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Installing a cluster quickly on RHV

You can quickly install a default, non-customized, cluster on Red Hat Virtualization (RHV). The installation program uses installer-provisioned infrastructure to automate creating and deploying the cluster.

To install a default cluster, you prepare the environment, run the installation program and answer its prompts. Then, the installation program creates the OKD cluster.

For an alternative to installing a default cluster, see Installing a cluster with customizations.

This installation program is available for Linux and macOS only.
Prerequisites

Creating a custom virtual machine template for RHV is a workaround for a known issue (BZ#1818577). If you do not create a custom virtual machine, the OKD cluster you install will fail.

Requirements for the RHV environment

To install and run an OKD cluster, the RHV environment must meet the following requirements. Not meeting these requirements can cause failures.

The following requirements for CPUs, memory, and storage are based on the default values you specify in the virtual machine template multiplied by the number of virtual machines the installation program creates.

By default, the installation program creates seven machines during the installation process, which includes one bootstrap machine. When the installation program finishes, it deletes the bootstrap machine and frees up its resources. If you perform a custom installation, you can increase the number of virtual machines the installation program creates.

If you increase the resources when you create the virtual machine template, or increase the number of virtual machines in the install_config.yaml file, you must also increase these requirements.
Requirements

  • The RHV version is 4.3.9 or later.

  • The RHV environment has one data center whose state is Up.

  • The RHV data center contains an RHV cluster.

  • The RHV cluster has the following resources exclusively for the OKD cluster:

    • Minimum 28 vCPUs, which is 4 vCPUs for each of the seven virtual machines created during installation.

    • 112 GiB RAM or more, including:

      • 16 GiB or more for the bootstrap machine, which provides the temporary control plane.

      • 16 GiB or more for each of the three control plane machines which provide the control plane.

      • 16 GiB or more for each of the three compute machines, which run the application workloads.

  • The RHV storage domain must meet these etcd backend performance requirements.

  • In production environments, each virtual machine must have 120 GiB or more, so the storage domain must have 840 GiB or more for the OKD cluster. In resource-constrained or non-production environments, each virtual machine must have 32 GiB or more, so the storage domain must have 230 GiB or more for the OKD cluster.

  • The RHV cluster must have access to an Internet connection to download images from the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog during installation and updates, and for the Telemetry service to simplify the subscription and entitlement process.

  • The RHV cluster has a virtual network with access to the REST API on the RHV Manager.

  • All together, the hosts must have the required memory and CPU resources in addition to and aside from what they use to operate or provide to non-OKD operations.

  • The release cycles of OKD and RHV are different and versions tested might vary in the future depending on the release dates of both products.

  • The bootstrap machine provides a temporary control plane while the installation program creates the OKD cluster. After it creates the cluster, the installation program removes the bootstrap machine and releases its resources.

Verifying the requirements for the RHV environment

Verify that the RHV environment meets the requirements to install and run an OKD cluster. Not meeting these requirements can cause failures.

These requirements are based on the resource allocations in the virtual machine template the installation program uses to create control plane and compute machines. These resources include vCPUs, memory, and storage. If you change the virtual machine template or increase the number of OKD machines, adjust these requirements.
Procedure

  1. Check the RHV version.

    1. In the RHV Administration Portal, click the ? help icon in the upper-right corner and select About.

    2. In the window that opens, confirm that the RHV Software Version is 4.3.9 or higher.

  2. Inspect the data center, cluster, and storage.

    1. In the RHV Administration Portal, click Compute → Data Centers.

    2. Confirm the data center where you plan to install OKD displays a green up arrow, meaning it is "Up".

    3. Click the name of that data center.

    4. In the data center details, on the Storage tab, confirm the storage domain where you plan to install OKD is Active.

    5. Record the Domain Name for use later on.

    6. Confirm Free Space has at least 230 GiB.

    7. Confirm that the storage domain meets these etcd backend performance requirements, which can be measured using the fio performance benchmarking tool.

    8. In the data center details, click the Clusters tab.

    9. Find the RHV cluster where you plan to install OKD. Record the cluster name for use later on.

  3. Inspect the RHV host resources.

    1. In the RHV Administration Portal, click Compute > Clusters.

    2. Click the cluster where you plan to install OKD.

    3. In the cluster details, click the Hosts tab.

    4. Inspect the hosts and confirm they have a combined total of at least 28 Logical CPU Cores available exclusively for the OKD cluster.

    5. Record the number of available Logical CPU Cores for use later on.

    6. Confirm that these CPU cores are distributed so each of the seven virtual machines created during installation can have four cores.

    7. Confirm that, all together, the hosts have 112 GiB of Max free Memory for scheduling new VMs distributed to meet the requirements for each of the following OKD machines:

      • 16 GiB required for the bootstrap machine

      • 16 GiB required for each of the three control plane machines

      • 16 GiB for each of the three compute machines

    8. Record the amount of Max free Memory for scheduling new VMs for use later on.

  4. Verify that the virtual network for installing OKD has access to the RHV Manager’s REST API. From a virtual machine on this network, use a curl command with the RHV Manager’s REST API. Use the following format:

    curl -k -u <username>@<profile>:<password> \ (1)
https://<engine-fqdn>/ovirt-engine/api (2)
    1 For <username>, specify the user name of an RHV administrator. For <profile>, specify the login profile, which you can get by going to the RHV Administration Portal login page and reviewing the Profile dropdown list. For <password>, specify the admin password.
    2 For <engine-fqdn>, specify the fully qualified domain name of the RHV environment.

    For example:

    $ curl -k -u rhvadmin@internal:pw123 \
https://rhv-env.virtlab.example.com/ovirt-engine/api

Preparing the network environment on RHV

Configure three static IP addresses for the OKD cluster and create DNS entries using two of these addresses.

Procedure

  1. Reserve three static IP addresses

    1. On the network where you plan to install OKD, identify three static IP addresses that are outside the DHCP lease pool.

    2. Connect to a host on this network and verify that each of the IP addresses is not in use. For example, use arp to check that none of the IP addresses have entries:

      $ arp 10.35.1.19
10.35.1.19 (10.35.1.19) -- no entry

    3. Reserve three static IP addresses following the standard practices for your network environment.

    4. Record these IP addresses for future reference.

  2. Create DNS entries for the OKD REST API and apps domain names using this format:

    api.<cluster-name>.<base-domain>   <ip-address> (1)
*.apps.<cluster-name>.<base-domain>   <ip-address> (2)
    1 For <cluster-name>, <base-domain>, and <ip-address>, specify the cluster name, base domain, and static IP address of your OKD API.
    2 Specify the cluster name, base domain, and static IP address of your OKD apps (ingress/load balancer).

    For example:

    api.my-cluster.virtlab.example.com	10.35.1.19
*.apps.my-cluster.virtlab.example.com	10.35.1.20

    The third static IP address does not require a DNS entry. The OKD cluster uses that address for its internal DNS service.

Setting up the CA certificate for RHV

Download the CA certificate from the Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) Manager and set it up on the installation machine.

You can download the certificate from a webpage on the RHV Manager or by using a curl command.

Later, you provide the certificate to the installation program.

Procedure

  1. Download the CA certificate using either of these methods:

    • Go to the Manager’s webpage and click the CA Certificate link. The URL of the Manager’s webpage uses this format: https://<engine-fqdn>/ovirt-engine/.

    • Run the following command:

      $ curl -k 'https://<engine-fqdn>/ovirt-engine/services/pki-resource?resource=ca-certificate&format=X509-PEM-CA' -o /tmp/ca.pem  (1)
      1 For <engine-fqdn>, specify the fully qualified domain name of the RHV Manager, such as rhv-env.virtlab.example.com.

  2. Add the certificate to the computer using the appropriate method for your operating system:

    • For Linux, copy the CA certificate to the directory for server certificates, and update the CA trust. For example:

      $ sudo cp /tmp/ca.pem /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/ca.pem
$ update-ca-trust

    • For macOS, double-click the certificate file and use the Keychain Access utility to add the file to the System keychain.

If you use your own certificate authority, make sure the system trusts it.
Additional Resources

To learn more, see Authentication and Security in the RHV documentation.

Generating an SSH private key and adding it to the agent

If you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery on your cluster, you must provide an SSH key to both your ssh-agent and to the installation program.

In a production environment, you require disaster recovery and debugging.

You can use this key to SSH into the master nodes as the user core. When you deploy the cluster, the key is added to the core user’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys list.

Procedure

  1. If you do not have an SSH key that is configured for password-less authentication on your computer, create one. For example, on a computer that uses a Linux operating system, run the following command:

    $ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -N '' \
    -f <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name, such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa, of the SSH key.

    Running this command generates an SSH key that does not require a password in the location that you specified.

If you create a new SSH key pair, avoid overwriting existing SSH keys.

  1. Start the ssh-agent process as a background task:

    $ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

Agent pid 31874

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

    $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)

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

  • When you install OKD, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

Obtaining the installation program

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

Prerequisites

  • 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 both the installation program and the files that the installation program creates after you finish installing the cluster.

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

    $ tar xvf <installation_program>.tar.gz

  3. From the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site, download your installation pull secret as a .txt file. 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.

Deploying the cluster

You can install OKD on a compatible cloud platform.

You can run the create cluster command of the installation program only once, during initial installation.
Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. Run the installation program:

    $ sudo ./openshift-install create cluster --dir=<installation_directory> \ (1)
    --log-level=info (2)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name to store the files that the installation program creates.
    2 To view different installation details, specify warn, debug, or error instead of info.

    Specify an empty 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.

    Respond to the installation program prompts.

    1. Optional: For SSH Public Key, select a password-less public key, such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. This key authenticates connections with the new OKD cluster.

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

    2. For Platform, select ovirt.

    3. For Enter oVirt’s API endpoint URL, enter the URL of the RHV API using this format:

      https://<engine-fqdn>/ovirt-engine/api (1)
      1 For <engine-fqdn>, specify the fully qualified domain name of the RHV environment.

      For example:

      https://rhv-env.virtlab.example.com/ovirt-engine/api

    4. For Is the installed oVirt certificate trusted?, enter Yes since you have already set up a CA certificate. Otherwise, enter No.

    5. For oVirt’s CA bundle, if you entered Yes for the preceding question, copy the certificate content from /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/ca.pem and paste it here. Then, press Enter twice. Otherwise, if you entered No for the preceding question, this question does not appear.

    6. For Enter the oVirt engine username, enter the username and profile of the RHV administrator using this format:

      <username>@<profile> (1)
      1 For <username>, specify the username of an RHV administrator. For <profile>, specify the login profile, which you can get by going to the RHV Administration Portal login page and reviewing the Profile dropdown list. Together, the user name and profile should look similar to this example: 
      admin@internal

    7. For Enter password, enter the RHV admin password.

    8. For Select the oVirt cluster, select the cluster for installing OKD.

    9. For Select the oVirt storage domain, select the storage domain for installing OKD.

    10. For Select the oVirt network, select a virtual network that has access to the RHV Manager REST API.

    11. For Enter the internal API Virtual IP, enter the static IP address you set aside for the cluster’s REST API.

    12. For Enter the internal DNS Virtual IP, enter the static IP address you set aside for the cluster’s internal DNS service.

    13. For Enter the ingress IP, enter the static IP address you reserved for the wildcard apps domain.

    14. For Base domain, enter the base domain of the OKD cluster. If this cluster is exposed to the outside world, this must be a valid domain recognized by DNS infrastructure. For example, enter: virtlab.example.com

    15. For Cluster name, enter the name of the cluster. For example, my-cluster. Use cluster name from the externally registered/resolvable DNS entries you created for the OKD REST API and apps domain names. The installation program also gives this name to the cluster in the RHV environment.

    16. For Pull secret, copy the pull secret from the pull-secret.txt file you downloaded earlier and paste it here. You can also get a copy of the same pull secret from the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site.

    If the cloud provider account that you configured on your host does not have sufficient permissions to deploy the cluster, the installation process stops, and the missing permissions are displayed.

    When the cluster deployment completes, directions for accessing your cluster, including a link to its web console and credentials for the kubeadmin user, display in your terminal.

    The Ignition config files that the installation program generates contain certificates that expire after 24 hours. You must keep the cluster running for 24 hours in a non-degraded state to ensure that the first certificate rotation has finished.

    You must not delete the installation program or the files that the installation program creates. Both are required to delete the cluster.

You have completed the steps required to install the cluster. The remaining steps show you how to verify the cluster and troubleshoot the installation.

Installing the CLI by downloading the binary

You can install the CLI in order to interact with OKD using a command-line interface.

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

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

  2. Download oc.tar.gz

  3. Click the folder for your operating system and architecture and click the compressed file.

    You can install oc on Linux, Windows, or macOS.

  4. Save the file to your file system.

  5. Extract the compressed file.

  6. Place it in a directory that is on your PATH.

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

$ oc <command>

To learn more, see Getting started with the CLI.

Logging in to the cluster

You can log in to your cluster as a default system user by exporting the cluster kubeconfig file. The kubeconfig file contains information about the cluster that is used by the CLI to connect a client to the correct cluster and API server. The file is specific to a cluster and is created during OKD installation.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OKD cluster.

  • Install the oc CLI.

Procedure

  1. Export the kubeadmin credentials:

    $ export KUBECONFIG=<installation_directory>/auth/kubeconfig (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation files in.

  2. Verify you can run oc commands successfully using the exported configuration:

    $ oc whoami
system:admin

Verifying cluster status

You can verify your OKD cluster’s status during or after installation.

Procedure

  1. In the cluster environment, export the administrator’s kubeconfig file:

    $ export KUBECONFIG=<installation_directory>/auth/kubeconfig (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation files in.

    The kubeconfig file contains information about the cluster that is used by the CLI to connect a client to the correct cluster and API server.

  2. View the control plane and compute machines created after a deployment:

    $ oc get nodes

  3. View your cluster’s version:

    $ oc get clusterversion

  4. View your operators' status:

    $ oc get clusteroperator

  5. View all running Pods in the cluster:

    $ oc get pods -A
Troubleshooting

If the installation fails, the installation program times out and displays an error message. To learn more, see Troubleshooting installation issues.

Accessing the OKD web console on RHV

After the OKD cluster initializes, you can log into the OKD web console.

Procedure

  1. Optional: In the Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) Administration Portal, open Compute → Cluster.

  2. Verify that the installation program creates the virtual machines.

  3. Return to the command line where the installation program is running. When the installation program finishes, it displays the user name and temporary password for logging into the OKD web console.

  4. In a browser, open the URL of the OKD web console. The URL uses this format:

    console-openshift-console.apps.<clustername>.<basedomain> (1)
    1 For <clustername>.<basedomain>, specify the cluster name and base domain.

    For example:

    console-openshift-console.apps.my-cluster.virtlab.example.com

Troubleshooting common issues with installing on Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)

Here are some common issues you might encounter, along with proposed causes and solutions.

CPU load increases and nodes go into a Not Ready state

  • Symptom: CPU load increases significantly and nodes start going into a Not Ready state.

  • Cause: The storage domain latency might be too high, especially for master nodes.

  • Solution:

    Make the nodes Ready again by restarting the kubelet service. Enter:

    $ systemctl restart kubelet

    Inspect the OKD metrics service, which automatically gathers and reports on some valuable data such as the etcd disk sync duration. If the cluster is operational, use this data to help determine whether storage latency or throughput is the root issue. If so, consider using a storage resource that has lower latency and higher throughput.

    To get raw metrics, enter the following command as kubeadmin or user with cluster-admin privileges:

    $ oc get --insecure-skip-tls-verify --server=https://localhost:<port> --raw=/metrics`

    To learn more, see Exploring Application Endpoints for the purposes of Debugging with OpenShift 4.x

Trouble connecting the OKD cluster API

  • Symptom: The installation program completes but the OKD cluster API is not available. The bootstrap virtual machine remains up after the bootstrap process is complete. When you enter the following command, the response will time out.

    $ oc login -u kubeadmin -p *** <apiurl>

  • Cause: The bootstrap VM was not deleted by the installation program and has not released the cluster’s API IP address.

  • Solution: Use the wait-for subcommand to be notified when the bootstrap process is complete:

    $ ./openshift-install wait-for bootstrap-complete

    When the bootstrap process is complete, delete the bootstrap virtual machine:

    $ ./openshift-install destroy bootstrap

Post-installation tasks

After the OKD cluster initializes, you can perform the following tasks.

  • Optional: After deployment, add or replace SSH keys using the Machine Config Operator (MCO) in OKD.

  • Optional: Remove the kubeadmin user. Instead, use the authentication provider to create a user with cluster-admin privileges.