Configuring the registry for vSphere - Setting up and configuring the registry | Registry

Image registry removed during installation
Changing the image registry’s management state
- Image registry storage configuration
Configuring registry storage for VMware vSphere
Configuring storage for the image registry in non-production clusters
Configuring block registry storage for VMware vSphere
Additional resources

Image registry removed during installation

On platforms that do not provide shareable object storage, the OpenShift Image Registry Operator bootstraps itself as Removed. This allows openshift-installer to complete installations on these platform types.

After installation, you must edit the Image Registry Operator configuration to switch the managementState from Removed to Managed.

The Prometheus console provides an ImageRegistryRemoved alert, for example:

"Image Registry has been removed. ImageStreamTags, BuildConfigs and DeploymentConfigs which reference ImageStreamTags may not work as expected. Please configure storage and update the config to Managed state by editing configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io."

Changing the image registry’s management state

To start the image registry, you must change the Image Registry Operator configuration’s managementState from Removed to Managed.

Procedure

Change managementState Image Registry Operator configuration from Removed to Managed. For example:

$ oc patch configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io cluster --type merge --patch '{"spec":{"managementState":"Managed"}}'

Image registry storage configuration

The Image Registry Operator is not initially available for platforms that do not provide default storage. After installation, you must configure your registry to use storage so that the Registry Operator is made available.

Instructions are shown for configuring a persistent volume, which is required for production clusters. Where applicable, instructions are shown for configuring an empty directory as the storage location, which is available for only non-production clusters.

Additional instructions are provided for allowing the image registry to use block storage types by using the Recreate rollout strategy during upgrades.

Configuring registry storage for VMware vSphere

As a cluster administrator, following installation you must configure your registry to use storage.

Prerequisites

Cluster administrator permissions.
A cluster on VMware vSphere.

Persistent storage provisioned for your cluster, such as Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage.

OKD supports ReadWriteOnce access for image registry storage when you have only one replica. To deploy an image registry that supports high availability with two or more replicas, ReadWriteMany access is required.

Must have "100Gi" capacity.

Testing shows issues with using the NFS server on RHEL as storage backend for core services. This includes the OpenShift Container Registry and Quay, Prometheus for monitoring storage, and Elasticsearch for logging storage. Therefore, using RHEL NFS to back PVs used by core services is not recommended.

Other NFS implementations on the marketplace might not have these issues. Contact the individual NFS implementation vendor for more information on any testing that was possibly completed against these OKD core components.

Procedure

To configure your registry to use storage, change the spec.storage.pvc in the configs.imageregistry/cluster resource.

When using shared storage, review your security settings to prevent outside access.
Verify that you do not have a registry pod:
```
$ oc get pod -n openshift-image-registry -l docker-registry=default
```
Example output
```
No resourses found in openshift-image-registry namespace
```
If you do have a registry pod in your output, you do not need to continue with this procedure.
Check the registry configuration:
```
$ oc edit configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io
```
Example output
```
storage:
  pvc:
    claim: (1)
```
1 Leave the claim field blank to allow the automatic creation of an image-registry-storage PVC.

Check the clusteroperator status:

$ oc get clusteroperator image-registry

Example output

NAME             VERSION                              AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   DEGRADED   SINCE   MESSAGE
image-registry   4.7                                  True        False         False      6h50m

Configuring storage for the image registry in non-production clusters

You must configure storage for the Image Registry Operator. For non-production clusters, you can set the image registry to an empty directory. If you do so, all images are lost if you restart the registry.

Procedure

To set the image registry storage to an empty directory:
```
$ oc patch configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io cluster --type merge --patch '{"spec":{"storage":{"emptyDir":{}}}}'
```
Configure this option for only non-production clusters.

If you run this command before the Image Registry Operator initializes its components, the oc patch command fails with the following error:
```
Error from server (NotFound): configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io "cluster" not found
```
Wait a few minutes and run the command again.

Configuring block registry storage for VMware vSphere

To allow the image registry to use block storage types such as vSphere Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) during upgrades as a cluster administrator, you can use the Recreate rollout strategy.

Block storage volumes are supported but not recommended for use with image registry on production clusters. An installation where the registry is configured on block storage is not highly available because the registry cannot have more than one replica.

Procedure

To set the image registry storage as a block storage type, patch the registry so that it uses the Recreate rollout strategy and runs with only 1 replica:
```
$ oc patch config.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster --type=merge -p '{"spec":{"rolloutStrategy":"Recreate","replicas":1}}'
```

Provision the PV for the block storage device, and create a PVC for that volume. The requested block volume uses the ReadWriteOnce (RWO) access mode.

Create a pvc.yaml file with the following contents to define a VMware vSphere PersistentVolumeClaim object:

kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: image-registry-storage (1)
  namespace: openshift-image-registry (2)
spec:
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce (3)
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100Gi (4)

1	A unique name that represents the `PersistentVolumeClaim` object.
2	The namespace for the `PersistentVolumeClaim` object, which is `openshift-image-registry`.
3	The access mode of the persistent volume claim. With `ReadWriteOnce`, the volume can be mounted with read and write permissions by a single node.
4	The size of the persistent volume claim.

Create the PersistentVolumeClaim object from the file:

$ oc create -f pvc.yaml -n openshift-image-registry

Edit the registry configuration so that it references the correct PVC:
```
$ oc edit config.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io -o yaml
```
Example output
```
storage:
  pvc:
    claim: (1)
```
1 Creating a custom PVC allows you to leave the claim field blank for the default automatic creation of an image-registry-storage PVC.

For instructions about configuring registry storage so that it references the correct PVC, see Configuring the registry for vSphere.

Additional resources

For more details about configuring registry storage for vSphere, see Recommended configurable storage technology.