Deploying IBM Cloud Pak for

Data Express on Single Node

OpenShift Cluster

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Overview
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform offers a single platform to build, deploy, and manage
applications consistently across hybrid cloud and multi-cloud infrastructure. Earlier, the smallest
supported cluster size (including control and worker nodes) was the three-node cluster. As of OpenShift
4.9, we can deploy a full OpenShift deployment in a single node, offering both control and worker node
capabilities in a single server. This is beneficial for users who have adopted Kubernetes at their central
management sites and who wish to have independent Kubernetes clusters at edge sites can deploy this
smaller OpenShift footprint.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data (CPD) is a fully-integrated data and AI platform, built on top of Red Hat
OpenShift container platform and can run on your private, on-premises cluster or an OpenShift
deployment on cloud. CPD simplifies data access, automates data discovery and curation, and safeguards
sensitive information by automating policy enforcement for all users in your organization. It helps
connect to your data, govern it, find it, and use it for analysis.

Value Proposition & Benefits

• Ideal solution for developers who want to test out Cloud Pak for data Express (CPD) in a small-
scale environment before deploying them on to a larger cluster.
• Provides smallest overhead for installing CPD on OpenShift in terms of physical hardware
(control/worker node capabilities in a single server).
• Suitable for PoC/Demo setups of CPD with smaller set of deployed assemblies that are
anticipated to be short-lived, and therefore resilience is not a major issue.
• CPD services that are independent of any other prerequisites may benefit with a stand-alone
installation on a resource constrained SNO cluster.
• SNO provides many of the same features as the full-fledged OpenShift cluster (web-based console
that allows users to manage their applications, including deploying, monitoring etc.)

Note: The major tradeoff with an installation on a single node is the lack of high availability. In
environments that require high availability, it is recommended that the architecture be configured in a
way in which if the hardware was to fail, those workloads are transitioned to other sites or nodes while
the impacted node is recovered.

Minimum Resource Requirements

For a production grade server, the minimum resource requirements for SNO, sufficient to run
OpenShift Container Platform services and a production workload. As given on Red Hat official site:

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Prerequisites for installation
This edition has been verified on the following software versions:
• RedHat OpenShift: 4.10
• Cloud Pak for Data Express and addons: 4.6.4
• Platform : AWS
Other prerequisites:
• AWS IAM temporary admin Access & Secret key permissions
• A public domain configured in Route 53
• The target region must have available quota
• OpenShift installer file for specific OCP version
• Red Hat account pull secret
Create a Public Hosted Zone
To install OpenShift Container Platform, we must need to register a Domain Name. For that you can
use Route53 service in AWS or any other domain name. When we register a domain with Route 53, AWS
create a hosted zone for you automatically.
Download OpenShift Installer

Create a Red Hat OpenShift account. Open the hybrid console (https://console.redhat.com/openshift/)
and select Cloud option from the cluster tab and create cluster by selecting AWS option. Select Linux

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option in the dropdown and copy the link, Right click on the "Download installer" button and copy the
link. Download the installer using wget command. Unzip OpenShift installer.

Installation
There are different choices to perform installation of the single node OpenShift cluster. Here we
explore one simple way we have been using to deploy an SNO from scratch on AWS. The OpenShift
installer will provision following resources:

• Virtual private cloud (VPC) that spans three Availability Zones (private and one public subnet in
each Availability Zone).
• Single EC2 compute/worker node instance.
• Internet gateway to provide internet access to each subnet.
• Load Balancer for access to the OpenShift API.

Again, it’s important to note that running OpenShift with only a single node is not recommended for
production environments due to the lack of high availability and scalability.
Note: RedHat does not claim support for single node OpenShift clusters on cloud providers.
Deploy The OpenShift Cluster
Our environment is now ready for OpenShift cluster installation on AWS Cloud Infrastructure.

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 q Generate Install config file using following command.

1. For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name to store the files that the installation
program creates. After you run the command, it will prompt you for a few inputs
• SSH public key
• Cloud Provider: Select the cloud provider from the listed items
• Region: Select the Region where you want to deploy the cluster
• Base Domain: select from the dropdown
• Cluster Name: provide a unique name.
• Red Hat Pull Secret

q Edit the install-config.yaml.

1. The cluster domain name

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 2. Set the compute replicas to 0. This makes the control plane node schedulable. Set the control
Plane replicas to 1. In conjunction with the previous compute setting, this setting ensures the
cluster runs on a single node.
3. Specify the instance type for the EC2 , This parameter sets the vCPU and Memory of the
instance
4. The AWS region where cluster will be deployed
5. The cluster network plugin to install.
6. Copy the pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager and add the contents to this
configuration setting.

q Run the installation program. Execute the following command to create a cluster.

1. For <installation_directory>, specify the location of your customized ./install-config.yaml file.

2. To view different installation details, specify warn, debug, or error instead of info

During installation, installation program will create a temporary extra bootstrap node which will get
automatically torn down by the installer when installation is done, leaving you with a single-node
OpenShift installation. The process might take around 20 minutes to get the cluster up and running.
Do not delete the installation program or the files that the installation program creates. Both are
required to delete the cluster.
When the cluster deployment completes, directions for accessing your cluster, including a link to its web
console and credentials for the kubeadmin user, displays as below in your terminal.

Configuring Persistent Storage

For configuring persistent storage for the cluster, we are going to make use of Amazon Elastic File
System (EFS). The steps which we need to follow to setup EFS are:
q Create an EFS file system on the same VPC as that of ec2 and note the filesystem DNS name.
q Create Storage Class
Apply yaml files for:
• Configuring authorization for EFS volumes
• Create the EFS provisioner

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 • Create the EFS StorageClass
To verify whether the storage has been properly configured we can execute the oc get sc command. In
the output look for the following storage classes
File storage: efs-nfs-client
Block storage: gp2-csi or gp3-csi
Execute oc get pods –n default to check for nfs-client provisioner pod.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data Express Parts

IBM Cloud Pak for Data Express is a set of three pre-built, pre-sized offerings designed to address
problems in cataloging, analyzing and integrating data. Express offerings give you a choice of three
popular data fabric starting points: IBM Data Governance Express for a data catalog, IBM ELT Pushdown
Express for data pipelines or IBM Data Science and MLOps Express for analytics and modeling. Each
provides pre-sized, pre-selected services designed to address a current data fabric need. All three
solutions are built on the IBM Cloud Pak for Data framework and the Red Hat OpenShift Container
Platform.
1. Data Governance Express
Data Governance Express augments its catalog by discovering and classifying data assets with
automation and enforcing your organization’s security controls to help protect sensitive data from
prying eyes.
Refer to their respective documentation links for installation instructions.
• Analytics Engine : https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=spark-
installing
• WKC core : https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=catalog-installing

2. ELT Pushdown Express

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) which is first loading raw data into a data warehouse and then
transforming it into a finished state that’s ready for reporting and analytics.
Refer to their respective documentation links for installation instructions.
• DataStage: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=datastage-
installing
• Watson Pipelines: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=pipelines-
installing

3. Data Science and MLOps Express

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Data science covers simple exploration and visualization through to modeling and AI training. MLOps
(Machine Learning Ops) covers capabilities to help an organization use models in production.
Mandatory Services: WSL, WML, WOS

• Watson Studio: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=ws-installing

• Watson Machine Learning: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-
data/4.6.x?topic=learning-installing
• Watson OpenScale: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/SSQNUZ_4.6.x/svc-openscale/openscale-
svc-install.html

Optional Services - Analytics Engine, SPSS Modeler, Decision Optimization, Watson Pipelines, RStudio

• Analytics Engine: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=spark-

installing
• SPSS Modeler: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=modeler-
installing
• Decision Optimization: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-
data/4.6.x?topic=optimization-installing
• Watson Pipelines: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=pipelines-
installing
• RStudio: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-paks/cp-data/4.6.x?topic=runtimes-installing

Note: Depending on number of services to be installed, it may be needed to increase the pod limit
(default maximum pods per node is 250). Refer below:
https://docs.openshift.com/container-platform/4.12/nodes/nodes/nodes-nodes-managing-max-
pods.html
This can cause the node to reboot, so it would be better to do this before starting CPD installation.

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vCPU and Memory requests on installation
CPD version: 4.6.4
OCP version: 4.10
Services CPU Memory
Requests requests

units (vCPU) (GB)

IBM Data Governance: 24 69

WKC core
Analytics Engine
ELT Pushdown Express: 27 75
DataStage
Watson Pipelines

Data science and MLOps #1: 31 90

Watson Studio
WML
Watson Openscale
Auto AI
Jupyter notebook
Data science and MLOps #2: 23 82
Watson Studio
WML
SPSS Modeler
Auto AI
Jupyter NB
Data science and MLOps #3: 21 65
Watson Studio
WML
Watson Pipelines
Auto AI
Jupyter NB

Data science and MLOps #4: 20 64

Watson Studio
WML
Decision Optimization

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Uninstalling The Cluster
Pre-requisites:
• You have a copy of the installation program that you used to deploy the cluster.
• You have the files that the installation program generated when you created your cluster.

1. For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation
files in.
2. To view different details, specify warn, debug, or error instead of info

Conclusion
In conclusion, SNO is a cost-effective tool for developers and system administrators who want to
deploy Cloud Pak for Data Express in a small-scale environment. It provides a way to make use of
various CPD services with minimum resource overhead for running smaller, fault-tolerant, and short-
term projects. Overall, SNO is a viable option for anyone who wants to test their applications in a
smaller environment or manage a small number of applications without the need for a full-fledged
cluster.

References:
• Single Node OpenShift RedHat documentation: https://docs.openshift.com/container-
platform/4.12/installing/installing_sno/install-sno-installing-sno.html
• Installing a cluster on AWS with customizations: https://docs.openshift.com/container-
platform/4.10/installing/installing_aws/installing-aws- customizations.html
• Configuring persistent storage: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-
us/openshift_container_platform/4.3/html/storage/configuring-persistent-storage

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Thanks to the colleagues of Cloud Pak for Data Platform Engineering team for the support.

Authors
This paper was produced by IBM Cloud Pak for Data Multi-Cloud team led by Anuj Sharma.
Contributed by the following people.

Vamshidhar Cholleti is a Senior Software Developer from IBM-ISL (India

Software Labs). He has been working with the Cloud Pak for Data Team
since Dec 2020. He worked on various CPD Deployments on Cloud, PoCs
and had working experience in Multiple Cloud Environments like AWS,
Azure and IBM Cloud.

Aparna Sreekumar, Software Developer for Cloud Pak for Data Multi-
Cloud team, India Software Labs (ISL). Working with IBM since August
2022.

Gayathri A D, Software Developer for Cloud Pak for Data Multi-Cloud

team, India Software Labs (ISL). Working with IBM since August 2022.

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