OpenShift Installation - Minishift

Another way of running OpenShift is by running miniShift. Minishift lets us to run a local OpenShift origin in a pre-build Virtual machine. 

  

This is what we call as Minishift. This is not an OSE distribution but a tool that will allow you to create a minimal VM that includes the Container Service. Minishift uses the OSE client OC to start up the OSE cluster by downloading and launching a preformatted container image container OSE. 

  

In order to install mini shift a hypervisor is required. Oracle Virtualbox for linux , Hyper-V for windows and xhyve for mac Operating systems. As a Prerequisite install any of these based on your Operating system. 

  

Download one of the minishift releases from Here and follow the steps as defined in the Mini shift installation document as here. There are no more steps over here, all you have to do is to install and setup the paths.

  

Once everything is setup, just run the “minishift start” command. 

We will be seeing something like this, 

work$ minishift start 

-- Starting profile 'minishift' 

-- Checking if requested OpenShift version 'v3.7.2' is valid ... OK 

-- Checking if requested OpenShift version 'v3.7.2' is supported ... OK 

-- Checking if requested hypervisor 'xhyve' is supported on this platform ... OK 

-- Checking if xhyve driver is installed ...  

  Driver is available at /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve 

  Checking for setuid bit ... OK 

-- Checking the ISO URL ... OK 

-- Checking if provided oc flags are supported ... OK 

-- Starting local OpenShift cluster using 'xhyve' hypervisor ... 

-- Starting Minishift VM ............... OK 

-- Checking for IP address ... OK 

-- Checking for nameservers ... OK 

-- Checking if external host is reachable from the Minishift VM ...  

  Pinging 8.8.8.8 ... OK 

-- Checking HTTP connectivity from the VM ...  

  Retrieving http://minishift.io/index.html ... OK 

-- Checking if persistent storage volume is mounted ... OK 

-- Checking available disk space ... 14% used OK 

-- OpenShift cluster will be configured with ... 

  Version: v3.7.2 

Starting OpenShift using openshift/origin:v3.7.2 ... 

OpenShift server started. 

  

The server is accessible via web console at: 

   https://192.168.64.3:8443 

  

By default minishift attempts to use the Virtualization driver native to the OS. If we need to use a different one we can set the argument as “--vm-driver” flag as “minishift start --vm-driver=virtualbox” 

  

When we start minishift , the OSE command line library oc will be downloaded and installed. Using the oc commands we will be managing the OSE environment. OSE also provides a web console where we can do all the things that can be done using the oc command. To access the web console for openshift , run the “minishift console” command which will open the default browser with the Openshift URL. 

  

Run the “minishift console --url” to get the openshift console url. The username and password would be developer and developer. 

  

We also have  “minishift stop” and “minishift delete” to stop the cluster and completely delete things from the local machine. 

  

The Password will be automatically configured for you. If you enter “admin” and “admin” the user account will be configured for you and will be enabled.