CAST AI Castware Operator

An operator that manages Castware components.

How to run in a local environment

1. Generate an api key in console
2. Set the environment variable API_KEY with the generated key
3. Set the API_URL environment variable to the api url of the environment where you generated the api key
4. Run make run-local

Sample custom resources for cluster and component are generated in local/samples.

Local environment cleanup

1. Run make updeploy

Ignore the error about the missing castware-operator-controller-manager deployment.

How to run castware-operator in local kind cluster using local chart ./charts/castai-castware-operator

Initial Setup

1. Create Kind cluster:

   kind create cluster --name castware-operator

2. Set required environment variables:

   export API_KEY="your-api-key-from-console"
   export API_URL="https://api.cast.ai"  # or your environment URL
   export API_KEY_BASE64=$(echo -n "$API_KEY" | base64)

3. Install operator in Kind cluster:

   ./local/install-local.sh

   This script will:

   • Build the operator binary (make build)
   • Build Docker image (make docker-build)
   • Load image into Kind cluster
   • Install Helm chart with local image
   • Create default Cluster and Component resources

Development Workflow

After making code changes, quickly reload the operator without full reinstall:

./local/reload-operator.sh

This script will:

• Rebuild operator binary and Docker image
• Load new image into Kind cluster
• Restart the operator deployment
• Wait for rollout to complete

Benefits:

• ~30 seconds vs ~2 minutes for full reinstall
• Preserves existing CRs (Cluster and Components)
• No need to delete/recreate resources

Monitoring

# Watch pods
kubectl get pods -n castai-agent -w

# View operator logs
kubectl logs -n castai-agent -l app.kubernetes.io/name=castware-operator -f

# Check Cluster CR status
kubectl get cluster -n castai-agent -o yaml

# Check Helm release status
helm status castware-operator -n castai-agent

Cleanup

# Uninstall Helm release
helm uninstall castware-operator -n castai-agent

# Delete Kind cluster
kind delete cluster --name castware-operator

How to use local helm registry

Pushing the chart to the local registry

1. cd to the chart directory
2. Run helm package ./castai-castware-operator
3. Run helm repo add local http://localhost:5001/helm-charts
4. Run curl --data-binary "@castware-operator-[myversion].tgz" http://localhost:5001/helm-charts/api/charts replacing [myversion] with the version of the chart (for example 0.0.7)
5. Run helm repo update

Test self upgrade from helm registry

1. Push at least two versions to the local registry (change version and appVersion in Chart.yaml before running helm package)
2. Install the operator from the local registry
3. Change helmRepoURL in cluster CR to http://chartmuseum.registry.svc.cluster.local:8080/helm-charts
4. Run self upgrade from a job manifest or an action