How to Install Harbor on IBM cloud

Harbor is an open source registry that secures artifacts with policies and role-based access control. It ensures images are scanned and free from vulnerabilities and signs images as trusted. Harbor, a CNCF Graduated project, delivers compliance, performance, and interoperability to help you consistently and securely manage artifacts across cloud native compute platforms like Kubernetes and Docker. This tutorial will show you how to install Harbor on IBM Cloud

Before you begin

You MUST have a user ID that is a member or an owner of an IBM Cloud account. To get an IBM Cloud user ID, go to: Please register here.

Step 1: Provision Kubernetes Cluster

• Click the Catalog button on the top
• Select Service from the catalog
• Search for Kubernetes Service and click on it

On the Kubernetes deployment page, you need to specify some details about the cluster

Choose a plan; standard or free. The free plan only has one worker node and no subnet. To provision a standard cluster, you will need to upgrade you account to Pay-As-You-Go

To upgrade to a Pay-As-You-Go account, complete the following steps:

In the console,

• go to Manage > Account.
• Select Account settings, and click Add credit card.
• Enter your payment information,
• click Next, and submit your information

Choose classic or VPC, read the docs and choose the most suitable type for yourself

Now choose your location settings, for more information please visit Locations

Choose Geography (continent)

Choose Single or Multizone,

In single zone your data is only kept in the datacenter. On the other hand, with Multizone, it is distributed to multiple zones, thus safer in an unforeseen zone failure

If you wish to use Multizone, please set up your account with VRF or enable Vlan spanning

If at your current location selection there is no available Virtual LAN, a new Vlan will be created for you

Choose a worker node setup or use the preselected one, set worker node amount per zone

Choose Master Service Endpoint, In VRF-enabled accounts,

You can choose private-only to make your master accessible on the private network or via VPN tunnel.

Choose public-only to make your master publicly accessible. When you have a VRF-enabled account, your cluster is set up by default to use both private and public endpoints. For more information visit endpoints.

Give cluster a name

Specify the desired tags for your cluster, for more information visit tags

Click create

Wait for you cluster to be provisioned

Your cluster is ready for usage

Step 2: Deploy IBM Cloud Block Storage plug-in

The Block Storage plug-in is a persistent, high-performance iSCSI storage that you can add to your apps by using Kubernetes Persistent Volumes (PVs).

• Click the Catalog button on the top
• Select Software from the catalog
• Search for IBM Cloud Block Storage plug-in and click on it

On the application page

• Click in the dot next to the cluster, you wish to use
• Click on Enter or Select Namespace and choose the default Namespace or use a custom one

Note: if you get error please wait for about 30 minutes for the cluster to finalize

• Give a name to this workspace
• Click install and wait for the deployment

Step 3: Deploy Harbor

We will deploy Harbor on our cluster

• Click the Catalog button on the top
• Select Software from the catalog
• Search for Harbor and click on it
• Please select IBM Kubernetes Service

On the application page

• Click in the dot next to the cluster you wish to use
• Click on Enter or Select Namespace and choose the default Namespace or use a custom one
• Give a unique name to workspace, which you can easily recognize

Select which resource group you want to use, it’s for access control and billing purposes. For more information please visit resource groups

• Give tags to your Harbor, for more information visit tags
• Click on Parameters with default values. You can set deployment values or use the default ones

After finishing everything, tick the box next to the agreements and click install

The Harbor workspace will start installing. Please wait a couple of minutes

Your Harbor workspace has been successfully deployed

Verify Harbor installation

• Go to Resources in your browser
• Click on Clusters
• Click on your Cluster

Now you are at you clusters overview. Here Click on Actions and Web terminal from the dropdown menu

Click install — wait couple of minutes

Click on Actions

Click Web terminal → a terminal will open up

Type in the terminal, please change NAMESPACE to the namespace you choose at the deployment setup:

$ kubectl get ns

$ kubectl get pod -n NAMESPACE -o wide
$ kubectl get service -n NAMESPACE

Open the Harbor application web page in browser using external IP shown in above command.

To retrieve the login credentials, please see the deployment log.

To get the password, please run the below command in cli.

echo Password: $(kubectl get secret --namespace harbor harbor2b-803d-48-core-envvars-o jsonpath="{.data.HARBOR_ADMIN_PASSWORD}" | base64 --decode)