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.