OpenShift Origin is a distribution of Kubernetes offered as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) from Red Hat and comes with some cool features on top of Kubernetes. You can find more information about OpenShift here..

In this blog, we will see how easy it is to setup a single-node cluster of OpenShift instance in Windows 10 with Minishift along with deploying a simple demo application.

For this blog, I am using PowerShell which I recommend. However, you can use the command prompt also.

Get your Hyper-V hypervisor ready

Hyper-V is the native hypervisor comes default in Microsoft Windows 10 Professional. You need to enable it to create virtual machines.

• Refer this link to enable Hyper-V either via CMD/PowerShell or manually enable the Hyper-V role.

• Create an external Virtual Switch using the Hyper-V manager. Make sure, you select the network adapter having internet connection under External network: in Connection type while creating virtual switch. In case, if you have multiple virtual switches, you need to set your preferred virtual switch using environment variable through PowerShell as :

  PS C:\> $env:HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH="External (Wireless)"
  

Prepare Minishift Binary

Once, you are ready with your hypervisor, prepare binary using following instructions:

• Navigate to the Minishift releases page.
• Click on Latest release and scroll down to Downloads section.
• Click on the archive with the format minishift-<version>-windows-amd64.zip to download it.
• Unzip it into anywhere in %USERPROFILE% directory (C:\Users\budhram in my case). See the reason here.
• Copy the contents of the directory to your preferred location.
• Add the minishift binary to your PATH environment variable.

Quickstart

Starting Minishift

• Run the minishift.exe start command:

  PS C:\Users\budhram> minishift.exe start
  Starting local OpenShift cluster using 'hyperv' hypervisor...
  Downloading ISO 'https://github.com/minishift/minishift-b2d-iso/releases/download/v1.0.2/minishift-b2d.iso'
   40.00 MiB / 40.00 MiB [==============================================================================] 100.00% 0s
  Downloading OpenShift binary 'oc' version 'v1.5.1'
   19.05 MiB / 19.05 MiB [==============================================================================] 100.00% 0s
  -- Checking OpenShift client ... OK
  -- Checking Docker client ... OK
  ...
  ...
  -- Login to server ... OK
  -- Creating initial project "myproject" ... OK
  -- Removing temporary directory ... OK
  -- Checking container networking ... OK
  -- Server Information ...
     OpenShift server started.
     The server is accessible via web console at:
         https://10.65.193.168:8443
  
     You are logged in as:
         User:     developer
         Password: developer
  
     To login as administrator:
         oc login -u system:admin
  

• Setup OpenShift client binary oc as below:

  PS C:\Users\budhram> & minishift oc-env | Invoke-Expression
  
  # Verify 'oc' binary
  PS C:\Users\budhram> oc.exe version
  oc v1.5.1+7b451fc
  kubernetes v1.5.2+43a9be4
  features: Basic-Auth
  
  Server https://10.65.193.168:8443
  openshift v1.5.1+7b451fc
  kubernetes v1.5.2+43a9be4
  

  Note: Run minishift.exe oc-env to get more details about above command.

Deploying an application

Once you have oc binary ready, you can start deploying application with it as follows:

• Create a Node.js example app:

  PS C:\Users\budhram> oc new-app https://github.com/openshift/nodejs-ex -l name=myapp
  --> Found image 3b58cad (11 days old) in image stream "openshift/nodejs" under tag "4" for "nodejs"
  
  ...
  --> Success
      Build scheduled, use 'oc logs -f bc/nodejs-ex' to track its progress.
      Run 'oc status' to view your app.
  

• Track the build log until the app is built and deployed:

  PS C:\Users\budhram> oc logs -f bc/nodejs-ex
  Cloning "https://github.com/openshift/nodejs-ex" ...
          Commit: 3d44de3ba8fef0b2baca4ddd001c0db286ea4cd3 (Merge pull request #117 from openshift/revert-112-revert-111-nodejs6)
          Author: Ben Parees <bparees@users.noreply.github.com>
          Date:   Tue May 23 15:54:29 2017 -0400
  ...
  
  Pushing image 172.30.1.1:5000/myproject/nodejs-ex:latest ...
  Pushed 0/9 layers, 11% complete
  Pushed 1/9 layers, 14% complete
  Pushed 2/9 layers, 23% complete
  Pushed 3/9 layers, 34% complete
  Pushed 4/9 layers, 46% complete
  Pushed 5/9 layers, 57% complete
  Pushed 6/9 layers, 73% complete
  Pushed 7/9 layers, 85% complete
  Pushed 8/9 layers, 100% complete
  Pushed 9/9 layers, 100% complete
  Push successful
  

• Expose a route to the service(or application):

  PS C:\Users\budhram> oc expose svc/nodejs-ex
  route "nodejs-ex" exposed
  

• Access the application:

  PS C:\Users\budhram>  minishift openshift service nodejs-ex -n myproject
  Opening the service myproject/nodejs-ex in the default browser...
  

Image: NodeJS demo application

• When done with building the application for the day, stop the cluster as follows:

  PS C:\Users\budhram> minishift.exe stop
  Stopping local OpenShift cluster...
  Cluster stopped.
  

  If you want to access the same cluster again, use minishift.exe start.

• At anytime if you want to delete the cluster, use the following command:

  PS C:\Users\budhram> minishift.exe delete
  Deleting the Minishift VM...
  Minishift VM deleted.
  

You can see, how quickly we can get the single-node OpenShift cluster running locally in the workstation through Minishift within few minutes (based on your network connection).

What’s next?

Documentation

You can refer the Minishift documentation to get more details on getting start with other platforms, its features, troubleshooting guide and all the minishift command references.

Community

The Minishift community hangs out on the IRC channel #minishift on Freenode (https://freenode.net). Reach out to us for any sort of queries, suggestions or discussions.

Resources

• GitHub Repo
• Minishift documentation
• Blog to get OpenShift single node cluster in Linux