Getting started - Developing Operators | Operators

Prerequisites
Creating and deploying Helm-based Operators
Next steps

The Operator SDK includes options for generating an Operator project that leverages existing Helm charts to deploy Kubernetes resources as a unified application, without having to write any Go code.

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).

To demonstrate the basics of setting up and running an Helm-based Operator using tools and libraries provided by the Operator SDK, Operator developers can build an example Helm-based Operator for Nginx and deploy it to a cluster.

Prerequisites

Operator SDK CLI installed
OpenShift CLI (oc) 4+ installed
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 Helm-based Operators

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

Procedure

Create a project.
1. Create your project directory:
  $ mkdir nginx-operator
2. Change into the project directory:
  $ cd nginx-operator
3. Run the operator-sdk init command with the helm plugin to initialize the project:
  $ operator-sdk init \ --plugins=helm
Create an API.

Create a simple Nginx API:
```
$ operator-sdk create api \
    --group demo \
    --version v1 \
    --kind Nginx
```
This API uses the built-in Helm chart boilerplate from the helm create command.
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>
```
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>
Add a security context constraint (SCC).

The Nginx service account requires privileged access to run in OKD. Add the following SCC to the service account for the nginx-sample pod:
```
$ oc adm policy add-scc-to-user \
    anyuid system:serviceaccount:nginx-operator-system:nginx-sample
```

Create a sample custom resource (CR).

Create a sample CR:

$ oc apply -f config/samples/demo_v1_nginx.yaml \
    -n nginx-operator-system

Watch for the CR to reconcile the Operator:

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

Delete a CR.

Delete a CR by running the following command:

$ oc delete -f config/samples/demo_v1_nginx.yaml -n nginx-operator-system

Clean up.

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

Next steps

See Operator SDK tutorial for Helm-based Operators for a more in-depth walkthrough on building a Helm-based Operator.

Getting started with Operator SDK for Helm-based Operators

Prerequisites

Creating and deploying Helm-based Operators

Next steps