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Understanding OperatorHub

About OperatorHub

OperatorHub is the web console interface in OpenShift Container Platform that cluster administrators use to discover and install Operators. With one click, an Operator can be pulled from its off-cluster source, installed and subscribed on the cluster, and made ready for engineering teams to self-service manage the product across deployment environments using Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM).

Cluster administrators can choose from Operator sources grouped into the following categories:

Category Description

Red Hat Operators

Red Hat products packaged and shipped by Red Hat. Supported by Red Hat.

Certified Operators

Products from leading independent software vendors (ISVs). Red Hat partners with ISVs to package and ship. Supported by the ISV.

Community Operators

Optionally-visible software maintained by relevant representatives in the operator-framework/community-operators GitHub repository. No official support.

Custom Operators

Operators you add to the cluster yourself. If you have not added any Custom Operators, the Custom category does not appear in the web console on your OperatorHub.

OperatorHub content automatically refreshes every 60 minutes.

Operators on OperatorHub are packaged to run on OLM. This includes a YAML file called a cluster service version (CSV) containing all of the CRDs, RBAC rules, Deployments, and container images required to install and securely run the Operator. It also contains user-visible information like a description of its features and supported Kubernetes versions.

The Operator SDK can be used to assist developers packaging their Operators for use on OLM and OperatorHub. If you have a commercial application that you want to make accessible to your customers, get it included using the certification workflow provided by Red Hat’s ISV partner portal at connect.redhat.com.

OperatorHub architecture

The OperatorHub UI component is driven by the Marketplace Operator by default on OpenShift Container Platform in the openshift-marketplace namespace.

The Marketplace Operator manages OperatorHub and OperatorSource custom resource definitions (CRDs).

Although some OperatorSource object information is exposed through the OperatorHub UI, it is only used directly by those who are creating their own Operators.

OperatorHub CRD

You can use the OperatorHub CRD to change the state of the default OperatorSource objects provided with OperatorHub on the cluster between enabled and disabled. This capability is useful when configuring OpenShift Container Platform in restricted network environments.

Example OperatorHub custom resource
apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1
kind: OperatorHub
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
  disableAllDefaultSources: true (1)
  sources: [ (2)
    {
      name: "community-operators",
      disabled: false
    }
  ]
1 disableAllDefaultSources is an override that controls availability of all default OperatorSource objects that are configured by default during an OpenShift Container Platform installation.
2 Disable default the default sources individually by changing the disabled parameter value per source.

OperatorSource CRD

For each Operator, the OperatorSource CRD is used to define the external data store used to store Operator bundles.

Example OperatorSource custom resource
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
kind: OperatorSource
metadata:
  name: community-operators
  namespace: marketplace
spec:
  type: appregistry (1)
  endpoint: https://quay.io/cnr (2)
  registryNamespace: community-operators (3)
  displayName: "Community Operators" (4)
  publisher: "Red Hat" (5)
1 To identify the data store as an application registry, type is set to appregistry.
2 Currently, Quay is the external data store used by OperatorHub, so the endpoint is set to https://quay.io/cnr for the Quay.io appregistry.
3 For a Community Operator, registryNamespace is set to community-operator.
4 Optionally, set displayName to a name that appears for the Operator in the OperatorHub UI.
5 Optionally, set publisher to the person or organization publishing the Operator that appears in the OperatorHub UI.

Additional resources