How to auto-register Red Hat Edge Manager with MicroShift

Available as a Technology Preview, Red Hat Edge Manager is a fleet management solution that provides comprehensive security, simplified management, and real-time visibility for thousands of edge devices and applications. You define the required state of your edge devices, including operating system versions, host configurations, and application deployments. Then, Red Hat Edge Manager automatically implements and maintains these configurations across your entire fleet of devices. 

When you register Edge Manager, you also have access to Red Hat build of MicroShift, a lightweight Kubernetes container orchestration solution built from the edge capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift. 

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.13 provides Technology Preview support to help you manage edge devices on Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.

In this article, you will learn how to auto-register Red Hat Edge Manager with Red Hat MicroShift into Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. 

Enable Red Hat Edge Manager with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 

You can enable Red Hat Edge Manager with your Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes namespace. If you are using a version earlier than Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2.13, enable Edge Manager by completing the following steps: 

1. Go to your open-cluster-management namespace in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.
2. To enable the edge-manager-preview, update the multiclusterhub customer resource by running the following command: 

oc patch mch multiclusterhub -n open-cluster-management \
       --type=json -p='[{"op": "add", "path": "/spec/overrides/components/-","value":{"name":"edge-manager-preview","enabled":true}}]'

Set up the flightctl command in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 

After enabling Red Hat Edge Manager, you can set up the flightctl command. To do so, you must first install Flight Control locally.

After installing the Flight Control CLI, set up the flightctl command in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes as follows: 

1. Get your OpenShift cluster token by running the following command:

oc whoami -t

2. Get your flightctl API route address by navigating to your installed Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes namespace.
3. In your CLI, run the flightctl command to log in to Red Hat Edge Manager.
4. Verify that your login worked by confirming that the status of the flightctl repository shows ACCESSIBLE: True. 

Enable auto-registration for Red Hat Edge Manager with Red Hat MicroShift 

To enable auto-registration for Red Hat Edge Manager with Red Hat MicroShift, complete these steps: 

1. Change the value of the image name for your os.image by building your own os.image. 
2. Run the flightctl command to add the following configuration file to your device template:

apiVersion: flightctl.io/v1alpha1
kind: Fleet
metadata:
  name: fleet-acm
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      fleet: acm
  template:
    spec:
      os:
        image: quay.io/hchenxa/centos-bootc-flightctl:test
      config:
      - name: acm-crd
        httpRef:
          filePath: /var/local/acm-import/crd.yaml
          repository: acm-registration
          suffix: /agent-registration/crds/v1
      - name: acm-import
        httpRef:
          filePath: /var/local/acm-import/import.yaml
          repository: acm-registration
          suffix: /agent-registration/manifests/{{.metadata.name}}
      - name: pull-secret
        inline:
        - path: "/etc/crio/openshift-pull-secret"
          content: "{\"auths\":{...}}"
      - name: apply-acm-manifests
        inline:
        - path: "/etc/flightctl/hooks.d/afterupdating/50-acm-registration.yaml"
          content: |
            - if:
              - path: /var/local/acm-import/crd.yaml
                op: [created]
              run: kubectl apply -f /var/local/acm-import/crd.yaml
              envVars:
                KUBECONFIG: /var/lib/microshift/resources/kubeadmin/kubeconfig
            - if:
              - path: /var/local/acm-import/import.yaml
                op: [created]
              run: kubectl apply -f /var/local/acm-import/import.yaml
              envVars:
                KUBECONFIG: /var/lib/microshift/resources/kubeadmin/kubeconfig

The items for .spec.template.spec.config have the following functions:

• acm-crd uses the HTTP Configuration Provider to query the ACM agent-registration server for the Kubernetes manifests that contain the custom resource definition (CRD) for the ACM agent.
• acm-import queries the server once more to receive the import manifests for a cluster whose name is the same as the device's name so that both can be more easily correlated later.
• pull-secret is optionally used to pull images from the image registry. You must manually configure the pull-secret to pull the images.
• apply-acm-manifests is used to install an afterUpdating device lifecycle hook. 

Build images for Red Hat Edge Manager 

Now that you have auto-registered Edge Manager into Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, you can build images for the former We will use bootc images for this demonstration. 

If you want more details on building images and the tools used in this demonstration, see the following resources: 

• Building OS images
• Podman setup rootful 

Before you begin the building images for Red Hat Edge Manager, complete the following prerequisites:

1. In your CLI, confirm you have Podman version 5 by running podman -v.
2. In your CLI, confirm you have flightctl version 5 by running flightctl version.

Build bootc images for Red Hat Edge Manager by completing the following steps: 

1. Add the following Dockerfile sample: 

hchenxa@huichen1-mac flightctl % cat Containerfile
FROM quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream9

RUN dnf -y copr enable @redhat-et/flightctl-dev centos-stream-9-x86_64 && \
    dnf -y install flightctl-agent; \
    dnf -y clean all; \
    systemctl enable flightctl-agent.service

COPY id_rsa.pub /usr/etc-system/root.keys
RUN touch /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/30-auth-system.conf; \
    mkdir -p /usr/etc-system/; \
    echo 'AuthorizedKeysFile /usr/etc-system/%u.keys' >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/30-auth-system.conf; \
    chmod 0600 /usr/etc-system/root.keys
VOLUME /var/roothome

ADD config.yaml /etc/flightctl/config.yaml

RUN dnf -y install epel-release epel-next-release && \
    dnf -y install podman-compose && \
    systemctl enable podman.service
ADD etc etc
RUN rm -rf /opt && \
    mkdir -p /opt/crio
RUN dnf install -y microshift && \
    systemctl enable microshift.service
RUN rm -rf /opt && ln -s /var /opt

2. Create the config.yaml file by creating a device certificate from the flightctl server. Run the following command:

flightctl certificate request --signer=enrollment --expiration=365d --output=embedded > config.yaml

3. Create a bootc image with this config.yaml file.
4. Install the Red Hat build of MicroShift service into your bootc image. Run the following command: 

RUN dnf install -y microshift && \
systemctl enable microshift.service .

5. After the images successfully build, push the image to your private registry and provide the pull secret that gets configured into your YAML content. 

Create a virtual machine with the bootc image 

After building the bootc image, you can create a virtual machine (VM) for it. For this example, we will use the qemu-system-aarch64 system to create the VM. Complete the following steps:

1. Create a VM using your bootc image by running the following command:

flightctl % sudo qemu-system-aarch64 \ 
-M accel-hvf \
-cup host \
-smp 2 \
-m 4096 \
-bios /opt/homebrew/Cellar/qemu/9.2.2/share/qemu/edk2-aarch64-code.fd \
-serial stdio \
-machine virt \
-snapshot /Users/<your username>/Documents/<your username>/src/daily_work/redaht/flightctl/output/qcow2/disk.qcow2 \ 

2. Verify that you created your VM by confirming that your CLI shows an output similar to the following: 

Your device is enrolled to flightctl. 
You can manage your device by scanning the above QR coce or folloiwng this URL: <the provided URL> 

Conclusion 

When you auto-register Red Hat Edge Manager with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, you can build images and automatically implement and maintain these images across your entire fleet of devices. You can continue to explore how these products help your development needs by using a virtual machine build images. 

Stay tuned for upcoming Technology Preview features in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management or Kubernetes 2.14 that further enhance your experience!