OpenShift Onboarding: From Zero to Production in 7 Steps
The OpenShift onboarding process is the critical path from zero to operational clusters. A smooth workflow means consistent environments, faster development cycles, and less risk. Done poorly, it slows releases and compounds technical debt.
1. Prepare the Environment
Check infrastructure requirements. OpenShift supports bare metal, VMs, and cloud platforms. Confirm CPU, memory, and storage resources meet cluster specs. Set up DNS and networking. Ensure load balancers are available for your ingress controllers.
2. Install OpenShift
Use the installer for your chosen platform. For Red Hat OpenShift, follow the Provider-specific steps for AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-prem. The installer handles cluster bootstrapping, control plane configuration, and worker node registration. Keep logs during installation to audit errors and warnings.
3. Configure Access and Authentication
Set up identity providers—OAuth, LDAP, or SSO. Create user roles with role-based access control (RBAC). Limit privileges to what each role needs. Test access with sample logins before moving forward.
4. Configure Networking
Define your Cluster Network Operator settings. Implement ingress rules, egress policies, and any required service mesh. Ensure pods can communicate across namespaces when necessary, while maintaining security boundaries.
5. Deploy Core Services
Install monitoring, logging, and CI/CD integrations. Configure Prometheus and Grafana for metrics. Set up ElasticSearch or Loki for logs. Integrate pipelines to automate builds and deployments.
6. Validation and Testing
Run sample workloads. Test scaling horizontally and vertically. Verify rolling updates work as expected. Check that pods recover after node restarts. Use OpenShift’s built-in diagnostics to confirm cluster health.
7. Move to Production
After validation, deploy production workloads. Monitor performance and resource usage closely during the first days. Adjust quotas and limits as needed.
A clear, documented onboarding process turns OpenShift from a complex platform into a predictable, controllable environment. Streamlined onboarding saves time, reduces failure points, and shortens the path to a running system.
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