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Getting started with Operator SDK for Go-based Operators

To demonstrate the basics of setting up and running a Go-based Operator using tools and libraries provided by the Operator SDK, Operator developers can build an example Go-based Operator for Memcached, a distributed key-value store, and deploy it to a cluster.

The Red Hat-supported version of the Operator SDK CLI tool, including the related scaffolding and testing tools for Operator projects, is deprecated and is planned to be removed in a future release of OKD. Red Hat will provide bug fixes and support for this feature during the current release lifecycle, but this feature will no longer receive enhancements and will be removed from future OKD releases.

The Red Hat-supported version of the Operator SDK is not recommended for creating new Operator projects. Operator authors with existing Operator projects can use the version of the Operator SDK CLI tool released with OKD 4 to maintain their projects and create Operator releases targeting newer versions of OKD.

The following related base images for Operator projects are not deprecated. The runtime functionality and configuration APIs for these base images are still supported for bug fixes and for addressing CVEs.

  • The base image for Ansible-based Operator projects

  • The base image for Helm-based Operator projects

For the most recent list of major functionality that has been deprecated or removed within OKD, refer to the Deprecated and removed features section of the OKD release notes.

For information about the unsupported, community-maintained, version of the Operator SDK, see Operator SDK (Operator Framework).

Prerequisites

  • Operator SDK CLI installed

  • OpenShift CLI (oc) 4+ installed

  • Go 1.21+

  • Logged into an OKD 4 cluster with oc with an account that has cluster-admin permissions

  • To allow the cluster to pull the image, the repository where you push your image must be set as public, or you must configure an image pull secret

Additional resources

Creating and deploying Go-based Operators

You can build and deploy a simple Go-based Operator for Memcached by using the Operator SDK.

Procedure

  1. Create a project.

    1. Create your project directory:

      $ mkdir memcached-operator

    2. Change into the project directory:

      $ cd memcached-operator

    3. Run the operator-sdk init command to initialize the project:

      $ operator-sdk init \
    --domain=example.com \
    --repo=github.com/example-inc/memcached-operator

      The command uses the Go plugin by default.

  2. Create an API.

    Create a simple Memcached API:

    $ operator-sdk create api \
    --resource=true \
    --controller=true \
    --group cache \
    --version v1 \
    --kind Memcached

  3. Build and push the Operator image.

    Use the default Makefile targets to build and push your Operator. Set IMG with a pull spec for your image that uses a registry you can push to:

    $ make docker-build docker-push IMG=<registry>/<user>/<image_name>:<tag>

  4. Run the Operator.

    1. Install the CRD:

      $ make install

    2. Deploy the project to the cluster. Set IMG to the image that you pushed:

      $ make deploy IMG=<registry>/<user>/<image_name>:<tag>

  5. Create a sample custom resource (CR).

    1. Create a sample CR:

      $ oc apply -f config/samples/cache_v1_memcached.yaml \
    -n memcached-operator-system

    2. Watch for the CR to reconcile the Operator:

      $ oc logs deployment.apps/memcached-operator-controller-manager \
    -c manager \
    -n memcached-operator-system

  6. Delete a CR.

    Delete a CR by running the following command:

    $ oc delete -f config/samples/cache_v1_memcached.yaml -n memcached-operator-system

  7. Clean up.

    Run the following command to clean up the resources that have been created as part of this procedure:

    $ make undeploy

Next steps