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Migrating from the OpenShift SDN network plugin

As a cluster administrator, you can migrate to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin from the OpenShift SDN network plugin.

To learn more about OVN-Kubernetes, read About the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin.

Do not automate the migration from OpenShift SDN to OVN-Kubernetes with a script or another tool like Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. This might cause outages or crash your OKD cluster.

Migration to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin

Migrating to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin is a manual process that includes some downtime during which your cluster is unreachable.

Before you migrate your OKD cluster to use the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin, update your cluster to the latest z-stream release so that all the latest bug fixes apply to your cluster.

Although a rollback procedure is provided, the migration is intended to be a one-way process.

A migration to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin is supported on the following platforms:

  • Bare metal hardware

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

  • IBM Cloud®

  • Microsoft Azure

  • OpenStack

  • VMware vSphere

Migrating to or from the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin is not supported for managed OpenShift cloud services such as Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, Azure Red Hat OpenShift(ARO), and Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA).

Migrating from OpenShift SDN network plugin to OVN-Kubernetes network plugin is not supported on Nutanix.

Considerations for migrating to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin

If you have more than 150 nodes in your OKD cluster, then open a support case for consultation on your migration to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin.

The subnets assigned to nodes and the IP addresses assigned to individual pods are not preserved during the migration.

While the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin implements many of the capabilities present in the OpenShift SDN network plugin, the configuration is not the same.

  • If your cluster uses any of the following OpenShift SDN network plugin capabilities, you must manually configure the same capability in the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin:

    • Namespace isolation

    • Egress router pods

  • Before migrating to OVN-Kubernetes, ensure that the following IP address ranges are not in use: 100.64.0.0/16, 169.254.169.0/29, 100.88.0.0/16, fd98::/64, fd69::/125, and fd97::/64. OVN-Kubernetes uses these ranges internally. Do not include any of these ranges in any other CIDR definitions in your cluster or infrastructure.

The following sections highlight the differences in configuration between the aforementioned capabilities in OVN-Kubernetes and OpenShift SDN network plugins.

Primary network interface

The OpenShift SDN plugin allows application of the NodeNetworkConfigurationPolicy (NNCP) custom resource (CR) to the primary interface on a node. The OVN-Kubernetes network plugin does not have this capability.

If you have an NNCP applied to the primary interface, you must delete the NNCP before migrating to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin. Deleting the NNCP does not remove the configuration from the primary interface, but with OVN-Kubernetes, the Kubernetes NMState cannot manage this configuration. Instead, the configure-ovs.sh shell script manages the primary interface and the configuration attached to this interface.

Namespace isolation

OVN-Kubernetes supports only the network policy isolation mode.

For a cluster using OpenShift SDN that is configured in either the multitenant or subnet isolation mode, you can still migrate to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin. Note that after the migration operation, multitenant isolation mode is dropped, so you must manually configure network policies to achieve the same level of project-level isolation for pods and services.

Egress IP addresses

OpenShift SDN supports two different Egress IP modes:

  • In the automatically assigned approach, an egress IP address range is assigned to a node.

  • In the manually assigned approach, a list of one or more egress IP addresses is assigned to a node.

The migration process supports migrating Egress IP configurations that use the automatically assigned mode.

The differences in configuring an egress IP address between OVN-Kubernetes and OpenShift SDN is described in the following table:

Table 1. Differences in egress IP address configuration
OVN-Kubernetes OpenShift SDN

  • Create an EgressIPs object

  • Add an annotation on a Node object

  • Patch a NetNamespace object

  • Patch a HostSubnet object

For more information on using egress IP addresses in OVN-Kubernetes, see "Configuring an egress IP address".

Egress network policies

The difference in configuring an egress network policy, also known as an egress firewall, between OVN-Kubernetes and OpenShift SDN is described in the following table:

Table 2. Differences in egress network policy configuration
OVN-Kubernetes OpenShift SDN

  • Create an EgressFirewall object in a namespace

  • Create an EgressNetworkPolicy object in a namespace

Because the name of an EgressFirewall object can only be set to default, after the migration all migrated EgressNetworkPolicy objects are named default, regardless of what the name was under OpenShift SDN.

If you subsequently rollback to OpenShift SDN, all EgressNetworkPolicy objects are named default as the prior name is lost.

For more information on using an egress firewall in OVN-Kubernetes, see "Configuring an egress firewall for a project".

Egress router pods

OVN-Kubernetes supports egress router pods in redirect mode. OVN-Kubernetes does not support egress router pods in HTTP proxy mode or DNS proxy mode.

When you deploy an egress router with the Cluster Network Operator, you cannot specify a node selector to control which node is used to host the egress router pod.

Multicast

The difference between enabling multicast traffic on OVN-Kubernetes and OpenShift SDN is described in the following table:

Table 3. Differences in multicast configuration
OVN-Kubernetes OpenShift SDN

  • Add an annotation on a Namespace object

  • Add an annotation on a NetNamespace object

For more information on using multicast in OVN-Kubernetes, see "Enabling multicast for a project".

Network policies

OVN-Kubernetes fully supports the Kubernetes NetworkPolicy API in the networking.k8s.io/v1 API group. No changes are necessary in your network policies when migrating from OpenShift SDN.

Additional resources

How the migration process works

The following table summarizes the migration process by segmenting between the user-initiated steps in the process and the actions that the migration performs in response.

Table 4. Migrating to OVN-Kubernetes from OpenShift SDN
User-initiated steps Migration activity

Set the migration field of the Network.operator.openshift.io custom resource (CR) named cluster to OVNKubernetes. Make sure the migration field is null before setting it to a value.
Cluster Network Operator (CNO)

Updates the status of the Network.config.openshift.io CR named cluster accordingly.

Machine Config Operator (MCO)

Rolls out an update to the systemd configuration necessary for OVN-Kubernetes; the MCO updates a single machine per pool at a time by default, causing the total time the migration takes to increase with the size of the cluster.

Update the networkType field of the Network.config.openshift.io CR.
CNO

Performs the following actions:

  • Destroys the OpenShift SDN control plane pods.

  • Deploys the OVN-Kubernetes control plane pods.

  • Updates the Multus objects to reflect the new network plugin.

Reboot each node in the cluster.
Cluster

As nodes reboot, the cluster assigns IP addresses to pods on the OVN-Kubernetes cluster network.

If a rollback to OpenShift SDN is required, the following table describes the process.

You must wait until the migration process from OpenShift SDN to OVN-Kubernetes network plugin is successful before initiating a rollback.
Table 5. Performing a rollback to OpenShift SDN
User-initiated steps Migration activity

Suspend the MCO to ensure that it does not interrupt the migration.

The MCO stops.

Set the migration field of the Network.operator.openshift.io custom resource (CR) named cluster to OpenShiftSDN. Make sure the migration field is null before setting it to a value.
CNO

Updates the status of the Network.config.openshift.io CR named cluster accordingly.

Update the networkType field.
CNO

Performs the following actions:

  • Destroys the OVN-Kubernetes control plane pods.

  • Deploys the OpenShift SDN control plane pods.

  • Updates the Multus objects to reflect the new network plugin.

Reboot each node in the cluster.
Cluster

As nodes reboot, the cluster assigns IP addresses to pods on the OpenShift-SDN network.

Enable the MCO after all nodes in the cluster reboot.
MCO

Rolls out an update to the systemd configuration necessary for OpenShift SDN; the MCO updates a single machine per pool at a time by default, so the total time the migration takes increases with the size of the cluster.

Migrating to the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin

As a cluster administrator, you can change the network plugin for your cluster to OVN-Kubernetes. During the migration, you must reboot every node in your cluster.

While performing the migration, your cluster is unavailable and workloads might be interrupted. Perform the migration only when an interruption in service is acceptable.
Prerequisites

  • You have a cluster configured with the OpenShift SDN CNI network plugin in the network policy isolation mode.

  • You installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

  • You have a recent backup of the etcd database.

  • You can manually reboot each node.

  • You checked that your cluster is in a known good state without any errors.

  • You created a security group rule that allows User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets on port 6081 for all nodes on all cloud platforms.

  • You set all timeouts for webhooks to 3 seconds or removed the webhooks.

Procedure

  1. To backup the configuration for the cluster network, enter the following command:

    $ oc get Network.config.openshift.io cluster -o yaml > cluster-openshift-sdn.yaml

  2. Verify that the OVN_SDN_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT environment variable is set and is equal to 0s by running the following command:

    #!/bin/bash

if [ -n "$OVN_SDN_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT" ] && [ "$OVN_SDN_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT" = "0s" ]; then
    unset OVN_SDN_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT
fi

#loops the timeout command of the script to repeatedly check the cluster Operators until all are available.

co_timeout=${OVN_SDN_MIGRATION_TIMEOUT:-1200s}
timeout "$co_timeout" bash <<EOT
until
  oc wait co --all --for='condition=AVAILABLE=True' --timeout=10s && \
  oc wait co --all --for='condition=PROGRESSING=False' --timeout=10s && \
  oc wait co --all --for='condition=DEGRADED=False' --timeout=10s;
do
  sleep 10
  echo "Some ClusterOperators Degraded=False,Progressing=True,or Available=False";
done
EOT

  3. Remove the configuration from the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) configuration object by running the following command:

    $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type='merge' \
--patch '{"spec":{"migration":null}}'

  4. . Delete the NodeNetworkConfigurationPolicy (NNCP) custom resource (CR) that defines the primary network interface for the OpenShift SDN network plugin by completing the following steps:

    1. Check that the existing NNCP CR bonded the primary interface to your cluster by entering the following command:

      $ oc get nncp
      Example output
      NAME          STATUS      REASON
bondmaster0   Available   SuccessfullyConfigured

      Network Manager stores the connection profile for the bonded primary interface in the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections system path.

    2. Remove the NNCP from your cluster:

      $ oc delete nncp <nncp_manifest_filename>

  5. To prepare all the nodes for the migration, set the migration field on the CNO configuration object by running the following command:

    $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type='merge' \
  --patch '{ "spec": { "migration": { "networkType": "OVNKubernetes" } } }'

    This step does not deploy OVN-Kubernetes immediately. Instead, specifying the migration field triggers the Machine Config Operator (MCO) to apply new machine configs to all the nodes in the cluster in preparation for the OVN-Kubernetes deployment.

    1. Check that the reboot is finished by running the following command:

      $ oc get mcp

    2. Check that all cluster Operators are available by running the following command:

      $ oc get co

    3. Alternatively: You can disable automatic migration of several OpenShift SDN capabilities to the OVN-Kubernetes equivalents:

      • Egress IPs

      • Egress firewall

      • Multicast

      To disable automatic migration of the configuration for any of the previously noted OpenShift SDN features, specify the following keys:

      $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type='merge' \
  --patch '{
    "spec": {
      "migration": {
        "networkType": "OVNKubernetes",
        "features": {
          "egressIP": <bool>,
          "egressFirewall": <bool>,
          "multicast": <bool>
        }
      }
    }
  }'

      where:

      bool: Specifies whether to enable migration of the feature. The default is true.

  6. Optional: You can customize the following settings for OVN-Kubernetes to meet your network infrastructure requirements:

    • Maximum transmission unit (MTU). Consider the following before customizing the MTU for this optional step:

      • If you use the default MTU, and you want to keep the default MTU during migration, this step can be ignored.

      • If you used a custom MTU, and you want to keep the custom MTU during migration, you must declare the custom MTU value in this step.

      • This step does not work if you want to change the MTU value during migration. Instead, you must first follow the instructions for "Changing the cluster MTU". You can then keep the custom MTU value by performing this procedure and declaring the custom MTU value in this step.

        OpenShift-SDN and OVN-Kubernetes have different overlay overhead. MTU values should be selected by following the guidelines found on the "MTU value selection" page.

    • Geneve (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation) overlay network port

    • OVN-Kubernetes IPv4 internal subnet

    • OVN-Kubernetes IPv6 internal subnet

    To customize either of the previously noted settings, enter and customize the following command. If you do not need to change the default value, omit the key from the patch.

    $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type=merge \
  --patch '{
    "spec":{
      "defaultNetwork":{
        "ovnKubernetesConfig":{
          "mtu":<mtu>,
          "genevePort":<port>,
          "v4InternalSubnet":"<ipv4_subnet>",
          "v6InternalSubnet":"<ipv6_subnet>"
    }}}}'

    where:

    mtu

    The MTU for the Geneve overlay network. This value is normally configured automatically, but if the nodes in your cluster do not all use the same MTU, then you must set this explicitly to 100 less than the smallest node MTU value.

    port

    The UDP port for the Geneve overlay network. If a value is not specified, the default is 6081. The port cannot be the same as the VXLAN port that is used by OpenShift SDN. The default value for the VXLAN port is 4789.

    ipv4_subnet

    An IPv4 address range for internal use by OVN-Kubernetes. You must ensure that the IP address range does not overlap with any other subnet used by your OKD installation. The IP address range must be larger than the maximum number of nodes that can be added to the cluster. The default value is 100.64.0.0/16.

    ipv6_subnet

    An IPv6 address range for internal use by OVN-Kubernetes. You must ensure that the IP address range does not overlap with any other subnet used by your OKD installation. The IP address range must be larger than the maximum number of nodes that can be added to the cluster. The default value is fd98::/48.

    Example patch command to update mtu field
    $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type=merge \
  --patch '{
    "spec":{
      "defaultNetwork":{
        "ovnKubernetesConfig":{
          "mtu":1200
    }}}}'

  7. As the MCO updates machines in each machine config pool, it reboots each node one by one. You must wait until all the nodes are updated. Check the machine config pool status by entering the following command:

    $ oc get mcp

    A successfully updated node has the following status: UPDATED=true, UPDATING=false, DEGRADED=false.

    By default, the MCO updates one machine per pool at a time, causing the total time the migration takes to increase with the size of the cluster.

  8. Confirm the status of the new machine configuration on the hosts:

    1. To list the machine configuration state and the name of the applied machine configuration, enter the following command:

      $ oc describe node | egrep "hostname|machineconfig"
      Example output
      kubernetes.io/hostname=master-0
machineconfiguration.openshift.io/currentConfig: rendered-master-c53e221d9d24e1c8bb6ee89dd3d8ad7b
machineconfiguration.openshift.io/desiredConfig: rendered-master-c53e221d9d24e1c8bb6ee89dd3d8ad7b
machineconfiguration.openshift.io/reason:
machineconfiguration.openshift.io/state: Done

      Verify that the following statements are true:

      • The value of machineconfiguration.openshift.io/state field is Done.

      • The value of the machineconfiguration.openshift.io/currentConfig field is equal to the value of the machineconfiguration.openshift.io/desiredConfig field.

    2. To confirm that the machine config is correct, enter the following command:

      $ oc get machineconfig <config_name> -o yaml | grep ExecStart

      where <config_name> is the name of the machine config from the machineconfiguration.openshift.io/currentConfig field.

      The machine config must include the following update to the systemd configuration:

      ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/configure-ovs.sh OVNKubernetes

    3. If a node is stuck in the NotReady state, investigate the machine config daemon pod logs and resolve any errors.

      1. To list the pods, enter the following command:

        $ oc get pod -n openshift-machine-config-operator
        Example output
        NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
machine-config-controller-75f756f89d-sjp8b   1/1     Running   0          37m
machine-config-daemon-5cf4b                  2/2     Running   0          43h
machine-config-daemon-7wzcd                  2/2     Running   0          43h
machine-config-daemon-fc946                  2/2     Running   0          43h
machine-config-daemon-g2v28                  2/2     Running   0          43h
machine-config-daemon-gcl4f                  2/2     Running   0          43h
machine-config-daemon-l5tnv                  2/2     Running   0          43h
machine-config-operator-79d9c55d5-hth92      1/1     Running   0          37m
machine-config-server-bsc8h                  1/1     Running   0          43h
machine-config-server-hklrm                  1/1     Running   0          43h
machine-config-server-k9rtx                  1/1     Running   0          43h

        The names for the config daemon pods are in the following format: machine-config-daemon-<seq>. The <seq> value is a random five character alphanumeric sequence.

      2. Display the pod log for the first machine config daemon pod shown in the previous output by enter the following command:

        $ oc logs <pod> -n openshift-machine-config-operator

        where pod is the name of a machine config daemon pod.

      3. Resolve any errors in the logs shown by the output from the previous command.

  9. To start the migration, configure the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin by using one of the following commands:

    • To specify the network provider without changing the cluster network IP address block, enter the following command:

      $ oc patch Network.config.openshift.io cluster \
  --type='merge' --patch '{ "spec": { "networkType": "OVNKubernetes" } }'

    • To specify a different cluster network IP address block, enter the following command:

      $ oc patch Network.config.openshift.io cluster \
  --type='merge' --patch '{
    "spec": {
      "clusterNetwork": [
        {
          "cidr": "<cidr>",
          "hostPrefix": <prefix>
        }
      ],
      "networkType": "OVNKubernetes"
    }
  }'

      where cidr is a CIDR block and prefix is the slice of the CIDR block apportioned to each node in your cluster. You cannot use any CIDR block that overlaps with the 100.64.0.0/16 CIDR block because the OVN-Kubernetes network provider uses this block internally.

      You cannot change the service network address block during the migration.

  10. Verify that the Multus daemon set rollout is complete before continuing with subsequent steps:

    $ oc -n openshift-multus rollout status daemonset/multus

    The name of the Multus pods is in the form of multus-<xxxxx> where <xxxxx> is a random sequence of letters. It might take several moments for the pods to restart.

    Example output
    Waiting for daemon set "multus" rollout to finish: 1 out of 6 new pods have been updated...
...
Waiting for daemon set "multus" rollout to finish: 5 of 6 updated pods are available...
daemon set "multus" successfully rolled out

  11. To complete changing the network plugin, reboot each node in your cluster. You can reboot the nodes in your cluster with either of the following approaches:

    The following scripts reboot all of the nodes in the cluster at the same time. This can cause your cluster to be unstable. Another option is to reboot your nodes manually one at a time. Rebooting nodes one-by-one causes considerable downtime in a cluster with many nodes.

    Cluster Operators will not work correctly before you reboot the nodes.

    • With the oc rsh command, you can use a bash script similar to the following:

      #!/bin/bash
readarray -t POD_NODES <<< "$(oc get pod -n openshift-machine-config-operator -o wide| grep daemon|awk '{print $1" "$7}')"

for i in "${POD_NODES[@]}"
do
  read -r POD NODE <<< "$i"
  until oc rsh -n openshift-machine-config-operator "$POD" chroot /rootfs shutdown -r +1
    do
      echo "cannot reboot node $NODE, retry" && sleep 3
    done
done

    • With the ssh command, you can use a bash script similar to the following. The script assumes that you have configured sudo to not prompt for a password.

      #!/bin/bash

for ip in $(oc get nodes  -o jsonpath='{.items[*].status.addresses[?(@.type=="InternalIP")].address}')
do
   echo "reboot node $ip"
   ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no core@$ip sudo shutdown -r -t 3
done

  12. Confirm that the migration succeeded:

    1. To confirm that the network plugin is OVN-Kubernetes, enter the following command. The value of status.networkType must be OVNKubernetes.

      $ oc get network.config/cluster -o jsonpath='{.status.networkType}{"\n"}'

    2. To confirm that the cluster nodes are in the Ready state, enter the following command:

      $ oc get nodes

    3. To confirm that your pods are not in an error state, enter the following command:

      $ oc get pods --all-namespaces -o wide --sort-by='{.spec.nodeName}'

      If pods on a node are in an error state, reboot that node.

    4. To confirm that all of the cluster Operators are not in an abnormal state, enter the following command:

      $ oc get co

      The status of every cluster Operator must be the following: AVAILABLE="True", PROGRESSING="False", DEGRADED="False". If a cluster Operator is not available or degraded, check the logs for the cluster Operator for more information.

  13. Complete the following steps only if the migration succeeds and your cluster is in a good state:

    1. To remove the migration configuration from the CNO configuration object, enter the following command:

      $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type='merge' \
  --patch '{ "spec": { "migration": null } }'

    2. To remove custom configuration for the OpenShift SDN network provider, enter the following command:

      $ oc patch Network.operator.openshift.io cluster --type='merge' \
  --patch '{ "spec": { "defaultNetwork": { "openshiftSDNConfig": null } } }'

    3. To remove the OpenShift SDN network provider namespace, enter the following command:

      $ oc delete namespace openshift-sdn

Additional resources