DevWorkspace Operator overview

The DevWorkspace Operator (DWO) extends Kubernetes to manage workspace pods, services, and persistent volumes by reconciling DevWorkspace custom resources. Every Che workspace has an underlying DevWorkspace CR that contains the devfile, editor definition, and configuration attributes.

The DevWorkspace CR is a Kubernetes resource representation of a Che workspace. Whenever a user creates a workspace using Che in the background, Dashboard Che creates a DevWorkspace CR in the cluster. For every Che workspace, there is an underlying DevWorkspace CR on the cluster.

Figure 1. Example of a DevWorkspace CR in a cluster

When creating a workspace with Che with a devfile, the DevWorkspace CR contains the devfile details. Additionally, Che adds the editor definition into the DevWorkspace CR depending on which editor was chosen for the workspace. Che also adds attributes to the DevWorkspace that further configure the workspace depending on how you configured the CheCluster CR.

A DevWorkspaceTemplate is a custom resource that defines a reusable spec.template for DevWorkspaces.

When a workspace is started, DWO reads the corresponding DevWorkspace CR and creates the necessary resources such as deployments, secrets, configmaps, and routes. As a result, a workspace pod representing the development environment defined in the devfile is created.

Custom Resources overview

The following Custom Resource Definitions are provided by the DevWorkspace Operator:

DevWorkspace
DevWorkspaceTemplate
DevWorkspaceOperatorConfig
DevWorkspaceRouting

DevWorkspace

The DevWorkspace custom resource contains details about an Che workspace. Notably, it contains devfile details and a reference to the editor definition.

DevWorkspaceTemplate

In Che the DevWorkspaceTemplate custom resource is typically used to define an editor (such as Visual Studio Code - Open Source) for Che workspaces. You can use this custom resource to define reusable spec.template content that is reused by multiple DevWorkspaces.

DevWorkspaceOperatorConfig

The DevWorkspaceOperatorConfig (DWOC) custom resource defines configuration options for the DWO. There are two different types of DWOC:

global configuration
non-global configuration

The global configuration is a DWOC custom resource named devworkspace-operator-config and is usually located in the DWO installation namespace. By default, the global configuration is not created upon installation. Configuration fields set in the global configuration apply to the DWO and all DevWorkspaces. However, the DWOC configuration can be overridden by a non-global configuration.

Any other DWOC custom resource than devworkspace-operator-config is considered to be non-global configuration. A non-global configuration does not apply to any DevWorkspaces unless the DevWorkspace contains a reference to the DWOC. If the global configuration and non-global configuration have the same fields, the non-global configuration field takes precedence.

Table 1. Global DWOC and Che-owned DWOC comparison
	Global DWOC	Che-owned DWOC
Resource name	`devworkspace-operator-config`	`devworkspace-config`
Namespace	DWO installation namespace	Che installation namespace
Default creation	Not created by default upon DWO installation	Created by default on Che installation
Scope	Applies to the DWO itself and all DevWorkspaces managed by DWO	Applies to DevWorkspaces created by Che
Precedence	Overridden by fields set in Che-owned config	Takes precedence over global config if both define the same field
Primary use case	Used to define default, broad settings that apply to DWO in general.	Used to define specific configuration for DevWorkspaces created by Che

For example, by default Che creates and manages a non-global DWOC in the Che namespace named devworkspace-config. This DWOC contains configuration specific to Che workspaces, and is maintained by Che depending on how you configure the CheCluster CR. When Che creates a workspace, Che adds a reference to the Che-owned DWOC with the controller.devfile.io/devworkspace-config attribute.

Figure 2. Example of DevWorkspace configuration attribute

DevWorkspaceRouting

The DevWorkspaceRouting custom resource defines details about the endpoints of a DevWorkspace. Every DevWorkspace has its corresponding DevWorkspaceRouting object that specifies the workspace’s container endpoints. Endpoints defined from the devfile, as well as endpoints defined by the editor definition appear in the DevWorkspaceRouting custom resource.

apiVersion: controller.devfile.io/v1alpha1
kind: DevWorkspaceRouting
metadata:
  annotations:
    controller.devfile.io/devworkspace-started: 'false'
  name: routing-workspaceb14aa33254674065
  labels:
    controller.devfile.io/devworkspace_id: workspaceb14aa33254674065
spec:
  devworkspaceId: workspaceb14aa33254674065
  endpoints:
    universal-developer-image:
      - attributes:
          cookiesAuthEnabled: true
          discoverable: false
          type: main
          urlRewriteSupported: true
        exposure: public
        name: che-code
        protocol: https
        secure: true
        targetPort: 3100
  podSelector:
    controller.devfile.io/devworkspace_id: workspaceb14aa33254674065
  routingClass: che
status:
  exposedEndpoints:
    ...

DevWorkspace Operator operands

The DevWorkspace Operator has two operands:

controller deployment
webhook deployment.

$ oc get pods -l 'app.kubernetes.io/part-of=devworkspace-operator' -o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name -n openshift-operators
NAME
devworkspace-controller-manager-66c6f674f5-l7rhj
devworkspace-webhook-server-d4958d9cd-gh7vr
devworkspace-webhook-server-d4958d9cd-rfvj6

where:

devworkspace-controller-manager-*: The DevWorkspace controller pod, which is responsible for reconciling custom resources.
devworkspace-webhook-server-*: The DevWorkspace operator webhook server pods.

Configuring the DevWorkspace-controller-manager deployment

You can configure the devworkspace-controller-manager pod in the DevWorkspace Operator Subscription object:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: devworkspace-operator
  namespace: openshift-operators
spec:
  config:
    affinity:
      nodeAffinity: ...
      podAffinity: ...
    resources:
      limits:
        memory: ...
        cpu: ...
      requests:
        memory: ...
        cpu: ...

Configuring the DevWorkspace-webhook-server deployment

You can configure the devworkspace-webhook-server deployment in the global DWOC:

apiVersion: controller.devfile.io/v1alpha1
kind: DevWorkspaceOperatorConfig
metadata:
  name: devworkspace-operator-config
  namespace: <DWO install namespace>
config:
  webhooks:
    nodeSelector: <map[string]string>
    replicas: <int>
    tolerations: <[]corev1.Toleration>

Additional resources

Operator Lifecycle Manager Subscription configuration