Steps to install RedHat OpenShift Local on Mac M1

NOTE:

Please refer to the Official RedHat documentation for the most current and detailed information about “Red Hat OpenShift Local”.

Before you Begin:

What is “Red Hat OpenShift Local”?

“Red Hat OpenShift Local is the quickest way to get started building OpenShift clusters. It is designed to run on a local computer to simplify setup and testing, and to emulate the cloud development environment locally with all of the tools needed to develop container-based applications.”

• “Red Hat OpenShift Local” can be used to install either a minimal OpenShift Container Platform 4 cluster or a Podman container runtime (you can choose any of these presets during installation) on your local computer.
• It provides minimal environments for development and testing purposes.
• It includes a command-line interface (CLI) to interact with the Red Hat OpenShift Local instance called crc. There are other CLI tools like oc and odo.
• crc vs oc vs odo:

odo is a CLI tool for developers who are writing, building, and deploying applications on OpenShift.

CRC helps the developer to run and test their application locally before moving them to the production OpenShift cluster.

With oc command, you can create applications and manage OpenShift Container Platform projects from a terminal.

• It is not intended for Production use and has no supported upgrade path to newer OpenShift Container Platform versions.

• This blog has steps to use “Red Hat OpenShift Local” to install the “ OpenShift Container Platform cluster” preset.

About “OpenShift Container Platform cluster”:

• Control Plane and Worker Node are both installed on the same node.
• OpenShift Container Platform cluster contains non-customizable cluster settings (which should not be modified) like use of *.crc.testing domain and 172 address range used for inter-cluster communication.
• It disables the Cluster Monitoring Operator by default.
• It requires the following system resources:

4 physical CPU cores
9 GB of free memory
35 GB of storage space

• Supported OS:

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) or later.
MacOS 11 Big Sur or later.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 7, 8 and 9 minor releases and on the latest two stable Fedora releases.

Now let’s install OpenShift Container Platform cluster using “Red Hat OpenShift Local” on Mac M1

Step 1:

Download the latest release of “Red Hat OpenShift Local” from:

Link: https://console.redhat.com/openshift/create/local

• Select aarch64 for Apple Silicon M1 or M2 chipset.
• Download the pull secret too. You will need this while running the “crc start” command.

Step 2:

For Mac OS run the guided installer and follow the instructions:

Step 3:

Open a Terminal and use crc CLI to check the installed versions

bash-3.2$ crc version

CRC version: 2.32.0+54a6f9
OpenShift version: 4.14.8
Podman version: 4.4.4

bash-3.2$ crc setup

INFO Using bundle path /Users/puneeth/.crc/cache/crc_vfkit_4.14.8_arm64.crcbundle 
INFO Checking if running as non-root 
INFO Checking if crc-admin-helper executable is cached 
INFO Checking if running on a supported CPU architecture 
INFO Checking if crc executable symlink exists 
INFO Checking minimum RAM requirements 
INFO Checking if running emulated on Apple silicon 
INFO Checking if vfkit is installed 
INFO Checking if CRC bundle is extracted in ‘$HOME/.crc’ 
INFO Checking if /Users/puneeth/.crc/cache/crc_vfkit_4.14.8_arm64.crcbundle exists 
INFO Getting bundle for the CRC executable 
INFO Downloading bundle: /Users/puneeth/.crc/cache/crc_vfkit_4.14.8_arm64.crcbundle… 
4.25 GiB / 4.25 GiB [ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -] 100.00% 8.52 MiB/s
INFO Uncompressing /Users/puneeth/.crc/cache/crc_vfkit_4.14.8_arm64.crcbundle 
crc.img: 31.00 GiB / 31.00 GiB [ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — ] 100.00%
oc: 115.75 MiB / 115.75 MiB [ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -] 100.00%
INFO Checking if old launchd config for tray and/or daemon exists 
INFO Checking if crc daemon plist file is present and loaded 
INFO Adding crc daemon plist file and loading it 
Your system is correctly setup for using CRC. Use ‘crc start’ to start the instance

bash-3.2$ crc start
INFO Using bundle path /Users/puneeth/.crc/cache/crc_vfkit_4.14.8_arm64.crcbundle 
INFO Checking if running as non-root 
INFO Checking if crc-admin-helper executable is cached 
INFO Checking if running on a supported CPU architecture 
INFO Checking if crc executable symlink exists 
INFO Checking minimum RAM requirements 
INFO Checking if running emulated on Apple silicon 
INFO Checking if vfkit is installed 
INFO Checking if old launchd config for tray and/or daemon exists 
INFO Checking if crc daemon plist file is present and loaded 
INFO Loading bundle: crc_vfkit_4.14.8_arm64… 
CRC requires a pull secret to download content from Red Hat.
You can copy it from the Pull Secret section of https://console.redhat.com/openshift/create/local.
? Please enter the pull secret *******************************************************************************************************************************INFO Creating CRC VM for OpenShift 4.14.8… 
INFO Generating new SSH key pair… 
INFO Generating new password for the kubeadmin user 
INFO Starting CRC VM for openshift 4.14.8… 
INFO CRC instance is running with IP 127.0.0.1 
INFO CRC VM is running 
INFO Updating authorized keys… 
INFO Configuring shared directories 
INFO Check internal and public DNS query… 
INFO Check DNS query from host… 
INFO Verifying validity of the kubelet certificates… 
INFO Starting kubelet service 
INFO Waiting for kube-apiserver availability… [takes around 2min] 
INFO Adding user’s pull secret to the cluster… 
INFO Updating SSH key to machine config resource… 
INFO Waiting until the user’s pull secret is written to the instance disk… 
INFO Changing the password for the kubeadmin user 
INFO Updating cluster ID… 
INFO Updating root CA cert to admin-kubeconfig-client-ca configmap… 
INFO Starting openshift instance… [waiting for the cluster to stabilize] 
INFO 2 operators are progressing: image-registry, openshift-controller-manager 
INFO All operators are available. Ensuring stability… 
INFO Operators are stable (2/3)… 
INFO Operators are stable (3/3)… 
INFO Adding crc-admin and crc-developer contexts to kubeconfig… 
Started the OpenShift cluster.

The server is accessible via web console at:
 https://console-openshift-console.apps-crc.testing

Log in as administrator:
 Username: xxxx
 Password: xxxx

Log in as user:
 Username: xxxx
 Password: xxxx

Use the ‘oc’ command line interface:
 $ eval $(crc oc-env)
 $ oc login -u developer https://api.crc.testing:6443

bash-3.2$ crc status

CRC VM: Running
OpenShift: Running (v4.14.8)
RAM Usage: 6.488GB of 9.353GB
Disk Usage: 22.05GB of 32.68GB (Inside the CRC VM)
Cache Usage: 38.1GB
Cache Directory: /Users/puneeth/.crc/cache

Step 4:

Login to OpenShift Dashboard

Other useful commands:

• To delete existing Red Hat OpenShift Local instance

crc delete

• To setup a new Red Hat OpenShift Local release

crc setup

• To start the new Red Hat OpenShift Local instance

crc start 

• To select Podman container runtime preset

crc config set preset podman

• To access the OpenShift Container Platform web console with your default web browser

crc console