Skip to content

How to Provision an OpenShift Cluster#

Learn how to provision a managed OpenShift cluster for your team via a Project claim.

Sam, a senior platform engineer at ACME Corp, needs to provide a dedicated OpenShift cluster for a product team. Sam can provision a fully managed cluster with configurable compute and node pool settings.

Prerequisites#

  • Access to your organisation's project
  • The openshiftcluster.kubernetes.cloud.stakater.com API available
  • kubectl configured with your organisation project kubeconfig
  • Sufficient permissions to create OpenShiftCluster resources

What Gets Created#

When you create an OpenShiftCluster claim, the platform provisions:

  • A managed OpenShift cluster with a dedicated control plane
  • A node pool with configurable size and replica count
  • Cluster credentials stored securely in your organisation's secrets store

Step 1: Minimal Configuration#

Create a file named cluster.yaml with only the required parameters:

apiVersion: kubernetes.cloud.stakater.com/v1
kind: OpenShiftCluster
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
spec:
  parameters:
    clusterName: my-cluster
    compute:
      cpu: 2
      memory: "8Gi"

Required Parameters#

Parameter Description
parameters.clusterName Name of the OpenShift cluster (1–63 characters)
parameters.compute.cpu Number of CPU cores per node (1–8)
parameters.compute.memory Memory per node (e.g., 8Gi, 16Gi)

Step 2: Full Configuration#

For production use, specify all parameters explicitly:

apiVersion: kubernetes.cloud.stakater.com/v1
kind: OpenShiftCluster
metadata:
  name: prod-cluster
spec:
  parameters:
    clusterName: prod-cluster
    version: "4.19"
    compute:
      cpu: 4
      memory: "16Gi"
    storage:
      rootVolumeSize: "120Gi"
    nodePool:
      replicas: 3
      labels:
        environment: production
        team: platform

Optional Parameters#

Parameter Default Description
parameters.version 4.19 OpenShift version (4.18, 4.19, 4.20)
parameters.storage.rootVolumeSize 10Gi Root volume size per node (e.g., 120Gi)
parameters.nodePool.replicas 3 Number of nodes in the pool (1–10)
parameters.nodePool.labels — Custom labels to apply to nodes

Step 3: Apply the Claim#

kubectl apply -f cluster.yaml

Step 4: Monitor Provisioning#

Cluster provisioning takes several minutes. Monitor progress:

kubectl get openshiftcluster my-cluster

Check detailed status and conditions:

kubectl describe openshiftcluster my-cluster

Once provisioning completes, the cluster status will show READY: True:

NAME         READY   SYNCED   AGE
my-cluster   True    True     15m

Tip

Contact your platform administrator for the list of validated and supported OpenShift versions for your environment.

What's Next?#