Are you a developer who wants to use OpenShift Kubernetes Engine but doesn’t have a powerful system? Or do you need to deploy to a small form factor or edge computing environment? If so, you’ll be happy to hear about our new MicroShift preset, a lightweight version of OpenShift Kubernetes Engine that’s optimized for resource-limited environments.

The OpenShift preset currently provided by CRC requires 9GB of RAM and 4 CPUs. With the release of CRC 2.16, you can now use the MicroShift preset, which only requires 4GB of RAM and 2 CPUs.

What makes MicroShift different from OpenShift Kubernetes Engine? MicroShift is designed for small form factor and edge computing environments, which means it’s optimized for lower resource requirements. MicroShift uses a subset of the OpenShift Kubernetes Engine components and removes some of the features that aren’t needed in these environments.

Key differences from OpenShift Kubernetes Engine

To get started with MicroShift, you’ll need to download and install the latest version of CRC. If you already have a CRC instance, delete it using the crc delete command. Then set the preset to MicroShift using the crc config set preset microshift command. Finally, set up and start CRC using the crc setup and crc start commands. With crc version 2.16, in order to use the oc binary from crc oc-env, a workaround is needed.

After CRC is started, a kubeconfig file will be generated, which is used to connect to the cluster.

To try out MicroShift, we’ve created a sample demo repository that you can find on GitHub. It includes step by step instructions to build and deploy a workload on a CRC instance using the MicroShift preset.

We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions on the MicroShift preset. Please let us know in our release discussion, or if you encounter any issues, please file them on our issue tracker.

In conclusion, MicroShift preset is a great option for users who need to use OpenShift Kubernetes Engine in resource-limited environments without some of the features of a Red Hat OpenShift cluster. So give it a try and see how it can benefit you and your team!