Will it be possible to install two OLM instances in one k8s cluster.

[sreenichelikam-hpe]

Question

What did you do?
I want to install two OLM instances in one k8s cluster. Will it be supported?
if Supported can you please point us steps?

[dmesser]

This is not supported today. OLM is designed using the operator pattern, and the OLM controllers own the OLM APIs cluster wide. Installing multiple versions would call for conflicts between version differences and there is currently no way of supplying a list of namespaces that OLM should observe vs. the whole cluster.

Can you describe what the use case is for running two OLM instances on the same cluster?

[sreenichelikam-hpe]

@dmesser
We provide the Container platforms for the customers and managed by us. We want to install the OLM while provisioning k8s cluster that points internal private repository and managed by us. This we don't want to provide the access to the customers.
if the customer want to install OLM for their usage . we are just evaluating the possibilities.

[dmesser]

When you say "that points internal private repository and managed by us" do you refer to internal-only operator catalogs via CatalogSource? If so, this API is namespaced already and you can make catalogs available in a certain namespace only, so only specific people have access to it and can see and consume its content.

[dinhxuanvu]

So we currently do not support running multiple OLM instances on the same cluster. OLM instance is supposed to manage the entire cluster so having multiple will certainly create the conflict.

I would like to ask if you can provide a bit more details on exactly the reason behind this request in a sense of what the users would able to do with different OLM instances. From what I gathered, it seems you want different users/namespaces to have access to different catalogsource content. CatalogSource API is actually namespaced. Every catalogsource in olm namespace will be global but in any other namespaces, it should be local in a sense that the content in that catalogsource is only available in that particular namespace. It seems that would resolve your issue but I'm not sure ensure if that's what your use case is.

[kfox1111]

Might be able to play around with vcluster (https://www.vcluster.com/) to get multiple versions on the same cluster. Not quite the same thing, but useful for some situations like testing.