Component Pack installation roadmap

Component Pack for HCL Connections consists of Docker images and Helm charts intended to be deployed on Kubernetes. To successfully install Component Pack, you will need the following:

  • One machine with at least 50G of disk space free
  • Fully configured Kubernetes cluster
  • Non root user configured to use kubectl to access your Kubernetes cluster
  • Latest Helm v2 installed and configured for the same non root user who can use kubectl
  • Docker Registry (or any alternative) where you will upload the images from the Component Pack package, using provided scripts, to be able to install it with Helm. You also need to ensure that your Kubernetes nodes can access your Docker Registry without any issues.
  • Use kubectl to create the namespace called "connections":
    kubectl create namespace connections
  • Use kubectl to create ImagePullSecret, called myregkey, so that your Kubernetes cluster can pull the images once you install the Component Pack:
    kubectl create secret docker-registry myregkey -n connections --docker-server=Docker_registry --docker-username=Your_user_name --docker-password=Your_password
  • Label your worker nodes as infrastructure: kubectl label nodesyour_worker_fqdntype=infrastructure --overwrite

How does installation work?

As you will see later, you will download the Component Pack to your prepared machine. Component Pack package can be 10G+ in size once unpacked.

Then you will use the script provided to upload the images that you obtained as a part of Component Pack to your Docker Registry.

You will then use Helm to install different components to your Kubernetes cluster, and Kubernetes itself will pull the images from your Docker Registry on the worker nodes to start them up. To be able to pull the images, Kubernetes needs to be able to authenticate to your Docker Registry first, and that is why you must have ImagePullSecret (called myregkey) properly configured. That is also why it is a good idea to test the access to your Docker Registry from the whole Kubernetes cluster before you begin.

You also must ensure that your Kubernetes cluster and the cluster for the rest of Connections are working fine and have no firewall or network-related issues.

That's it!