Chapter 6. Containers Providers

A containers provider is a service that manages container resources that can be added to the Red Hat CloudForms appliance.

CloudForms can connect to OpenShift Enterprise containers providers and manage them similarly to infrastructure and cloud providers. This allows you to gain control over different aspects of your containers environment and answer questions, such as:

  • How many containers exist in my environment?
  • Does a specific node have enough resources?
  • How many distinct images are used?
  • Which image registries are used?

When CloudForms connects to a container’s environment, it collects information on different areas of the environment:

  • Entities such as pods, nodes, or services.
  • Basic relationships between the entities, for example: Which services are serving which pods?
  • Advanced insight into relationships, for example: Which two different containers are using the same image?
  • Additional information, such as events, projects, routes, and metrics.

You can manage policies for containers entities by adding tags. All containers entities except volumes can be tagged.

6.1. Obtaining an OpenShift Enterprise Management Token

When deploying OpenShift Enterprise using openshift-ansible-3.0.20 (or later versions), the OpenShift Enterprise service account and roles required by Red Hat CloudForms are installed by default.

Note

See the OpenShift Enterprise documentation for a list of the default roles.

To obtain the token to use for the provider definition, follow the instructions below for your OpenShift Enterprise version.

6.1.1. Obtaining a Management Token in OpenShift Enterprise 3.2 and Later

Run the following to obtain the token needed to add an OpenShift Enterprise provider: 

# oc sa get-token -n management-infra management-admin
eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiI...

6.1.2. Obtaining a Management Token in OpenShift Enterprise 3.1

Run the following to obtain the token needed to add an OpenShift Enterprise provider:

  1. To obtain the management service account token name, run the following command:: 

    # oc describe sa -n management-infra management-admin
...
Tokens:  management-admin-token-0f3fh
         management-admin-token-q7a87

  2. Select one of the tokens and run the following command to retrieve the full token output: 

    # oc describe secret -n management-infra management-admin-token-0f3fh
...
Data
====
token:  eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiI...

    Replace management-admin-token-0f3fh with the name of your token.

6.2. Enabling OpenShift Cluster Metrics

Use the OpenShift Cluster Metrics plug-in to collect node, pod, and container metrics into one location. This helps track usage and find common issues.

6.3. Adding an OpenShift Enterprise Provider

After initial installation and creation of a Red Hat CloudForms environment, add an OpenShift Enterprise provider using the token obtained in Section 6.1, “Obtaining an OpenShift Enterprise Management Token” and following the procedure below.

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers.
  2. Click Configuration (Configuration), then click Add a New Containers Provider (Add a New Containers Provider).
  3. Enter a Name for the provider.
  4. From the Type list, select OpenShift Enterprise.
  5. Enter the appropriate Zone for the provider. By default, the zone is set to default.

  6. Enter the Hostname or IP address of the provider.

    Important

    The Hostname must use a unique fully qualified domain name.

  7. Enter the Port of the provider. The default port is 8443.

  8. Under Credentials, enter the token in the Token field. This is the token obtained earlier in Section 6.1, “Obtaining an OpenShift Enterprise Management Token”.

    • Click Validate to confirm that the Red Hat CloudForms can connect to the OpenShift Enterprise provider using the provided token.
  9. Click Add.
  10. The "Added!" pop-up displays when the provider has been added.

6.4. Tagging Containers Providers

Apply tags to all containers providers to categorize them together at the same time.

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers.
  2. Select the checkboxes for the containers providers to tag.
  3. Click Policy (Policy), and then Edit Tags (Edit Tags).

  4. Select a tag to assign from the drop-down menu.

    2219

  5. Select a value to assign.
  6. Click Save.

6.5. Removing Containers Providers

You may want to remove a containers provider from the VMDB if the provider is no longer in use.

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers.
  2. Select the checkboxes for the containers providers to remove.
  3. Click Configuration (Configuration), and then Remove Containers Providers from the VMDB (Remove Containers Providers from the VMDB).
  4. Click OK.

6.6. Editing a Containers Provider

Edit information about a provider such as the name, hostname, IP address or port, and credentials.

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers.
  2. Click the containers provider to edit.
  3. Click Configuration (Configuration), and then Edit Selected Containers Provider (Edit Selected Containers Provider).

  4. Edit the Basic Information. This varies depending on the Type of provider.

    Note

    The Type value is unchangeable.

    To use a different containers provider, create a new one.

  5. Edit the Credentials by typing in a new Token.
  6. Click Validate and wait for notification of successful validation.
  7. Click Save.

6.7. Viewing a Containers Provider’s Timeline

View the timeline of events for instances registered to a containers provider.

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers.
  2. Click the desired containers provider for viewing the timeline.
  3. Click Monitoring (Monitoring), and then Timelines (Timelines).

  4. From Options, customize the period of time to display and the types of events to see.

    • Use Show to select regular Management Events or Policy Events.
    • Use the Interval dropdown to select hourly or daily data points.
    • Use Date to type the date for the timeline to display.
    • If you select to view a daily timeline, use Show to set how many days back to go. The maximum history is 31 days.
    • From the Level dropdown, select a Summary event, or a Detail list of events.
    • The three Event Groups dropdowns allow you to select different groups of events to display. Each has its own color.

Click on an item for more detailed information.

6.8. The Container Overview Page

Navigate to Compute → Containers → <Object to view information on many different container objects.

6.8.1. Cross-Providers Insight

Cross-providers insight is a feature that connects all layers of infrastructure, cloud, and containers known to Red Hat CloudForms and collects data for analysis.

It supports cross-linking all of the layers available in the following environments:

  • OpenStack
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
  • VMware vCenter
  • Amazon EC2
  • Google Cloud Engine

The collected information includes all the data available in other (infrastructure or cloud) providers.

Note

For Amazon EC2 (AWS) and Google Cloud Engine (GCE) support, OpenShift must be installed using the relevant cloud provider. For more information, see the OpenShift Enterprise Installation and Configuration Guide, ensuring to use the desired version of OpenShift.

6.8.2. Working with the Containers Overview Page

The information on all containers providers and entities known to Red Hat CloudForms is summarized on the Containers Overview page. The Overview page provides links to other summary pages which contain further information on the containers providers and entities. The Overview page also provides metrics for Aggregated Node Utilization, Network Utilization Trend, New Image Usage Trend, Node Utilization, and Pod Creation and Deletion Trends.

Containers Overview

Working with the Containers Overview Page

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Overview.
  2. Click the desired containers entity, or provider, if applicable, for viewing the summary with further information.
Note

To reliably associate pods and images, CloudForms requires information from the docker-pullable field, added in OpenShift 3.3.1.2. This can affect the results of the Chargeback by Image report for older OpenShift providers, and potentially cause image inspection (done as part of Smart State Analysis) to fail due to associating a container to the wrong image. Consequently, CloudForms may not report accurate information about pods and images in OpenShift providers before version 3.3.1.2.

6.8.2.1. Viewing an Object Summary

Object summaries are found at Compute → Containers → Object, and you can view information about a number of objects and their components.

Viewing a Containers Provider Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers to view information on different aspects of a containers provider. The summary includes:

  • The status of the provider and its components.

  • The relationships between different entities of the containers provider. These relationships are summarized in the Relationships box on the right-hand side of the summary page.

    Entity Relationships

  • Additional information on aggregated capacity of all CPU cores of all nodes, and aggregated capacity of all memory of all nodes.
Viewing a Container Nodes Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Container Nodes to view information on different aspects of a container node. The summary includes:

  • The number of entities on a node.
  • A node’s capacity and utilization.
  • The version of the underlying operating system and software.

To view the timeline of events for a node from a container nodes summary page, click Monitoring (Monitoring), and then Timelines (Timelines).

Viewing a Containers Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Containers to view information on different aspects of a container. The summary includes:

  • The relationships of the container to a related node, pod, or image.
  • The node the container runs on.
  • The container ID.
  • Properties of the container image, such as name, tag, etc.
Viewing a Container Images Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Container Images to view information on different aspects of a container image. The summary includes:

  • The containers currently using the images.
  • The image registry the image is from.
Viewing an Image Registries Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Image Registries to view information on different aspects of an image registry. The summary includes:

  • Which images are from the registry.
  • The number of images that come from that registry.
  • Which containers use images from that registry.
  • The host and port of the registry.
Viewing a Pods Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Pods to view information on different aspects of a pod. The summary includes:

  • The containers that are part of the pod.
  • The services that reference the pod.
  • The node the pod runs on.
  • If the pod controlled by a replicator.
  • The IP address of the pod.
Viewing a Replicators Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Replicators to view information on different aspects of a replicator. The summary includes:

  • The number of requested pods.
  • The number of current pods.
  • The labels and selector for the replicator.
Viewing a Container Services Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Container Services to view information on different aspects of a container service. The summary includes:

  • The pods that the container service provide traffic to.
  • The port configurations for the container service.
  • The labels and selector for the container service.
Viewing a Volumes Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Volumes to view information on the persistent volumes of a container provider. The summary includes:

  • The pods the volume is connected to.
  • The volume’s connection parameters.
  • The volume’s storage capacity.
  • The volume’s iSCSI target details (if applicable).
Viewing a Container Builds Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Container Builds to view different aspects of a container build. The summary includes:

  • The build configuration the container build is based on.
  • Which build instances have been created.
  • Which phase in the build process the instance has completed.
  • Which pod a build instance reside in.
Viewing a Container Templates Summary

Navigate to Compute → Containers → Container Templates to view different aspects of a container template. The summary includes:

  • The project the template is associated with.
  • The objects the template contains.
  • The parameters that can be used with the template’s objects.
  • The template’s version number.

6.8.3. Using the Topology Widget

The Topology widget is an interactive topology graph, showing the status and relationships between the different entities of the containers providers that Red Hat CloudForms has access to.

  • The topology graph includes pods, containers, services, nodes, virtual machines, hosts, routes, and replicators within the overall containers provider environment.
  • Each entity in the graph displays a color indication of its status.
  • Hovering over any individual graph element will display a summary of details for the individual element.
  • Double-click the entities in the graph to navigate to their summary pages.
  • It is possible to drag elements to reposition the graph.
  • Click the legend at the top of the graph to show or hide entities.
  • Click Display Names on the right-hand side of the page to show or hide entity names.

Using the Topology Widget

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Providers.
  2. Click the desired containers provider for viewing the provider summary.
  3. On the provider summary page, click Topology in the Overview box on the right-hand side of the page.

6.8.4. Running a SmartState Analysis

Perform a SmartState Analysis of a container image to inspect the packages included in an image.

Running a SmartState Analysis

  1. Navigate to Compute → Containers → Container Images.
  2. Check the container image to analyze. You can check multiple images.
  3. Click Configuration (Configuration), and then Perform SmartState Analysis (Perform SmartState Analysis).

The container image is scanned. The process will copy over any required files for the image. After reloading the image page, all new or updated packages are listed.

To monitor the status of container image SmartState Analysis tasks, navigate to the settings menu, then Tasks. The status of each task is displayed including time started, time ended, what part of the task is currently running, and any errors encountered.