Configuring Operator Lifecycle Manager features

The Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) controller is configured by an OLMConfig custom resource (CR) named cluster. Cluster administrators can modify this resource to enable or disable certain features.

This document outlines the features currently supported by OLM that are configured by the OLMConfig resource.

Disabling copied CSVs

When an Operator is installed by Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM), a simplified copy of its cluster service version (CSV) is created by default in every namespace that the Operator is configured to watch. These CSVs are known as copied CSVs and communicate to users which controllers are actively reconciling resource events in a given namespace.

When an Operator is configured to use the AllNamespaces install mode, versus targeting a single or specified set of namespaces, a copied CSV for the Operator is created in every namespace on the cluster. On especially large clusters, with namespaces and installed Operators potentially in the hundreds or thousands, copied CSVs consume an untenable amount of resources, such as OLM’s memory usage, cluster etcd limits, and networking.

To support these larger clusters, cluster administrators can disable copied CSVs for Operators globally installed with the AllNamespaces mode.

Note

If you disable copied CSVs, an Operator installed in AllNamespaces mode has their CSV copied only to the openshift namespace, instead of every namespace on the cluster. In disabled copied CSVs mode, the behavior differs between the web console and CLI:

In the web console, the default behavior is modified to show copied CSVs from the openshift namespace in every namespace, even though the CSVs are not actually copied to every namespace. This allows regular users to still be able to view the details of these Operators in their namespaces and create related custom resources (CRs).
In the OpenShift CLI (oc), regular users can view Operators installed directly in their namespaces by using the oc get csvs command, but the copied CSVs from the openshift namespace are not visible in their namespaces. Operators affected by this limitation are still available and continue to reconcile events in the user’s namespace.

To view a full list of installed global Operators, similar to the web console behavior, all authenticated users can run the following command:
```
$ oc get csvs -n openshift
```

Procedure

Edit the OLMConfig object named cluster and set the spec.features.disableCopiedCSVs field to true:

$ oc apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
kind: OLMConfig
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
  features:
    disableCopiedCSVs: true 
EOF

Disabled copied CSVs for AllNamespaces install mode Operators

Verification

When copied CSVs are disabled, OLM captures this information in an event in the Operator’s namespace:
```
$ oc get events
```
Example output
```
LAST SEEN   TYPE      REASON               OBJECT                                MESSAGE
85s         Warning   DisabledCopiedCSVs   clusterserviceversion/my-csv.v1.0.0   CSV copying disabled for operators/my-csv.v1.0.0
```
When the spec.features.disableCopiedCSVs field is missing or set to false, OLM recreates the copied CSVs for all Operators installed with the AllNamespaces mode and deletes the previously mentioned events.

Additional resources

Install modes