example:

white_list:
  - "foo.*-apb$"
  - "^my-apb$"

Anything matching on foo.*-apb$ and only my-apb will be allowed through in this case. All other APBs will be rejected.

black_list:
  - "bar.*-apb$"
  - "^foobar-apb$"

Anything matching on bar.*-apb$ and only foobar-apb will be blocked in this case. All other APBs will be allowed through.

white_list:
  - "foo.*-apb$"
  - "^my-apb$"
black_list:
  - "^foo-rootkit-apb$"

Here, foo-rootkit-apb is specifically blocked by the blacklist despite its match in the whitelist because the whitelist match is overridden.

Otherwise, only those matching on foo.*-apb$ and my-apb will be allowed through.

registry:
  - type: dockerhub
    name: dockerhub
    url: https://registry.hub.docker.com
    user: <user>
    pass: <password>
    org: <org>
    white_list:
      - "foo.*-apb$"
      - "^my-apb$"
    black_list:
      - "bar.*-apb$"
      - "^foobar-apb$"

Using the local_openshift type will allow you to load APBs from the OpenShift Container Registry that is internal to the OpenShift Container Platform cluster. You can configure the namespaces in which you want to look for published APBs.

registry:
  - type: local_openshift
    name: lo
    namespaces:
      - openshift
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"

Using the rhcc type will allow you to load APBs that are published to the Red Hat Container Catalog (RHCC) registry.

registry:
  - name: rhcc
    type: rhcc
    url: https://registry.access.redhat.com
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"

Using the openshift type allows you to load APBs that are published to the ISV container registry at registry.connect.redhat.com.

registry:
  - name: isv
    type: openshift
    user: <user> 1
    pass: <password>
    url: https://registry.connect.redhat.com
    images: 2
      - <image_1>
      - <image_2>
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"

You can use more than one registry to separate APBs into logical organizations and be able to manage them from the same broker. The registries must have a unique, non-empty name. If there is no unique name, the service broker will fail to start with an error message alerting you to the problem.

registry:
  - name: dockerhub
    type: dockerhub
    org: ansibleplaybookbundle
    user: <user>
    pass: <password>
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"
  - name: rhcc
    type: rhcc
    url: <rhcc_url>
    white_list:
      - ".*-apb$"

The broker’s configured registry adapters must be able to communicate with their external registries in order to bootstrap successfully and load remote APB manifests. These requests can be made via the proxy, however, the proxy must ensure that the required remote hosts are accessible.

Example required whitelisted hosts:

If during initial installation you configure your OpenShift Container Platform cluster to run behind a proxy (see Configuring Global Proxy Options), when the OAB is deployed it will:

and no further configuration is needed.

If your cluster’s global proxy options were not configured during initial installation or prior to the broker being deployed, or if you have modified the global proxy settings, you must manually configure the broker for external access via proxy:

It is common that APB pods themselves may require external access via proxy as well. If the broker recognizes it has a proxy configuration, it will transparently apply these environment variables to the APB pods that it spawns. As long as the modules used within the APB respect proxy configuration via environment variable, the APB will also use these settings to perform its work.

Finally, it is possible the services spawned by the APB may also require external network access via proxy. The APB must be authored to set these environment variables explicitly if recognizes them in its own execution environment, or the cluster operator must manually modify the required services to inject them into their environments.