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Installing a user-provisioned cluster on bare metal

In OKD 4, you can install a cluster on bare metal infrastructure that you provision.

While you might be able to follow this procedure to deploy a cluster on virtualized or cloud environments, you must be aware of additional considerations for non-bare metal platforms. Review the information in the guidelines for deploying OKD on non-tested platforms before you attempt to install an OKD cluster in such an environment.

Prerequisites

Additional resources

Requirements for a cluster with user-provisioned infrastructure

For a cluster that contains user-provisioned infrastructure, you must deploy all of the required machines.

This section describes the requirements for deploying OKD on user-provisioned infrastructure.

Required machines for cluster installation

The smallest OKD clusters require the following hosts:

Table 1. Minimum required hosts
Hosts Description

One temporary bootstrap machine

The cluster requires the bootstrap machine to deploy the OKD cluster on the three control plane machines. You can remove the bootstrap machine after you install the cluster.

Three control plane machines

The control plane machines run the Kubernetes and OKD services that form the control plane.

At least two compute machines, which are also known as worker machines.

The workloads requested by OKD users run on the compute machines.

As an exception, you can run zero compute machines in a bare metal cluster that consists of three control plane machines only. This provides smaller, more resource efficient clusters for cluster administrators and developers to use for testing, development, and production. Running one compute machine is not supported.

To maintain high availability of your cluster, use separate physical hosts for these cluster machines.

The bootstrap and control plane machines must use Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) as the operating system. However, the compute machines can choose between Fedora CoreOS (FCOS), Fedora 8.4, or Fedora 8.5.

See Red Hat Enterprise Linux technology capabilities and limits.

Minimum resource requirements for cluster installation

Each cluster machine must meet the following minimum requirements:

Machine Operating System CPU [1] RAM Storage IOPS [2]

Bootstrap

FCOS

4

16 GB

100 GB

300

Control plane

FCOS

4

16 GB

100 GB

300

Compute

FCOS

2

8 GB

100 GB

300

  1. One CPU is equivalent to one physical core when simultaneous multithreading (SMT), or hyperthreading, is not enabled. When enabled, use the following formula to calculate the corresponding ratio: (threads per core × cores) × sockets = CPUs.

  2. OKD and Kubernetes are sensitive to disk performance, and faster storage is recommended, particularly for etcd on the control plane nodes which require a 10 ms p99 fsync duration. Note that on many cloud platforms, storage size and IOPS scale together, so you might need to over-allocate storage volume to obtain sufficient performance.

  3. As with all user-provisioned installations, if you choose to use Fedora compute machines in your cluster, you take responsibility for all operating system life cycle management and maintenance, including performing system updates, applying patches, and completing all other required tasks. Use of Fedora 7 compute machines is deprecated and has been removed in OKD 4.10 and later.

Certificate signing requests management

Because your cluster has limited access to automatic machine management when you use infrastructure that you provision, you must provide a mechanism for approving cluster certificate signing requests (CSRs) after installation. The kube-controller-manager only approves the kubelet client CSRs. The machine-approver cannot guarantee the validity of a serving certificate that is requested by using kubelet credentials because it cannot confirm that the correct machine issued the request. You must determine and implement a method of verifying the validity of the kubelet serving certificate requests and approving them.

Additional resources

Networking requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure

All the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) machines require networking to be configured in initramfs during boot to fetch their Ignition config files.

During the initial boot, the machines require an IP address configuration that is set either through a DHCP server or statically by providing the required boot options. After a network connection is established, the machines download their Ignition config files from an HTTP or HTTPS server. The Ignition config files are then used to set the exact state of each machine. The Machine Config Operator completes more changes to the machines, such as the application of new certificates or keys, after installation.

It is recommended to use a DHCP server for long-term management of the cluster machines. Ensure that the DHCP server is configured to provide persistent IP addresses, DNS server information, and hostnames to the cluster machines.

If a DHCP service is not available for your user-provisioned infrastructure, you can instead provide the IP networking configuration and the address of the DNS server to the nodes at FCOS install time. These can be passed as boot arguments if you are installing from an ISO image. See the Installing FCOS and starting the OKD bootstrap process section for more information about static IP provisioning and advanced networking options.

The Kubernetes API server must be able to resolve the node names of the cluster machines. If the API servers and worker nodes are in different zones, you can configure a default DNS search zone to allow the API server to resolve the node names. Another supported approach is to always refer to hosts by their fully-qualified domain names in both the node objects and all DNS requests.

Setting the cluster node hostnames through DHCP

On Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) machines, the hostname is set through NetworkManager. By default, the machines obtain their hostname through DHCP. If the hostname is not provided by DHCP, set statically through kernel arguments, or another method, it is obtained through a reverse DNS lookup. Reverse DNS lookup occurs after the network has been initialized on a node and can take time to resolve. Other system services can start prior to this and detect the hostname as localhost or similar. You can avoid this by using DHCP to provide the hostname for each cluster node.

Additionally, setting the hostnames through DHCP can bypass any manual DNS record name configuration errors in environments that have a DNS split-horizon implementation.

Network connectivity requirements

You must configure the network connectivity between machines to allow OKD cluster components to communicate. Each machine must be able to resolve the hostnames of all other machines in the cluster.

This section provides details about the ports that are required.

In connected OKD environments, all nodes are required to have internet access to pull images for platform containers and provide telemetry data to Red Hat.
Table 2. Ports used for all-machine to all-machine communications
Protocol Port Description

ICMP

N/A

Network reachability tests

TCP

1936

Metrics

9000-9999

Host level services, including the node exporter on ports 9100-9101 and the Cluster Version Operator on port 9099.

10250-10259

The default ports that Kubernetes reserves

10256

openshift-sdn

UDP

4789

VXLAN

6081

Geneve

9000-9999

Host level services, including the node exporter on ports 9100-9101.

500

IPsec IKE packets

4500

IPsec NAT-T packets

TCP/UDP

30000-32767

Kubernetes node port

ESP

N/A

IPsec Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
Table 3. Ports used for all-machine to control plane communications
Protocol Port Description

TCP

6443

Kubernetes API
Table 4. Ports used for control plane machine to control plane machine communications
Protocol Port Description

TCP

2379-2380

etcd server and peer ports

NTP configuration for user-provisioned infrastructure

OKD clusters are configured to use a public Network Time Protocol (NTP) server by default. If you want to use a local enterprise NTP server, or if your cluster is being deployed in a disconnected network, you can configure the cluster to use a specific time server. For more information, see the documentation for Configuring chrony time service.

If a DHCP server provides NTP server information, the chrony time service on the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) machines read the information and can sync the clock with the NTP servers.

Additional resources

User-provisioned DNS requirements

In OKD deployments, DNS name resolution is required for the following components:

  • The Kubernetes API

  • The OKD application wildcard

  • The bootstrap, control plane, and compute machines

Reverse DNS resolution is also required for the Kubernetes API, the bootstrap machine, the control plane machines, and the compute machines.

DNS A/AAAA or CNAME records are used for name resolution and PTR records are used for reverse name resolution. The reverse records are important because Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) uses the reverse records to set the hostnames for all the nodes, unless the hostnames are provided by DHCP. Additionally, the reverse records are used to generate the certificate signing requests (CSR) that OKD needs to operate.

It is recommended to use a DHCP server to provide the hostnames to each cluster node. See the DHCP recommendations for user-provisioned infrastructure section for more information.

The following DNS records are required for a user-provisioned OKD cluster and they must be in place before installation. In each record, <cluster_name> is the cluster name and <base_domain> is the base domain that you specify in the install-config.yaml file. A complete DNS record takes the form: <component>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>..

Table 5. Required DNS records
Component Record Description

Kubernetes API

api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record, and a DNS PTR record, to identify the API load balancer. These records must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.

api-int.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record, and a DNS PTR record, to internally identify the API load balancer. These records must be resolvable from all the nodes within the cluster.

The API server must be able to resolve the worker nodes by the hostnames that are recorded in Kubernetes. If the API server cannot resolve the node names, then proxied API calls can fail, and you cannot retrieve logs from pods.

Routes

*.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A wildcard DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record that refers to the application ingress load balancer. The application ingress load balancer targets the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default. These records must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.

For example, console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> is used as a wildcard route to the OKD console.

Bootstrap machine

bootstrap.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record, and a DNS PTR record, to identify the bootstrap machine. These records must be resolvable by the nodes within the cluster.

Control plane machines

<master><n>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

DNS A/AAAA or CNAME records and DNS PTR records to identify each machine for the control plane nodes. These records must be resolvable by the nodes within the cluster.

Compute machines

<worker><n>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

DNS A/AAAA or CNAME records and DNS PTR records to identify each machine for the worker nodes. These records must be resolvable by the nodes within the cluster.

In OKD 4.4 and later, you do not need to specify etcd host and SRV records in your DNS configuration.

You can use the dig command to verify name and reverse name resolution. See the section on Validating DNS resolution for user-provisioned infrastructure for detailed validation steps.

Example DNS configuration for user-provisioned clusters

This section provides A and PTR record configuration samples that meet the DNS requirements for deploying OKD on user-provisioned infrastructure. The samples are not meant to provide advice for choosing one DNS solution over another.

In the examples, the cluster name is ocp4 and the base domain is example.com.

Example DNS A record configuration for a user-provisioned cluster

The following example is a BIND zone file that shows sample A records for name resolution in a user-provisioned cluster.

Sample DNS zone database 
$TTL 1W
@	IN	SOA	ns1.example.com.	root (
			2019070700	; serial
			3H		; refresh (3 hours)
			30M		; retry (30 minutes)
			2W		; expiry (2 weeks)
			1W )		; minimum (1 week)
	IN	NS	ns1.example.com.
	IN	MX 10	smtp.example.com.
;
;
ns1.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5
smtp.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5
;
helper.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5
helper.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.5
;
api.ocp4.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5 (1)
api-int.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.5 (2)
;
*.apps.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.5 (3)
;
bootstrap.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.96 (4)
;
master0.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.97 (5)
master1.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.98 (5)
master2.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.99 (5)
;
worker0.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.11 (6)
worker1.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.7 (6)
;
;EOF
1 Provides name resolution for the Kubernetes API. The record refers to the IP address of the API load balancer.
2 Provides name resolution for the Kubernetes API. The record refers to the IP address of the API load balancer and is used for internal cluster communications.
3 Provides name resolution for the wildcard routes. The record refers to the IP address of the application ingress load balancer. The application ingress load balancer targets the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default.

In the example, the same load balancer is used for the Kubernetes API and application ingress traffic. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.
4 Provides name resolution for the bootstrap machine.
5 Provides name resolution for the control plane machines.
6 Provides name resolution for the compute machines.
Example DNS PTR record configuration for a user-provisioned cluster

The following example BIND zone file shows sample PTR records for reverse name resolution in a user-provisioned cluster.

Sample DNS zone database for reverse records 
$TTL 1W
@	IN	SOA	ns1.example.com.	root (
			2019070700	; serial
			3H		; refresh (3 hours)
			30M		; retry (30 minutes)
			2W		; expiry (2 weeks)
			1W )		; minimum (1 week)
	IN	NS	ns1.example.com.
;
5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	api.ocp4.example.com. (1)
5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	api-int.ocp4.example.com. (2)
;
96.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	bootstrap.ocp4.example.com. (3)
;
97.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	master0.ocp4.example.com. (4)
98.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	master1.ocp4.example.com. (4)
99.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	master2.ocp4.example.com. (4)
;
11.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	worker0.ocp4.example.com. (5)
7.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	worker1.ocp4.example.com. (5)
;
;EOF
1 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the Kubernetes API. The PTR record refers to the record name of the API load balancer.
2 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the Kubernetes API. The PTR record refers to the record name of the API load balancer and is used for internal cluster communications.
3 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the bootstrap machine.
4 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the control plane machines.
5 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the compute machines.

A PTR record is not required for the OKD application wildcard.
Additional resources

Load balancing requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure

Before you install OKD, you must provision the API and application ingress load balancing infrastructure. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.

The load balancing infrastructure must meet the following requirements:

  1. API load balancer: Provides a common endpoint for users, both human and machine, to interact with and configure the platform. Configure the following conditions:

    • Layer 4 load balancing only. This can be referred to as Raw TCP, SSL Passthrough, or SSL Bridge mode. If you use SSL Bridge mode, you must enable Server Name Indication (SNI) for the API routes.

    • A stateless load balancing algorithm. The options vary based on the load balancer implementation.

    Do not configure session persistence for an API load balancer.

    Configure the following ports on both the front and back of the load balancers:

    Table 6. API load balancer
    Port Back-end machines (pool members) Internal External Description

    6443

    Bootstrap and control plane. You remove the bootstrap machine from the load balancer after the bootstrap machine initializes the cluster control plane. You must configure the /readyz endpoint for the API server health check probe.

    X

    X

    Kubernetes API server

    22623

    Bootstrap and control plane. You remove the bootstrap machine from the load balancer after the bootstrap machine initializes the cluster control plane.

    X

    Machine config server

    The load balancer must be configured to take a maximum of 30 seconds from the time the API server turns off the /readyz endpoint to the removal of the API server instance from the pool. Within the time frame after /readyz returns an error or becomes healthy, the endpoint must have been removed or added. Probing every 5 or 10 seconds, with two successful requests to become healthy and three to become unhealthy, are well-tested values.

  2. Application ingress load balancer: Provides an ingress point for application traffic flowing in from outside the cluster. Configure the following conditions:

    • Layer 4 load balancing only. This can be referred to as Raw TCP, SSL Passthrough, or SSL Bridge mode. If you use SSL Bridge mode, you must enable Server Name Indication (SNI) for the ingress routes.

    • A connection-based or session-based persistence is recommended, based on the options available and types of applications that will be hosted on the platform.

    If the true IP address of the client can be seen by the application ingress load balancer, enabling source IP-based session persistence can improve performance for applications that use end-to-end TLS encryption.

    Configure the following ports on both the front and back of the load balancers:

    Table 7. Application ingress load balancer
    Port Back-end machines (pool members) Internal External Description

    443

    The machines that run the Ingress Controller pods, compute, or worker, by default.

    X

    X

    HTTPS traffic

    80

    The machines that run the Ingress Controller pods, compute, or worker, by default.

    X

    X

    HTTP traffic

    1936

    The worker nodes that run the Ingress Controller pods, by default. You must configure the /healthz/ready endpoint for the ingress health check probe.

    X

    X

    HTTP traffic

If you are deploying a three-node cluster with zero compute nodes, the Ingress Controller pods run on the control plane nodes. In three-node cluster deployments, you must configure your application ingress load balancer to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the control plane nodes.

A working configuration for the Ingress router is required for an OKD cluster. You must configure the Ingress router after the control plane initializes.

Example load balancer configuration for user-provisioned clusters

This section provides an example API and application ingress load balancer configuration that meets the load balancing requirements for user-provisioned clusters. The sample is an /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg configuration for an HAProxy load balancer. The example is not meant to provide advice for choosing one load balancing solution over another.

In the example, the same load balancer is used for the Kubernetes API and application ingress traffic. In production scenarios you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.
Sample API and application ingress load balancer configuration 
global
  log         127.0.0.1 local2
  pidfile     /var/run/haproxy.pid
  maxconn     4000
  daemon
defaults
  mode                    http
  log                     global
  option                  dontlognull
  option http-server-close
  option                  redispatch
  retries                 3
  timeout http-request    10s
  timeout queue           1m
  timeout connect         10s
  timeout client          1m
  timeout server          1m
  timeout http-keep-alive 10s
  timeout check           10s
  maxconn                 3000
frontend stats
  bind *:1936
  mode            http
  log             global
  maxconn 10
  stats enable
  stats hide-version
  stats refresh 30s
  stats show-node
  stats show-desc Stats for ocp4 cluster (1)
  stats auth admin:ocp4
  stats uri /stats
listen api-server-6443 (2)
  bind *:6443
  mode tcp
  server bootstrap bootstrap.ocp4.example.com:6443 check inter 1s backup (3)
  server master0 master0.ocp4.example.com:6443 check inter 1s
  server master1 master1.ocp4.example.com:6443 check inter 1s
  server master2 master2.ocp4.example.com:6443 check inter 1s
listen machine-config-server-22623 (4)
  bind *:22623
  mode tcp
  server bootstrap bootstrap.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s backup (3)
  server master0 master0.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s
  server master1 master1.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s
  server master2 master2.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s
listen ingress-router-443 (5)
  bind *:443
  mode tcp
  balance source
  server worker0 worker0.ocp4.example.com:443 check inter 1s
  server worker1 worker1.ocp4.example.com:443 check inter 1s
listen ingress-router-80 (6)
  bind *:80
  mode tcp
  balance source
  server worker0 worker0.ocp4.example.com:80 check inter 1s
  server worker1 worker1.ocp4.example.com:80 check inter 1s
1 In the example, the cluster name is ocp4.
2 Port 6443 handles the Kubernetes API traffic and points to the control plane machines.
3 The bootstrap entries must be in place before the OKD cluster installation and they must be removed after the bootstrap process is complete.
4 Port 22623 handles the machine config server traffic and points to the control plane machines.
5 Port 443 handles the HTTPS traffic and points to the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default.
6 Port 80 handles the HTTP traffic and points to the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default.

If you are deploying a three-node cluster with zero compute nodes, the Ingress Controller pods run on the control plane nodes. In three-node cluster deployments, you must configure your application ingress load balancer to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the control plane nodes.

If you are using HAProxy as a load balancer, you can check that the haproxy process is listening on ports 6443, 22623, 443, and 80 by running netstat -nltupe on the HAProxy node.

If you are using HAProxy as a load balancer and SELinux is set to enforcing, you must ensure that the HAProxy service can bind to the configured TCP port by running setsebool -P haproxy_connect_any=1.

Preparing the user-provisioned infrastructure

Before you install OKD on user-provisioned infrastructure, you must prepare the underlying infrastructure.

This section provides details about the high-level steps required to set up your cluster infrastructure in preparation for an OKD installation. This includes configuring IP networking and network connectivity for your cluster nodes, enabling the required ports through your firewall, and setting up the required DNS and load balancing infrastructure.

After preparation, your cluster infrastructure must meet the requirements outlined in the Requirements for a cluster with user-provisioned infrastructure section.

Prerequisites

  • You have reviewed the OKD 4.x Tested Integrations page.

  • You have reviewed the infrastructure requirements detailed in the Requirements for a cluster with user-provisioned infrastructure section.

Procedure

  1. If you are using DHCP to provide the IP networking configuration to your cluster nodes, configure your DHCP service.

    1. Add persistent IP addresses for the nodes to your DHCP server configuration. In your configuration, match the MAC address of the relevant network interface to the intended IP address for each node.

    2. When you use DHCP to configure IP addressing for the cluster machines, the machines also obtain the DNS server information through DHCP. Define the persistent DNS server address that is used by the cluster nodes through your DHCP server configuration.

      If you are not using a DHCP service, you must provide the IP networking configuration and the address of the DNS server to the nodes at FCOS install time. These can be passed as boot arguments if you are installing from an ISO image. See the Installing FCOS and starting the OKD bootstrap process section for more information about static IP provisioning and advanced networking options.

    3. Define the hostnames of your cluster nodes in your DHCP server configuration. See the Setting the cluster node hostnames through DHCP section for details about hostname considerations.

      If you are not using a DHCP service, the cluster nodes obtain their hostname through a reverse DNS lookup.

  2. Ensure that your network infrastructure provides the required network connectivity between the cluster components. See the Networking requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for details about the requirements.

  3. Configure your firewall to enable the ports required for the OKD cluster components to communicate. See Networking requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for details about the ports that are required.

  4. Setup the required DNS infrastructure for your cluster.

    1. Configure DNS name resolution for the Kubernetes API, the application wildcard, the bootstrap machine, the control plane machines, and the compute machines.

    2. Configure reverse DNS resolution for the Kubernetes API, the bootstrap machine, the control plane machines, and the compute machines.

      See the User-provisioned DNS requirements section for more information about the OKD DNS requirements.

  5. Validate your DNS configuration.

    1. From your installation node, run DNS lookups against the record names of the Kubernetes API, the wildcard routes, and the cluster nodes. Validate that the IP addresses in the responses correspond to the correct components.

    2. From your installation node, run reverse DNS lookups against the IP addresses of the load balancer and the cluster nodes. Validate that the record names in the responses correspond to the correct components.

      See the Validating DNS resolution for user-provisioned infrastructure section for detailed DNS validation steps.

  6. Provision the required API and application ingress load balancing infrastructure. See the Load balancing requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for more information about the requirements.

Some load balancing solutions require the DNS name resolution for the cluster nodes to be in place before the load balancing is initialized.
Additional resources

Validating DNS resolution for user-provisioned infrastructure

You can validate your DNS configuration before installing OKD on user-provisioned infrastructure.

The validation steps detailed in this section must succeed before you install your cluster.
Prerequisites

  • You have configured the required DNS records for your user-provisioned infrastructure.

Procedure

  1. From your installation node, run DNS lookups against the record names of the Kubernetes API, the wildcard routes, and the cluster nodes. Validate that the IP addresses contained in the responses correspond to the correct components.

    1. Perform a lookup against the Kubernetes API record name. Check that the result points to the IP address of the API load balancer:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> (1)
      1 Replace <nameserver_ip> with the IP address of the nameserver, <cluster_name> with your cluster name, and <base_domain> with your base domain name.
      Example output
      api.ocp4.example.com.		0	IN	A	192.168.1.5

    2. Perform a lookup against the Kubernetes internal API record name. Check that the result points to the IP address of the API load balancer:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> api-int.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      api-int.ocp4.example.com.		0	IN	A	192.168.1.5

    3. Test an example *.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> DNS wildcard lookup. All of the application wildcard lookups must resolve to the IP address of the application ingress load balancer:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> random.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      random.apps.ocp4.example.com.		0	IN	A	192.168.1.5

      In the example outputs, the same load balancer is used for the Kubernetes API and application ingress traffic. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.

      You can replace random with another wildcard value. For example, you can query the route to the OKD console:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      console-openshift-console.apps.ocp4.example.com. 0 IN	A 192.168.1.5

    4. Run a lookup against the bootstrap DNS record name. Check that the result points to the IP address of the bootstrap node:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> bootstrap.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      bootstrap.ocp4.example.com.		0	IN	A	192.168.1.96

    5. Use this method to perform lookups against the DNS record names for the control plane and compute nodes. Check that the results correspond to the IP addresses of each node.

  2. From your installation node, run reverse DNS lookups against the IP addresses of the load balancer and the cluster nodes. Validate that the record names contained in the responses correspond to the correct components.

    1. Perform a reverse lookup against the IP address of the API load balancer. Check that the response includes the record names for the Kubernetes API and the Kubernetes internal API:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> -x 192.168.1.5
      Example output
      5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 0	IN	PTR	api-int.ocp4.example.com. (1)
5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 0	IN	PTR	api.ocp4.example.com. (2)
      1 Provides the record name for the Kubernetes internal API.
      2 Provides the record name for the Kubernetes API.

      A PTR record is not required for the OKD application wildcard. No validation step is needed for reverse DNS resolution against the IP address of the application ingress load balancer.

    2. Perform a reverse lookup against the IP address of the bootstrap node. Check that the result points to the DNS record name of the bootstrap node:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> -x 192.168.1.96
      Example output
      96.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 0	IN	PTR	bootstrap.ocp4.example.com.

    3. Use this method to perform reverse lookups against the IP addresses for the control plane and compute nodes. Check that the results correspond to the DNS record names of each node.

Additional resources

Generating a key pair for cluster node SSH access

During an OKD installation, you can provide an SSH public key to the installation program. The key is passed to the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) nodes through their Ignition config files and is used to authenticate SSH access to the nodes. The key is added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys list for the core user on each node, which enables password-less authentication.

After the key is passed to the nodes, you can use the key pair to SSH in to the FCOS nodes as the user core. To access the nodes through SSH, the private key identity must be managed by SSH for your local user.

If you want to SSH in to your cluster nodes to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, you must provide the SSH public key during the installation process. The ./openshift-install gather command also requires the SSH public key to be in place on the cluster nodes.

Do not skip this procedure in production environments, where disaster recovery and debugging is required.

You must use a local key, not one that you configured with platform-specific approaches such as AWS key pairs.

On clusters running Fedora CoreOS (FCOS), the SSH keys specified in the Ignition config files are written to the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys.d/core file. However, the Machine Config Operator manages SSH keys in the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys file and configures sshd to ignore the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys.d/core file. As a result, newly provisioned OKD nodes are not accessible using SSH until the Machine Config Operator reconciles the machine configs with the authorized_keys file. After you can access the nodes using SSH, you can delete the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys.d/core file.
Procedure

  1. If you do not have an existing SSH key pair on your local machine to use for authentication onto your cluster nodes, create one. For example, on a computer that uses a Linux operating system, run the following command:

    $ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N '' -f <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name, such as ~/.ssh/id_ed25519, of the new SSH key. If you have an existing key pair, ensure your public key is in the your ~/.ssh directory.

    If you plan to install an OKD cluster that uses FIPS Validated / Modules in Process cryptographic libraries on the x86_64 architecture, do not create a key that uses the ed25519 algorithm. Instead, create a key that uses the rsa or ecdsa algorithm.

  2. View the public SSH key:

    $ cat <path>/<file_name>.pub

    For example, run the following to view the ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub public key:

    $ cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

  3. Add the SSH private key identity to the SSH agent for your local user, if it has not already been added. SSH agent management of the key is required for password-less SSH authentication onto your cluster nodes, or if you want to use the ./openshift-install gather command.

    On some distributions, default SSH private key identities such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_dsa are managed automatically.

    1. If the ssh-agent process is not already running for your local user, start it as a background task:

      $ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
      Example output
      Agent pid 31874

      If your cluster is in FIPS mode, only use FIPS-compliant algorithms to generate the SSH key. The key must be either RSA or ECDSA.

  4. Add your SSH private key to the ssh-agent:

    $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name for your SSH private key, such as ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
    Example output
    Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)
Next steps

  • When you install OKD, provide the SSH public key to the installation program. If you install a cluster on infrastructure that you provision, you must provide the key to the installation program.

Additional resources

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OKD, download the installation file on a local computer.

Prerequisites

  • You have a computer that runs Linux or macOS, with 500 MB of local disk space

Procedure

  1. Download installer from https://github.com/openshift/okd/releases

    The installation program creates several files on the computer that you use to install your cluster. You must keep the installation program and the files that the installation program creates after you finish installing the cluster. Both files are required to delete the cluster.

    Deleting the files created by the installation program does not remove your cluster, even if the cluster failed during installation. To remove your cluster, complete the OKD uninstallation procedures for your specific cloud provider.

  2. Extract the installation program. For example, on a computer that uses a Linux operating system, run the following command:

    $ tar -xvf openshift-install-linux.tar.gz

  3. Download your installation pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager. This pull secret allows you to authenticate with the services that are provided by the included authorities, including Quay.io, which serves the container images for OKD components.

    Using a pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager is not required. You can use a pull secret for another private registry. Or, if you do not need the cluster to pull images from a private registry, you can use {"auths":{"fake":{"auth":"aWQ6cGFzcwo="}}} as the pull secret when prompted during the installation.

    If you do not use the pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager:

    • Red Hat Operators are not available.

    • The Telemetry and Insights operators do not send data to Red Hat.

    • Content from the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog Container images registry, such as image streams and Operators, are not available.

Installing the OpenShift CLI by downloading the binary

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) to interact with OKD from a command-line interface. You can install oc on Linux, Windows, or macOS.

If you installed an earlier version of oc, you cannot use it to complete all of the commands in OKD 4. Download and install the new version of oc.

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Linux

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) binary on Linux by using the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

  2. Download oc.tar.gz.

  3. Unpack the archive:

    $ tar xvzf <file>

  4. Place the oc binary in a directory that is on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, execute the following command:

    $ echo $PATH

After you install the OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Windows

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) binary on Windows by using the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

  2. Download oc.zip.

  3. Unzip the archive with a ZIP program.

  4. Move the oc binary to a directory that is on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, open the command prompt and execute the following command:

    C:\> path

After you install the OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

C:\> oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on macOS

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) binary on macOS by using the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

  2. Download oc.tar.gz.

  3. Unpack and unzip the archive.

  4. Move the oc binary to a directory on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, open a terminal and execute the following command:

    $ echo $PATH

After you install the OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Manually creating the installation configuration file

For user-provisioned installations of OKD, you manually generate your installation configuration file.

Prerequisites

  • You have an SSH public key on your local machine to provide to the installation program. The key will be used for SSH authentication onto your cluster nodes for debugging and disaster recovery.

  • You have obtained the OKD installation program and the pull secret for your cluster.

Procedure

  1. Create an installation directory to store your required installation assets in:

    $ mkdir <installation_directory>

    You must create a directory. Some installation assets, like bootstrap X.509 certificates have short expiration intervals, so you must not reuse an installation directory. If you want to reuse individual files from another cluster installation, you can copy them into your directory. However, the file names for the installation assets might change between releases. Use caution when copying installation files from an earlier OKD version.

  2. Customize the sample install-config.yaml file template that is provided and save it in the <installation_directory>.

    You must name this configuration file install-config.yaml.

    For some platform types, you can alternatively run ./openshift-install create install-config --dir <installation_directory> to generate an install-config.yaml file. You can provide details about your cluster configuration at the prompts.

  3. Back up the install-config.yaml file so that you can use it to install multiple clusters.

    The install-config.yaml file is consumed during the next step of the installation process. You must back it up now.

Installation configuration parameters

Before you deploy an OKD cluster, you provide a customized install-config.yaml installation configuration file that describes the details for your environment.

After installation, you cannot modify these parameters in the install-config.yaml file.

Required configuration parameters

Required installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 8. Required parameters
Parameter Description Values

apiVersion

The API version for the install-config.yaml content. The current version is v1. The installer may also support older API versions.

String

baseDomain

The base domain of your cloud provider. The base domain is used to create routes to your OKD cluster components. The full DNS name for your cluster is a combination of the baseDomain and metadata.name parameter values that uses the <metadata.name>.<baseDomain> format.

A fully-qualified domain or subdomain name, such as example.com.

metadata

Kubernetes resource ObjectMeta, from which only the name parameter is consumed.

Object

metadata.name

The name of the cluster. DNS records for the cluster are all subdomains of {{.metadata.name}}.{{.baseDomain}}.

String of lowercase letters, hyphens (-), and periods (.), such as dev.

platform

The configuration for the specific platform upon which to perform the installation: alibabacloud, aws, baremetal, azure, ibmcloud, openstack, ovirt, vsphere, or {}. For additional information about platform.<platform> parameters, consult the table for your specific platform that follows.

Object

Network configuration parameters

You can customize your installation configuration based on the requirements of your existing network infrastructure. For example, you can expand the IP address block for the cluster network or provide different IP address blocks than the defaults.

Only IPv4 addresses are supported.

Table 9. Network parameters
Parameter Description Values

networking

The configuration for the cluster network.

Object

You cannot modify parameters specified by the networking object after installation.

networking.networkType

The cluster network provider Container Network Interface (CNI) plug-in to install.

Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. The default value is OVNKubernetes.

networking.clusterNetwork

The IP address blocks for pods.

The default value is 10.128.0.0/14 with a host prefix of /23.

If you specify multiple IP address blocks, the blocks must not overlap.

An array of objects. For example:

networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23

networking.clusterNetwork.cidr

Required if you use networking.clusterNetwork. An IP address block.

An IPv4 network.

An IP address block in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation. The prefix length for an IPv4 block is between 0 and 32.

networking.clusterNetwork.hostPrefix

The subnet prefix length to assign to each individual node. For example, if hostPrefix is set to 23 then each node is assigned a /23 subnet out of the given cidr. A hostPrefix value of 23 provides 510 (2^(32 - 23) - 2) pod IP addresses.

A subnet prefix.

The default value is 23.

networking.serviceNetwork

The IP address block for services. The default value is 172.30.0.0/16.

The OpenShift SDN and OVN-Kubernetes network providers support only a single IP address block for the service network.

An array with an IP address block in CIDR format. For example:

networking:
  serviceNetwork:
   - 172.30.0.0/16

networking.machineNetwork

The IP address blocks for machines.

If you specify multiple IP address blocks, the blocks must not overlap.

An array of objects. For example:

networking:
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16

networking.machineNetwork.cidr

Required if you use networking.machineNetwork. An IP address block. The default value is 10.0.0.0/16 for all platforms other than libvirt. For libvirt, the default value is 192.168.126.0/24.

An IP network block in CIDR notation.

For example, 10.0.0.0/16.

Set the networking.machineNetwork to match the CIDR that the preferred NIC resides in.

Optional configuration parameters

Optional installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 10. Optional parameters
Parameter Description Values

additionalTrustBundle

A PEM-encoded X.509 certificate bundle that is added to the nodes' trusted certificate store. This trust bundle may also be used when a proxy has been configured.

String

cgroupsV2

Enables Linux control groups version 2 (cgroups v2) on specific nodes in your cluster. The OKD process for enabling cgroups v2 disables all cgroup version 1 controllers and hierarchies. The OKD cgroups version 2 feature is in Developer Preview and is not supported by Red Hat at this time.

true

compute

The configuration for the machines that comprise the compute nodes.

Array of MachinePool objects.

compute.architecture

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, clusters with varied architectures are not supported. All pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64 (the default).

String

compute.hyperthreading

Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading, on compute machines. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance.

Enabled or Disabled

compute.name

Required if you use compute. The name of the machine pool.

worker

compute.platform

Required if you use compute. Use this parameter to specify the cloud provider to host the worker machines. This parameter value must match the controlPlane.platform parameter value.

alibaba, aws, azure, gcp, ibmcloud, openstack, ovirt, vsphere, or {}

compute.replicas

The number of compute machines, which are also known as worker machines, to provision.

A positive integer greater than or equal to 2. The default value is 3.

controlPlane

The configuration for the machines that comprise the control plane.

Array of MachinePool objects.

controlPlane.architecture

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, clusters with varied architectures are not supported. All pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64.

String

controlPlane.hyperthreading

Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading, on control plane machines. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance.

Enabled or Disabled

controlPlane.name

Required if you use controlPlane. The name of the machine pool.

master

controlPlane.platform

Required if you use controlPlane. Use this parameter to specify the cloud provider that hosts the control plane machines. This parameter value must match the compute.platform parameter value.

alibaba, aws, azure, gcp, ibmcloud, openstack, ovirt, vsphere, or {}

controlPlane.replicas

The number of control plane machines to provision.

The only supported value is 3, which is the default value.

credentialsMode

The Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) mode. If no mode is specified, the CCO dynamically tries to determine the capabilities of the provided credentials, with a preference for mint mode on the platforms where multiple modes are supported.

Not all CCO modes are supported for all cloud providers. For more information on CCO modes, see the Cloud Credential Operator entry in the Platform Operators reference content.

Mint, Passthrough, Manual, or an empty string ("").

imageContentSources

Sources and repositories for the release-image content.

Array of objects. Includes a source and, optionally, mirrors, as described in the following rows of this table.

imageContentSources.source

Required if you use imageContentSources. Specify the repository that users refer to, for example, in image pull specifications.

String

imageContentSources.mirrors

Specify one or more repositories that may also contain the same images.

Array of strings

publish

How to publish or expose the user-facing endpoints of your cluster, such as the Kubernetes API, OpenShift routes.

Internal or External. The default value is External.

Setting this field to Internal is not supported on non-cloud platforms and IBM Cloud VPC.

If the value of the field is set to Internal, the cluster will become non-functional. For more information, refer to BZ#1953035.

sshKey

The SSH key to authenticate access to your cluster machines.

For production OKD clusters on which you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, specify an SSH key that your ssh-agent process uses.

For example, sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA...

Sample install-config.yaml file for bare metal

You can customize the install-config.yaml file to specify more details about your OKD cluster’s platform or modify the values of the required parameters.

apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
compute: (2)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  name: worker
  replicas: 0 (4)
controlPlane: (2)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  name: master
  replicas: 3 (5)
metadata:
  name: test (6)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14 (7)
    hostPrefix: 23 (8)
  networkType: OVNKubernetes
  serviceNetwork: (9)
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  none: {} (10)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (11)
sshKey: 'ssh-ed25519 AAAA...' (12)
1 The base domain of the cluster. All DNS records must be sub-domains of this base and include the cluster name.
2 The controlPlane section is a single mapping, but the compute section is a sequence of mappings. To meet the requirements of the different data structures, the first line of the compute section must begin with a hyphen, -, and the first line of the controlPlane section must not. Although both sections currently define a single machine pool, it is possible that future versions of OKD will support defining multiple compute pools during installation. Only one control plane pool is used.
3 Specifies whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading (SMT), or hyperthreading. By default, SMT is enabled to increase the performance of the cores in your machines. You can disable it by setting the parameter value to Disabled. If you disable SMT, you must disable it in all cluster machines; this includes both control plane and compute machines.

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is enabled by default. If SMT is not enabled in your BIOS settings, the hyperthreading parameter has no effect.

If you disable hyperthreading, whether in the BIOS or in the install-config.yaml file, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance.
4 You must set this value to 0 when you install OKD on user-provisioned infrastructure. In installer-provisioned installations, the parameter controls the number of compute machines that the cluster creates and manages for you. In user-provisioned installations, you must manually deploy the compute machines before you finish installing the cluster.

If you are installing a three-node cluster, do not deploy any compute machines when you install the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) machines.
5 The number of control plane machines that you add to the cluster. Because the cluster uses these values as the number of etcd endpoints in the cluster, the value must match the number of control plane machines that you deploy.
6 The cluster name that you specified in your DNS records.
7 A block of IP addresses from which pod IP addresses are allocated. This block must not overlap with existing physical networks. These IP addresses are used for the pod network. If you need to access the pods from an external network, you must configure load balancers and routers to manage the traffic.
8 The subnet prefix length to assign to each individual node. For example, if hostPrefix is set to 23, then each node is assigned a /23 subnet out of the given cidr, which allows for 510 (2^(32 - 23) - 2) pod IP addresses. If you are required to provide access to nodes from an external network, configure load balancers and routers to manage the traffic.
9 The IP address pool to use for service IP addresses. You can enter only one IP address pool. This block must not overlap with existing physical networks. If you need to access the services from an external network, configure load balancers and routers to manage the traffic.
10 You must set the platform to none. You cannot provide additional platform configuration variables for your platform.
11 The pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager. This pull secret allows you to authenticate with the services that are provided by the included authorities, including Quay.io, which serves the container images for OKD components.
12 The SSH public key for the core user in Fedora CoreOS (FCOS).

For production OKD clusters on which you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, specify an SSH key that your ssh-agent process uses.
Additional resources

Configuring the cluster-wide proxy during installation

Production environments can deny direct access to the internet and instead have an HTTP or HTTPS proxy available. You can configure a new OKD cluster to use a proxy by configuring the proxy settings in the install-config.yaml file.

For bare metal installations, if you do not assign node IP addresses from the range that is specified in the networking.machineNetwork[].cidr field in the install-config.yaml file, you must include them in the proxy.noProxy field.
Prerequisites

  • You have an existing install-config.yaml file.

  • You reviewed the sites that your cluster requires access to and determined whether any of them need to bypass the proxy. By default, all cluster egress traffic is proxied, including calls to hosting cloud provider APIs. You added sites to the Proxy object’s spec.noProxy field to bypass the proxy if necessary.

    The Proxy object status.noProxy field is populated with the values of the networking.machineNetwork[].cidr, networking.clusterNetwork[].cidr, and networking.serviceNetwork[] fields from your installation configuration.

    For installations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and OpenStack, the Proxy object status.noProxy field is also populated with the instance metadata endpoint (169.254.169.254).
Procedure

  1. Edit your install-config.yaml file and add the proxy settings. For example:

    apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: my.domain.com
proxy:
  httpProxy: http://<username>:<pswd>@<ip>:<port> (1)
  httpsProxy: https://<username>:<pswd>@<ip>:<port> (2)
  noProxy: example.com (3)
additionalTrustBundle: | (4)
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    <MY_TRUSTED_CA_CERT>
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----
...
    1 A proxy URL to use for creating HTTP connections outside the cluster. The URL scheme must be http.
    2 A proxy URL to use for creating HTTPS connections outside the cluster.
    3 A comma-separated list of destination domain names, IP addresses, or other network CIDRs to exclude from proxying. Preface a domain with . to match subdomains only. For example, .y.com matches x.y.com, but not y.com. Use * to bypass the proxy for all destinations.
    4 If provided, the installation program generates a config map that is named user-ca-bundle in the openshift-config namespace to hold the additional CA certificates. If you provide additionalTrustBundle and at least one proxy setting, the Proxy object is configured to reference the user-ca-bundle config map in the trustedCA field. The Cluster Network Operator then creates a trusted-ca-bundle config map that merges the contents specified for the trustedCA parameter with the FCOS trust bundle. The additionalTrustBundle field is required unless the proxy’s identity certificate is signed by an authority from the FCOS trust bundle.

    The installation program does not support the proxy readinessEndpoints field.

  2. Save the file and reference it when installing OKD.

The installation program creates a cluster-wide proxy that is named cluster that uses the proxy settings in the provided install-config.yaml file. If no proxy settings are provided, a cluster Proxy object is still created, but it will have a nil spec.

Only the Proxy object named cluster is supported, and no additional proxies can be created.

Configuring a three-node cluster

Optionally, you can deploy zero compute machines in a bare metal cluster that consists of three control plane machines only. This provides smaller, more resource efficient clusters for cluster administrators and developers to use for testing, development, and production.

In three-node OKD environments, the three control plane machines are schedulable, which means that your application workloads are scheduled to run on them.

Prerequisites

  • You have an existing install-config.yaml file.

Procedure

  • Ensure that the number of compute replicas is set to 0 in your install-config.yaml file, as shown in the following compute stanza:

    compute:
- name: worker
  platform: {}
  replicas: 0

    You must set the value of the replicas parameter for the compute machines to 0 when you install OKD on user-provisioned infrastructure, regardless of the number of compute machines you are deploying. In installer-provisioned installations, the parameter controls the number of compute machines that the cluster creates and manages for you. This does not apply to user-provisioned installations, where the compute machines are deployed manually.

For three-node cluster installations, follow these next steps:

  • If you are deploying a three-node cluster with zero compute nodes, the Ingress Controller pods run on the control plane nodes. In three-node cluster deployments, you must configure your application ingress load balancer to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the control plane nodes. See the Load balancing requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for more information.

  • When you create the Kubernetes manifest files in the following procedure, ensure that the mastersSchedulable parameter in the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-scheduler-02-config.yml file is set to true. This enables your application workloads to run on the control plane nodes.

  • Do not deploy any compute nodes when you create the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) machines.

Creating the Kubernetes manifest and Ignition config files

Because you must modify some cluster definition files and manually start the cluster machines, you must generate the Kubernetes manifest and Ignition config files that the cluster needs to configure the machines.

The installation configuration file transforms into the Kubernetes manifests. The manifests wrap into the Ignition configuration files, which are later used to configure the cluster machines.

  • The Ignition config files that the OKD installation program generates contain certificates that expire after 24 hours, which are then renewed at that time. If the cluster is shut down before renewing the certificates and the cluster is later restarted after the 24 hours have elapsed, the cluster automatically recovers the expired certificates. The exception is that you must manually approve the pending node-bootstrapper certificate signing requests (CSRs) to recover kubelet certificates. See the documentation for Recovering from expired control plane certificates for more information.

  • It is recommended that you use Ignition config files within 12 hours after they are generated because the 24-hour certificate rotates from 16 to 22 hours after the cluster is installed. By using the Ignition config files within 12 hours, you can avoid installation failure if the certificate update runs during installation.
Prerequisites

  • You obtained the OKD installation program.

  • You created the install-config.yaml installation configuration file.

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the OKD installation program and generate the Kubernetes manifests for the cluster:

    $ ./openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the installation directory that contains the install-config.yaml file you created.

    If you are installing a three-node cluster, skip the following step to allow the control plane nodes to be schedulable.

    When you configure control plane nodes from the default unschedulable to schedulable, additional subscriptions are required. This is because control plane nodes then become worker nodes.

  2. Check that the mastersSchedulable parameter in the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-scheduler-02-config.yml Kubernetes manifest file is set to false. This setting prevents pods from being scheduled on the control plane machines:

    1. Open the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-scheduler-02-config.yml file.

    2. Locate the mastersSchedulable parameter and ensure that it is set to false.

    3. Save and exit the file.

  3. To create the Ignition configuration files, run the following command from the directory that contains the installation program:

    $ ./openshift-install create ignition-configs --dir <installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the same installation directory.

    Ignition config files are created for the bootstrap, control plane, and compute nodes in the installation directory. The kubeadmin-password and kubeconfig files are created in the ./<installation_directory>/auth directory:

    .
├── auth
│   ├── kubeadmin-password
│   └── kubeconfig
├── bootstrap.ign
├── master.ign
├── metadata.json
└── worker.ign
Additional resources

Installing FCOS and starting the OKD bootstrap process

To install OKD on bare metal infrastructure that you provision, you must install Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) on the machines. When you install FCOS, you must provide the Ignition config file that was generated by the OKD installation program for the type of machine you are installing. If you have configured suitable networking, DNS, and load balancing infrastructure, the OKD bootstrap process begins automatically after the FCOS machines have rebooted.

To install FCOS on the machines, follow either the steps to use an ISO image or network PXE booting.

The compute node deployment steps included in this installation document are FCOS-specific. If you choose instead to deploy Fedora-based compute nodes, you take responsibility for all operating system life cycle management and maintenance, including performing system updates, applying patches, and completing all other required tasks. Only Fedora 8 compute machines are supported.

You can configure FCOS during ISO and PXE installations by using the following methods:

  • Kernel arguments: You can use kernel arguments to provide installation-specific information. For example, you can specify the locations of the FCOS installation files that you uploaded to your HTTP server and the location of the Ignition config file for the type of node you are installing. For a PXE installation, you can use the APPEND parameter to pass the arguments to the kernel of the live installer. For an ISO installation, you can interrupt the live installation boot process to add the kernel arguments. In both installation cases, you can use special coreos.inst.* arguments to direct the live installer, as well as standard installation boot arguments for turning standard kernel services on or off.

  • Ignition configs: OKD Ignition config files (*.ign) are specific to the type of node you are installing. You pass the location of a bootstrap, control plane, or compute node Ignition config file during the FCOS installation so that it takes effect on first boot. In special cases, you can create a separate, limited Ignition config to pass to the live system. That Ignition config could do a certain set of tasks, such as reporting success to a provisioning system after completing installation. This special Ignition config is consumed by the coreos-installer to be applied on first boot of the installed system. Do not provide the standard control plane and compute node Ignition configs to the live ISO directly.

  • coreos-installer: You can boot the live ISO installer to a shell prompt, which allows you to prepare the permanent system in a variety of ways before first boot. In particular, you can run the coreos-installer command to identify various artifacts to include, work with disk partitions, and set up networking. In some cases, you can configure features on the live system and copy them to the installed system.

Whether to use an ISO or PXE install depends on your situation. A PXE install requires an available DHCP service and more preparation, but can make the installation process more automated. An ISO install is a more manual process and can be inconvenient if you are setting up more than a few machines.

As of OKD 4.6, the FCOS ISO and other installation artifacts provide support for installation on disks with 4K sectors.

Installing FCOS by using an ISO image

You can use an ISO image to install FCOS on the machines.

Prerequisites

  • You have created the Ignition config files for your cluster.

  • You have configured suitable network, DNS and load balancing infrastructure.

  • You have an HTTP server that can be accessed from your computer, and from the machines that you create.

  • You have reviewed the Advanced FCOS installation configuration section for different ways to configure features, such as networking and disk partitioning.

Procedure

  1. Obtain the SHA512 digest for each of your Ignition config files. For example, you can use the following on a system running Linux to get the SHA512 digest for your bootstrap.ign Ignition config file:

    $ sha512sum <installation_directory>/bootstrap.ign

    The digests are provided to the coreos-installer in a later step to validate the authenticity of the Ignition config files on the cluster nodes.

  2. Upload the bootstrap, control plane, and compute node Ignition config files that the installation program created to your HTTP server. Note the URLs of these files.

    You can add or change configuration settings in your Ignition configs before saving them to your HTTP server. If you plan to add more compute machines to your cluster after you finish installation, do not delete these files.

  3. From the installation host, validate that the Ignition config files are available on the URLs. The following example gets the Ignition config file for the bootstrap node:

    $ curl -k http://<HTTP_server>/bootstrap.ign (1)
    Example output
      % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0{"ignition":{"version":"3.2.0"},"passwd":{"users":[{"name":"core","sshAuthorizedKeys":["ssh-rsa...

    Replace bootstrap.ign with master.ign or worker.ign in the command to validate that the Ignition config files for the control plane and compute nodes are also available.

  4. Although it is possible to obtain the FCOS images that are required for your preferred method of installing operating system instances from the FCOS page, the recommended way to obtain the correct version of your FCOS images are from the output of openshift-install command:

    $ openshift-install coreos print-stream-json | grep '\.iso[^.]'
    Example output
    "location": "<url>/prod/streams/stable/builds/<release>/x86_64/fedora-coreos-<release>-live.x86_64.iso",

    The FCOS images might not change with every release of OKD. You must download images with the highest version that is less than or equal to the OKD version that you install. Use the image versions that match your OKD version if they are available. Use only ISO images for this procedure. FCOS qcow2 images are not supported for this installation type.

    ISO file names resemble the following example:

    fedora-coreos-<version>-live.<architecture>.iso

  5. Use the ISO to start the FCOS installation. Use one of the following installation options:

    • Burn the ISO image to a disk and boot it directly.

    • Use ISO redirection by using a lights-out management (LOM) interface.

  6. Boot the FCOS ISO image without specifying any options or interrupting the live boot sequence. Wait for the installer to boot into a shell prompt in the FCOS live environment.

    It is possible to interrupt the FCOS installation boot process to add kernel arguments. However, for this ISO procedure you should use the coreos-installer command as outlined in the following steps, instead of adding kernel arguments.

  7. Run the coreos-installer command and specify the options that meet your installation requirements. At a minimum, you must specify the URL that points to the Ignition config file for the node type, and the device that you are installing to:

    $ sudo coreos-installer install --ignition-url=http://<HTTP_server>/<node_type>.ign <device> --ignition-hash=sha512-<digest> (1) (2)
    1 You must run the coreos-installer command by using sudo, because the core user does not have the required root privileges to perform the installation.
    2 The --ignition-hash option is required when the Ignition config file is obtained through an HTTP URL to validate the authenticity of the Ignition config file on the cluster node. <digest> is the Ignition config file SHA512 digest obtained in a preceding step.

    If you want to provide your Ignition config files through an HTTPS server that uses TLS, you can add the internal certificate authority (CA) to the system trust store before running coreos-installer.

    The following example initializes a bootstrap node installation to the /dev/sda device. The Ignition config file for the bootstrap node is obtained from an HTTP web server with the IP address 192.168.1.2:

    $ sudo coreos-installer install --ignition-url=http://192.168.1.2:80/installation_directory/bootstrap.ign /dev/sda --ignition-hash=sha512-a5a2d43879223273c9b60af66b44202a1d1248fc01cf156c46d4a79f552b6bad47bc8cc78ddf0116e80c59d2ea9e32ba53bc807afbca581aa059311def2c3e3b

  8. Monitor the progress of the FCOS installation on the console of the machine.

    Be sure that the installation is successful on each node before commencing with the OKD installation. Observing the installation process can also help to determine the cause of FCOS installation issues that might arise.

  9. After FCOS installs, the system reboots. During the system reboot, it applies the Ignition config file that you specified.

  10. Check the console output to verify that Ignition ran.

    Example command
    Ignition: ran on 2022/03/14 14:48:33 UTC (this boot)
Ignition: user-provided config was applied

  11. Continue to create the other machines for your cluster.

    You must create the bootstrap and control plane machines at this time. If the control plane machines are not made schedulable, also create at least two compute machines before you install OKD.

    If the required network, DNS, and load balancer infrastructure are in place, the OKD bootstrap process begins automatically after the FCOS nodes have rebooted.

    FCOS nodes do not include a default password for the core user. You can access the nodes by running ssh core@<node>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> as a user with access to the SSH private key that is paired to the public key that you specified in your install_config.yaml file. OKD 4 cluster nodes running FCOS are immutable and rely on Operators to apply cluster changes. Accessing cluster nodes by using SSH is not recommended. However, when investigating installation issues, if the OKD API is not available, or the kubelet is not properly functioning on a target node, SSH access might be required for debugging or disaster recovery.

Installing FCOS by using PXE or iPXE booting

You can use PXE or iPXE booting to install FCOS on the machines.

Prerequisites

  • You have created the Ignition config files for your cluster.

  • You have configured suitable network, DNS and load balancing infrastructure.

  • You have configured suitable PXE or iPXE infrastructure.

  • You have an HTTP server that can be accessed from your computer, and from the machines that you create.

  • You have reviewed the Advanced FCOS installation configuration section for different ways to configure features, such as networking and disk partitioning.

Procedure

  1. Upload the bootstrap, control plane, and compute node Ignition config files that the installation program created to your HTTP server. Note the URLs of these files.

    You can add or change configuration settings in your Ignition configs before saving them to your HTTP server. If you plan to add more compute machines to your cluster after you finish installation, do not delete these files.

  2. From the installation host, validate that the Ignition config files are available on the URLs. The following example gets the Ignition config file for the bootstrap node:

    $ curl -k http://<HTTP_server>/bootstrap.ign (1)
    Example output
      % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0{"ignition":{"version":"3.2.0"},"passwd":{"users":[{"name":"core","sshAuthorizedKeys":["ssh-rsa...

    Replace bootstrap.ign with master.ign or worker.ign in the command to validate that the Ignition config files for the control plane and compute nodes are also available.

  3. Although it is possible to obtain the FCOS kernel, initramfs and rootfs files that are required for your preferred method of installing operating system instances from the FCOS page, the recommended way to obtain the correct version of your FCOS files are from the output of openshift-install command:

    $ openshift-install coreos print-stream-json | grep -Eo '"https.*(kernel-|initramfs.|rootfs.)\w+(\.img)?"'
    Example output
    "<url>/prod/streams/stable/builds/<release>/x86_64/fedora-coreos-<release>-live-kernel-x86_64"
"<url>/prod/streams/stable/builds/<release>/x86_64/fedora-coreos-<release>-live-initramfs.x86_64.img"
"<url>/prod/streams/stable/builds/<release>/x86_64/fedora-coreos-<release>-live-rootfs.x86_64.img"

    The FCOS artifacts might not change with every release of OKD. You must download images with the highest version that is less than or equal to the OKD version that you install. Only use the appropriate kernel, initramfs, and rootfs artifacts described below for this procedure. FCOS QCOW2 images are not supported for this installation type.

    The file names contain the OKD version number. They resemble the following examples:

    • kernel: fedora-coreos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture>

    • initramfs: fedora-coreos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img

    • rootfs: fedora-coreos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img

  4. Upload the rootfs, kernel, and initramfs files to your HTTP server.

    If you plan to add more compute machines to your cluster after you finish installation, do not delete these files.

  5. Configure the network boot infrastructure so that the machines boot from their local disks after FCOS is installed on them.

  6. Configure PXE or iPXE installation for the FCOS images and begin the installation.

    Modify one of the following example menu entries for your environment and verify that the image and Ignition files are properly accessible:

    • For PXE (x86_64):

      DEFAULT pxeboot
TIMEOUT 20
PROMPT 0
LABEL pxeboot
    KERNEL http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture> (1)
    APPEND initrd=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img coreos.inst.install_dev=/dev/sda coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<HTTP_server>/bootstrap.ign (2) (3)
      1 Specify the location of the live kernel file that you uploaded to your HTTP server. The URL must be HTTP, TFTP, or FTP; HTTPS and NFS are not supported.
      2 If you use multiple NICs, specify a single interface in the ip option. For example, to use DHCP on a NIC that is named eno1, set ip=eno1:dhcp.
      3 Specify the locations of the FCOS files that you uploaded to your HTTP server. The initrd parameter value is the location of the initramfs file, the coreos.live.rootfs_url parameter value is the location of the rootfs file, and the coreos.inst.ignition_url parameter value is the location of the bootstrap Ignition config file. You can also add more kernel arguments to the APPEND line to configure networking or other boot options.

      This configuration does not enable serial console access on machines with a graphical console. To configure a different console, add one or more console= arguments to the APPEND line. For example, add console=tty0 console=ttyS0 to set the first PC serial port as the primary console and the graphical console as a secondary console. For more information, see How does one set up a serial terminal and/or console in Red Hat Enterprise Linux?.

    • For iPXE (x86_64 ):

      kernel http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture> initrd=main coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img coreos.inst.install_dev=/dev/sda coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<HTTP_server>/bootstrap.ign (1) (2)
initrd --name main http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img (3)
boot
      1 Specify the locations of the FCOS files that you uploaded to your HTTP server. The kernel parameter value is the location of the kernel file, the initrd=main argument is needed for booting on UEFI systems, the coreos.live.rootfs_url parameter value is the location of the rootfs file, and the coreos.inst.ignition_url parameter value is the location of the bootstrap Ignition config file.
      2 If you use multiple NICs, specify a single interface in the ip option. For example, to use DHCP on a NIC that is named eno1, set ip=eno1:dhcp.
      3 Specify the location of the initramfs file that you uploaded to your HTTP server.

      This configuration does not enable serial console access on machines with a graphical console. To configure a different console, add one or more console= arguments to the kernel line. For example, add console=tty0 console=ttyS0 to set the first PC serial port as the primary console and the graphical console as a secondary console. For more information, see How does one set up a serial terminal and/or console in Red Hat Enterprise Linux?.

  7. Monitor the progress of the FCOS installation on the console of the machine.

    Be sure that the installation is successful on each node before commencing with the OKD installation. Observing the installation process can also help to determine the cause of FCOS installation issues that might arise.

  8. After FCOS installs, the system reboots. During reboot, the system applies the Ignition config file that you specified.

  9. Check the console output to verify that Ignition ran.

    Example command
    Ignition: ran on 2022/03/14 14:48:33 UTC (this boot)
Ignition: user-provided config was applied

  10. Continue to create the machines for your cluster.

    You must create the bootstrap and control plane machines at this time. If the control plane machines are not made schedulable, also create at least two compute machines before you install the cluster.

    If the required network, DNS, and load balancer infrastructure are in place, the OKD bootstrap process begins automatically after the FCOS nodes have rebooted.

    FCOS nodes do not include a default password for the core user. You can access the nodes by running ssh core@<node>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> as a user with access to the SSH private key that is paired to the public key that you specified in your install_config.yaml file. OKD 4 cluster nodes running FCOS are immutable and rely on Operators to apply cluster changes. Accessing cluster nodes by using SSH is not recommended. However, when investigating installation issues, if the OKD API is not available, or the kubelet is not properly functioning on a target node, SSH access might be required for debugging or disaster recovery.

Advanced FCOS installation configuration

A key benefit for manually provisioning the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) nodes for OKD is to be able to do configuration that is not available through default OKD installation methods. This section describes some of the configurations that you can do using techniques that include:

  • Passing kernel arguments to the live installer

  • Running coreos-installer manually from the live system

  • Customizing a live ISO or PXE boot image

The advanced configuration topics for manual Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) installations detailed in this section relate to disk partitioning, networking, and using Ignition configs in different ways.

Using advanced networking options for PXE and ISO installations

Networking for OKD nodes uses DHCP by default to gather all necessary configuration settings. To set up static IP addresses or configure special settings, such as bonding, you can do one of the following:

  • Pass special kernel parameters when you boot the live installer.

  • Use a machine config to copy networking files to the installed system.

  • Configure networking from a live installer shell prompt, then copy those settings to the installed system so that they take effect when the installed system first boots.

To configure a PXE or iPXE installation, use one of the following options:

  • See the "Advanced RHCOS installation reference" tables.

  • Use a machine config to copy networking files to the installed system.

To configure an ISO installation, use the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Boot the ISO installer.

  2. From the live system shell prompt, configure networking for the live system using available RHEL tools, such as nmcli or nmtui.

  3. Run the coreos-installer command to install the system, adding the --copy-network option to copy networking configuration. For example:

    $ coreos-installer install --copy-network \
     --ignition-url=http://host/worker.ign /dev/sda

    The --copy-network option only copies networking configuration found under /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. In particular, it does not copy the system hostname.

  4. Reboot into the installed system.

Additional resources

Disk partitioning

The disk partitions are created on OKD cluster nodes during the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) installation. Each FCOS node of a particular architecture uses the same partition layout, unless the default partitioning configuration is overridden. During the FCOS installation, the size of the root file system is increased to use the remaining available space on the target device.

There are two cases where you might want to override the default partitioning when installing FCOS on an OKD cluster node:

  • Creating separate partitions: For greenfield installations on an empty disk, you might want to add separate storage to a partition. This is officially supported for mounting /var or a subdirectory of /var, such as /var/lib/etcd, on a separate partition, but not both.

    For disk sizes larger than 100GB, and especially disk sizes larger than 1TB, create a separate /var partition. See "Creating a separate /var partition" for more information.

    Kubernetes supports only two file system partitions. If you add more than one partition to the original configuration, Kubernetes cannot monitor all of them.

  • Retaining existing partitions: For a brownfield installation where you are reinstalling OKD on an existing node and want to retain data partitions installed from your previous operating system, there are both boot arguments and options to coreos-installer that allow you to retain existing data partitions.

The use of custom partitions could result in those partitions not being monitored by OKD or alerted on. If you are overriding the default partitioning, see Understanding OpenShift File System Monitoring (eviction conditions) for more information about how OKD monitors your host file systems.
Creating a separate /var partition

In general, you should use the default disk partitioning that is created during the FCOS installation. However, there are cases where you might want to create a separate partition for a directory that you expect to grow.

OKD supports the addition of a single partition to attach storage to either the /var directory or a subdirectory of /var. For example:

  • /var/lib/containers: Holds container-related content that can grow as more images and containers are added to a system.

  • /var/lib/etcd: Holds data that you might want to keep separate for purposes such as performance optimization of etcd storage.

  • /var: Holds data that you might want to keep separate for purposes such as auditing.

    For disk sizes larger than 100GB, and especially larger than 1TB, create a separate /var partition.

Storing the contents of a /var directory separately makes it easier to grow storage for those areas as needed and reinstall OKD at a later date and keep that data intact. With this method, you will not have to pull all your containers again, nor will you have to copy massive log files when you update systems.

The use of a separate partition for the /var directory or a subdirectory of /var also prevents data growth in the partitioned directory from filling up the root file system.

The following procedure sets up a separate /var partition by adding a machine config manifest that is wrapped into the Ignition config file for a node type during the preparation phase of an installation.

Procedure

  1. On your installation host, change to the directory that contains the OKD installation program and generate the Kubernetes manifests for the cluster:

    $ openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory>

  2. Create a Butane config that configures the additional partition. For example, name the file $HOME/clusterconfig/98-var-partition.bu, change the disk device name to the name of the storage device on the worker systems, and set the storage size as appropriate. This example places the /var directory on a separate partition:

    variant: openshift
version: 4.10.0
metadata:
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
  name: 98-var-partition
storage:
  disks:
  - device: /dev/<device_name> (1)
    partitions:
    - label: var
      start_mib: <partition_start_offset> (2)
      size_mib: <partition_size> (3)
  filesystems:
    - device: /dev/disk/by-partlabel/var
      path: /var
      format: xfs
      mount_options: [defaults, prjquota] (4)
      with_mount_unit: true
    1 The storage device name of the disk that you want to partition.
    2 When adding a data partition to the boot disk, a minimum offset value of 25000 mebibytes is recommended. The root file system is automatically resized to fill all available space up to the specified offset. If no offset value is specified, or if the specified value is smaller than the recommended minimum, the resulting root file system will be too small, and future reinstalls of FCOS might overwrite the beginning of the data partition.
    3 The size of the data partition in mebibytes.
    4 The prjquota mount option must be enabled for filesystems used for container storage.

    When creating a separate /var partition, you cannot use different instance types for compute nodes, if the different instance types do not have the same device name.

  3. Create a manifest from the Butane config and save it to the clusterconfig/openshift directory. For example, run the following command:

    $ butane $HOME/clusterconfig/98-var-partition.bu -o $HOME/clusterconfig/openshift/98-var-partition.yaml

  4. Create the Ignition config files:

    $ openshift-install create ignition-configs --dir <installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the same installation directory.

    Ignition config files are created for the bootstrap, control plane, and compute nodes in the installation directory:

    .
├── auth
│   ├── kubeadmin-password
│   └── kubeconfig
├── bootstrap.ign
├── master.ign
├── metadata.json
└── worker.ign

    The files in the <installation_directory>/manifest and <installation_directory>/openshift directories are wrapped into the Ignition config files, including the file that contains the 98-var-partition custom MachineConfig object.

Next steps

  • You can apply the custom disk partitioning by referencing the Ignition config files during the FCOS installations.

Retaining existing partitions

For an ISO installation, you can add options to the coreos-installer command that cause the installer to maintain one or more existing partitions. For a PXE installation, you can add coreos.inst.* options to the APPEND parameter to preserve partitions.

Saved partitions might be data partitions from an existing OKD system. You can identify the disk partitions you want to keep either by partition label or by number.

If you save existing partitions, and those partitions do not leave enough space for FCOS, the installation will fail without damaging the saved partitions.
Retaining existing partitions during an ISO installation

This example preserves any partition in which the partition label begins with data (data*):

# coreos-installer install --ignition-url http://10.0.2.2:8080/user.ign \
        --save-partlabel 'data*' /dev/sda

The following example illustrates running the coreos-installer in a way that preserves the sixth (6) partition on the disk:

# coreos-installer install --ignition-url http://10.0.2.2:8080/user.ign \
        --save-partindex 6 /dev/sda

This example preserves partitions 5 and higher:

# coreos-installer install --ignition-url http://10.0.2.2:8080/user.ign
        --save-partindex 5- /dev/sda

In the previous examples where partition saving is used, coreos-installer recreates the partition immediately.

Retaining existing partitions during a PXE installation

This APPEND option preserves any partition in which the partition label begins with 'data' ('data*'):

coreos.inst.save_partlabel=data*

This APPEND option preserves partitions 5 and higher:

coreos.inst.save_partindex=5-

This APPEND option preserves partition 6:

coreos.inst.save_partindex=6

Identifying Ignition configs

When doing an FCOS manual installation, there are two types of Ignition configs that you can provide, with different reasons for providing each one:

  • Permanent install Ignition config: Every manual FCOS installation needs to pass one of the Ignition config files generated by openshift-installer, such as bootstrap.ign, master.ign and worker.ign, to carry out the installation.

    It is not recommended to modify these Ignition config files directly. You can update the manifest files that are wrapped into the Ignition config files, as outlined in examples in the preceding sections.

    For PXE installations, you pass the Ignition configs on the APPEND line using the coreos.inst.ignition_url= option. For ISO installations, after the ISO boots to the shell prompt, you identify the Ignition config on the coreos-installer command line with the --ignition-url= option. In both cases, only HTTP and HTTPS protocols are supported.

  • Live install Ignition config: This type can be created by using the coreos-installer customize subcommand and its various options. With this method, the Ignition config passes to the live install medium, runs immediately upon booting, and performs setup tasks before or after the FCOS system installs to disk. This method should only be used for performing tasks that must be done once and not applied again later, such as with advanced partitioning that cannot be done using a machine config.

    For PXE or ISO boots, you can create the Ignition config and APPEND the ignition.config.url= option to identify the location of the Ignition config. You also need to append ignition.firstboot ignition.platform.id=metal or the ignition.config.url option will be ignored.

Customizing a live FCOS ISO or PXE install

You can use the live ISO image or PXE environment to install FCOS by injecting an Ignition config file directly into the image. This creates a customized image that you can use to provision your system.

For an ISO image, the mechanism to do this is the coreos-installer iso customize subcommand, which modifies the .iso file with your configuration. Similarly, the mechanism for a PXE environment is the coreos-installer pxe customize subcommand, which creates a new initramfs file that includes your customizations.

The customize subcommand is a general purpose tool that can embed other types of customizations as well. The following tasks are examples of some of the more common customizations:

  • Inject custom CA certificates for when corporate security policy requires their use.

  • Configure network settings without the need for kernel arguments.

  • Embed arbitrary pre-install and post-install scripts or binaries.

Customizing a live FCOS ISO image

You can customize a live FCOS ISO image directly with the coreos-installer iso customize subcommand. When you boot the ISO image, the customizations are applied automatically.

You can use this feature to configure the ISO image to automatically install FCOS.

Procedure

  1. Download the coreos-installer binary from the coreos-installer image mirror page.

  2. Retrieve the FCOS ISO image from the FCOS image mirror page and the Ignition config file, and then run the following command to inject the Ignition config directly into the ISO image:

    $ coreos-installer iso customize rhcos-<version>-live.x86_64.iso \
    --dest-ignition bootstrap.ign \ (1)
    --dest-device /dev/sda (2)
1 The Ignition config file that is generated from openshift-installer.
2 When you specify this option, the ISO image automatically runs an install. Otherwise, the image remains configured for installing, but does not do so automatically unless you specify the coreos.inst.install_dev kernel argument.

Your customizations are applied and affect every subsequent boot of the ISO image.

  1. To remove the ISO image customizations and return the image to its pristine state, run:

    $ coreos-installer iso reset rhcos-<version>-live.x86_64.iso

    You can now re-customize the live ISO image or use it in its pristine state.
Modifying a live install ISO image to use a custom certificate authority

You can provide certificate authority (CA) certificates to Ignition with the --ignition-ca flag of the customize subcommand. You can use the CA certificates during both the installation boot and when provisioning the installed system.

Procedure

  1. Download the coreos-installer binary from the coreos-installer image mirror page.

  2. Retrieve the FCOS ISO image from the FCOS image mirror page and run the following command to customize the ISO image for use with a custom CA:

    $ coreos-installer iso customize rhcos-<version>-live.x86_64.iso --ignition-ca cert.pem

    Custom CA certificates affect how Ignition fetches remote resources but they do not affect the certificates installed onto the system.

    Your CA certificate is applied and affects every subsequent boot of the ISO image.

Modifying a live install ISO image with customized network settings

You can embed a NetworkManager keyfile into the live ISO image and pass it through to the installed system with the --network-keyfile flag of the customize subcommand.

Procedure

  1. Download the coreos-installer binary from the coreos-installer image mirror page.

  2. Create a connection profile for a bonded interface. For example, create the bond0.nmconnection file in your local directory with the following content:

    [connection]
id=bond0
type=bond
interface-name=bond0
multi-connect=1
permissions=

[ethernet]
mac-address-blacklist=

[bond]
miimon=100
mode=active-backup

[ipv4]
method=auto

[ipv6]
method=auto

[proxy]

  3. Create a connection profile for a secondary interface to add to the bond. For example, create the bond0-proxy-em1.nmconnection file in your local directory with the following content:

    [connection]
id=em1
type=ethernet
interface-name=em1
master=bond0
multi-connect=1
permissions=
slave-type=bond

[ethernet]
mac-address-blacklist=

  4. Create a connection profile for a secondary interface to add to the bond. For example, create the bond0-proxy-em2.nmconnection file in your local directory with the following content:

    [connection]
id=em2
type=ethernet
interface-name=em2
master=bond0
multi-connect=1
permissions=
slave-type=bond

[ethernet]
mac-address-blacklist=

  5. Retrieve the FCOS ISO image from the FCOS image mirror page and run the following command to customize the ISO image with your configured networking:

    $ coreos-installer iso customize rhcos-<version>-live.x86_64.iso \
    --network-keyfile bond0.nmconnection \
    --network-keyfile bond0-proxy-em1.nmconnection \
    --network-keyfile bond0-proxy-em2.nmconnection

    Network settings are applied to the live system and are carried over to the destination system.

Customizing a live FCOS PXE environment

You can customize a live FCOS PXE environment directly with the coreos-installer pxe customize subcommand. When you boot the PXE environment, the customizations are applied automatically.

You can use this feature to configure the PXE environment to automatically install FCOS.

Procedure

  1. Download the coreos-installer binary from the coreos-installer image mirror page.

  2. Retrieve the FCOS kernel, initramfs and rootfs files from the FCOS image mirror page and the Ignition config file, and then run the following command to create a new initramfs file that contains the customizations from your Ignition config:

    $ coreos-installer pxe customize rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.x86_64.img \
    --dest-ignition bootstrap.ign \ (1)
    --dest-device /dev/sda \ (2)
    -o rhcos-<version>-custom-initramfs.x86_64.img
    1 The Ignition config file that is generated from openshift-installer.
    2 When you specify this option, the PXE environment automatically runs an install. Otherwise, the image remains configured for installing, but does not do so automatically unless you specify the coreos.inst.install_dev kernel argument.

    Your customizations are applied and affect every subsequent boot of the PXE environment.

Modifying a live install PXE environment to use a custom certificate authority

You can provide certificate authority (CA) certificates to Ignition with the --ignition-ca flag of the customize subcommand. You can use the CA certificates during both the installation boot and when provisioning the installed system.

Procedure

  1. Download the coreos-installer binary from the coreos-installer image mirror page.

  2. Retrieve the FCOS kernel, initramfs and rootfs files from the FCOS image mirror page and run the following command to create a new customized initramfs file for use with a custom CA:

    $ coreos-installer pxe customize rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.x86_64.img \
    --ignition-ca cert.pem \
    -o rhcos-<version>-custom-initramfs.x86_64.img

    Custom CA certificates affect how Ignition fetches remote resources but they do not affect the certificates installed onto the system.

    Your CA certificate is applied and affects every subsequent boot of the PXE environment.

Modifying a live install PXE environment with customized network settings

You can embed a NetworkManager keyfile into the live PXE environment and pass it through to the installed system with the --network-keyfile flag of the customize subcommand.

Procedure

  1. Download the coreos-installer binary from the coreos-installer image mirror page.

  2. Create a connection profile for a bonded interface. For example, create the bond0.nmconnection file in your local directory with the following content:

    [connection]
id=bond0
type=bond
interface-name=bond0
multi-connect=1
permissions=

[ethernet]
mac-address-blacklist=

[bond]
miimon=100
mode=active-backup

[ipv4]
method=auto

[ipv6]
method=auto

[proxy]

  3. Create a connection profile for a secondary interface to add to the bond. For example, create the bond0-proxy-em1.nmconnection file in your local directory with the following content:

    [connection]
id=em1
type=ethernet
interface-name=em1
master=bond0
multi-connect=1
permissions=
slave-type=bond

[ethernet]
mac-address-blacklist=

  4. Create a connection profile for a secondary interface to add to the bond. For example, create the bond0-proxy-em2.nmconnection file in your local directory with the following content:

    [connection]
id=em2
type=ethernet
interface-name=em2
master=bond0
multi-connect=1
permissions=
slave-type=bond

[ethernet]
mac-address-blacklist=

  5. Retrieve the FCOS kernel, initramfs and rootfs files from the FCOS image mirror page and run the following command to create a new customized initramfs file that contains your configured networking:

    $ coreos-installer pxe customize rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.x86_64.img \
    --network-keyfile bond0.nmconnection \
    --network-keyfile bond0-proxy-em1.nmconnection \
    --network-keyfile bond0-proxy-em2.nmconnection