About Operator installation from the software catalog

The software catalog in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is the interface for discovering Operators that Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) installs and manages on your cluster. You can choose installation settings such as install mode, namespace, and approval strategy during subscription.

As a cluster administrator, you can install an Operator from the software catalog by using the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform web console or CLI. Subscribing an Operator to one or more namespaces makes the Operator available to developers on your cluster.

During installation, you must determine the following initial settings for the Operator:

Installation Mode

Choose All namespaces on the cluster (default) to have the Operator installed on all namespaces or choose individual namespaces, if available, to only install the Operator on selected namespaces. This example chooses All namespaces…​ to make the Operator available to all users and projects.

Update Channel

If an Operator is available through multiple channels, you can choose which channel you want to subscribe to. For example, to deploy from the stable channel, if available, select it from the list.

Approval Strategy

You can choose automatic or manual updates.

If you choose automatic updates for an installed Operator, when a new version of that Operator is available in the selected channel, Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) automatically upgrades the running instance of your Operator without human intervention.

If you select manual updates, when a newer version of an Operator is available, OLM creates an update request. As a cluster administrator, you must then manually approve that update request to have the Operator updated to the new version.