Install Service Catalog using Helm

Service Catalog is an extension API that enables applications running in Kubernetes clusters to easily use external managed software offerings, such as a datastore service offered by a cloud provider.

It provides a way to list, provision, and bind with external Managed Services from Service Brokers without needing detailed knowledge about how those services are created or managed.

Use Helm to install Service Catalog on your Kubernetes cluster. Up to date information on this process can be found at the kubernetes-sigs/service-catalog repo.

Before you begin

• Understand the key concepts of Service Catalog.
• Service Catalog requires a Kubernetes cluster running version 1.7 or higher.
• You must have a Kubernetes cluster with cluster DNS enabled.
  • If you are using a cloud-based Kubernetes cluster or Minikube, you may already have cluster DNS enabled.
  • If you are using hack/local-up-cluster.sh, ensure that the KUBE_ENABLE_CLUSTER_DNS environment variable is set, then run the install script.
• Install and setup kubectl v1.7 or higher. Make sure it is configured to connect to the Kubernetes cluster.
• Install Helm v2.7.0 or newer.
  • Follow the Helm install instructions.
  • If you already have an appropriate version of Helm installed, execute helm init to install Tiller, the server-side component of Helm.

Add the service-catalog Helm repository

Once Helm is installed, add the service-catalog Helm repository to your local machine by executing the following command:

helm repo add svc-cat https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/service-catalog

Check to make sure that it installed successfully by executing the following command:

helm search repo service-catalog

If the installation was successful, the command should output the following:

NAME                	CHART VERSION	APP VERSION	DESCRIPTION                                                 
svc-cat/catalog     	0.2.1        	           	service-catalog API server and controller-manager helm chart
svc-cat/catalog-v0.2	0.2.2        	           	service-catalog API server and controller-manager helm chart

Enable RBAC

Your Kubernetes cluster must have RBAC enabled, which requires your Tiller Pod(s) to have cluster-admin access.

When using Minikube v0.25 or older, you must run Minikube with RBAC explicitly enabled:

minikube start --extra-config=apiserver.Authorization.Mode=RBAC

When using Minikube v0.26+, run:

minikube start

With Minikube v0.26+, do not specify --extra-config. The flag has since been changed to --extra-config=apiserver.authorization-mode and Minikube now uses RBAC by default. Specifying the older flag may cause the start command to hang.

If you are using hack/local-up-cluster.sh, set the AUTHORIZATION_MODE environment variable with the following values:

AUTHORIZATION_MODE=Node,RBAC hack/local-up-cluster.sh -O

By default, helm init installs the Tiller Pod into the kube-system namespace, with Tiller configured to use the default service account.

Note: If you used the --tiller-namespace or --service-account flags when running helm init, the --serviceaccount flag in the following command needs to be adjusted to reference the appropriate namespace and ServiceAccount name.

Configure Tiller to have cluster-admin access:

kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-admin \
    --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
    --serviceaccount=kube-system:default

Install Service Catalog in your Kubernetes cluster

Install Service Catalog from the root of the Helm repository using the following command:

• Helm version 3
• Helm version 2

helm install catalog svc-cat/catalog --namespace catalog

helm install svc-cat/catalog --name catalog --namespace catalog

What's next

• View sample service brokers.
• Explore the kubernetes-sigs/service-catalog project.