On IBM Fusion HCI, you can have a fully operational OpenShift cluster with storage and backup/restore capabilities in 7 easy steps.

1. From the Advanced Cluster Management UI, go to Infrastructure -> Clusters section.

2. Select “Create cluster” followed by "Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization" and "Hosted Control Plane"

3. Add pull-secret credentials that are required for cluster creation and IBM Fusion. Include credentials for: cloud.openshift.com, cp.icr.io(IBM Fusion credentials), quay.io, registry.connect.redhat.com, registry.redhat.io.

4. Enter the following details in the  Create Cluster details page:

Cluster name: Name for the new cluster

Release image: Select OpenShift Container Platform  4.14 or 4.15. You can also add a particular image to the field. 

Etcd Storage Class: Use “lvms-hcp-etcd”

Labels: Add the IBM Fusion services that you plan to install on the new Hosted Control Plane cluster.

Required for all Fusion services: isf.ibm.com/fusion-base=

For Fusion Data Foundation, gives the new cluster access to the Fusion HCI storage to create PVCs: isf.ibm.com/fusion-fdf=

For Fusion Backup and Restore services: isf.ibm.com/fusion-backup=

5. Click “Next”.

6. Select the compute node attributes.

7. Review the options and start cluster creation process. 

8. Wait for the cluster to show all nodes in the ready state(green), and then log in to the new cluster.

The IBM Fusion software and services gets installed automatically. To check on the Fusion services, go to the new cluster and look under “Installed Operators”. After the Fusion Operators are installed, Fusion Data Foundation storage classes and backup capabilities are included in the new cluster.

After all the Fusion operators are installed on the new cluster, the cluster shows up as connection in the Fusion HCI UI. 

All done! Your new OpenShift cluster with IBM Fusion data services is ready to use. 

Next Steps:

To validate, create a new project on the new cluster and do a backup/restore of it from Storage Fusion HCI. 

1. Create a new project on the new hosted control plane cluster. 

2. Add some custom resources, such as a secret.

3. Create a new PVC by using the storage classes provided by the Fusion Data Foundation, such as ocs-storagecluster-cephfs or ocs-storagecluster-ceph-rbd.

4. Go to the Fusion UI on the Fusion HCI cluster. Add the new application to an existing backup policy. Run a backup of the new application.

5. After the backup is complete, restore the application to the Fusion HCI cluster.

6. After the restore is successful, check the Fusion HCI cluster where you restored the project, resources and PVCs.