Requirements for hosted control planes - Preparing to deploy hosted control planes | Hosted control planes

Support matrix for hosted control planes

In the context of hosted control planes, a management cluster is an OKD cluster where the HyperShift Operator is deployed and where the control planes for hosted clusters are hosted. The management cluster and workers must run on the same infrastructure. For example, you cannot run your management cluster on bare metal and your workers on the cloud. However, the management cluster and workers do not need to run on the same platform. For example, you might run your management cluster on bare metal and workers on OKD Virtualization.

The control plane is associated with a hosted cluster and runs as pods in a single namespace. When the cluster service consumer creates a hosted cluster, it creates a worker node that is independent of the control plane.

Support matrix for hosted control planes

Because multicluster engine for Kubernetes Operator includes the HyperShift Operator, releases of hosted control planes align with releases of multicluster engine Operator. For more information, see OpenShift Operator Life Cycles.

Management cluster support

Any supported standalone OKD cluster can be a management cluster.

A single-node OKD cluster is not supported as a management cluster. If you have resource constraints, you can share infrastructure between a standalone OKD control plane and hosted control planes. For more information, see "Shared infrastructure between hosted and standalone control planes".

The following table maps multicluster engine Operator versions to the management cluster versions that support them:

Table 1. Supported multicluster engine Operator versions for OKD management clusters
Management cluster version	Supported multicluster engine Operator version
4.14 - 4.15	2.4
4.14 - 4.16	2.5
4.14 - 4.17	2.6
4.15 - 4.17	2.7

Hosted cluster support

For hosted clusters, no direct relationship exists between the management cluster version and the hosted cluster version. The hosted cluster version depends on the HyperShift Operator that is included with your multicluster engine Operator version.

Ensure a minimum latency of 200 ms between the management cluster and hosted clusters.

The following table maps multicluster engine Operator versions to the hosted cluster versions that you can create by using the HyperShift Operator that is associated with that version of multicluster engine Operator:

Table 2. Hosted cluster versions that can be created by multicluster engine Operator versions
Hosted cluster version	multicluster engine Operator 2.4	multicluster engine Operator 2.5	multicluster engine Operator 2.6	multicluster engine Operator 2.7
4.14	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
4.15	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
4.16	No	No	Yes	Yes
4.17	No	No	No	Yes

Hosted cluster platform support

The following table indicates which OKD versions are supported for each platform of hosted control planes. In the table, Management cluster version refers to the OKD version where the multicluster engine Operator is enabled:

Table 3. Required OKD versions for platforms
Hosted cluster platform	Management cluster version	Hosted cluster version
Amazon Web Services	4.16 - 4.17	4.16 - 4.17
IBM Power	4.17	4.17
IBM Z	4.17	4.17
OKD Virtualization	4.14 - 4.17	4.14 - 4.17
Bare metal	4.14 - 4.17	4.14 - 4.17
Non-bare-metal agent machines (Technology Preview)	4.16 - 4.17	4.16 - 4.17

Updates of multicluster engine Operator

When you update to another version of the multicluster engine Operator, your hosted cluster can continue to run if the HyperShift Operator that is included in the version of multicluster engine Operator supports the hosted cluster version. The following table shows which hosted cluster versions are supported on which updated multicluster engine Operator versions:

Table 4. Updated multicluster engine Operator version support for hosted clusters
Updated multicluster engine Operator version	Supported hosted cluster version
Updated from 2.4 to 2.5	OKD 4.14
Updated from 2.5 to 2.6	OKD 4.14 - 4.15
Updated from 2.6 to 2.7	OKD 4.14 - 4.16

For example, if you have an OKD 4.14 hosted cluster on the management cluster and you update from multicluster engine Operator 2.4 to 2.5, the hosted cluster can continue to run.

Technology Preview features

The following list indicates Technology Preview features for this release:

Hosted control planes on IBM Z in a disconnected environment
Custom taints and tolerations for hosted control planes on OKD Virtualization
NVIDIA GPU devices on hosted control planes for OKD Virtualization

Additional resources