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Installing a cluster on vSphere with network customizations

In OKD version 4, you can install a cluster on your VMware vSphere instance by using installer-provisioned infrastructure with customized network configuration options. By customizing your network configuration, your cluster can coexist with existing IP address allocations in your environment and integrate with existing MTU and VXLAN configurations. To customize the installation, you modify parameters in the install-config.yaml file before you install the cluster.

You must set most of the network configuration parameters during installation, and you can modify only kubeProxy configuration parameters in a running cluster.

Prerequisites

VMware vSphere infrastructure requirements

You must install the OKD cluster on a VMware vSphere version 6 or 7 instance that meets the requirements for the components that you use.

Table 1. Minimum supported vSphere version for VMware components
Component Minimum supported versions Description

Hypervisor

vSphere 6.5 and later with HW version 13

This version is the minimum version that Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) supports. See the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 supported hypervisors list.

Networking (NSX-T)

vSphere 6.5U3 or vSphere 6.7U2 and later

vSphere 6.5U3 or vSphere 6.7U2+ are required for OKD. VMware’s NSX Container Plug-in (NCP) is certified with OKD 4.6 and NSX-T 3.x+.

Storage with in-tree drivers

vSphere 6.5 and later

This plug-in creates vSphere storage by using the in-tree storage drivers for vSphere included in OKD.

If you use a vSphere version 6.5 instance, consider upgrading to 6.7U3 or 7.0 before you install OKD.

You must ensure that the time on your ESXi hosts is synchronized before you install OKD. See Edit Time Configuration for a Host in the VMware documentation.

vCenter requirements

Before you install an OKD cluster on your vCenter that uses infrastructure that the installer provisions, you must prepare your environment.

Required vCenter account privileges

To install an OKD cluster in a vCenter, the installation program requires access to an account with privileges to read and create the required resources. Using an account that has administrative privileges is the simplest way to access all of the necessary permissions.

A user requires the following privileges to install an OKD cluster:

  • Datastore

    • Allocate space

    • Browse datastore

    • Low level file operations

    • Remove file

  • Folder

    • Create folder

    • Delete folder

  • vSphere Tagging

    • All privileges

  • Network

    • Assign network

  • Resource

    • Assign virtual machine to resource pool

  • Profile-driven storage

    • All privileges

  • vApp

    • All privileges

  • Virtual machine

    • All privileges

For more information about creating an account with only the required privileges, see vSphere Permissions and User Management Tasks in the vSphere documentation.

Using OKD with vMotion

OKD generally supports compute-only vMotion. Using Storage vMotion can cause issues and is not supported.

If you are using vSphere volumes in your pods, migrating a VM across datastores either manually or through Storage vMotion causes invalid references within OKD persistent volume (PV) objects. These references prevent affected pods from starting up and can result in data loss.

Similarly, OKD does not support selective migration of VMDKs across datastores, using datastore clusters for VM provisioning or for dynamic or static provisioning of PVs, or using a datastore that is part of a datastore cluster for dynamic or static provisioning of PVs.

Cluster resources

When you deploy an OKD cluster that uses installer-provisioned infrastructure, the installation program must be able to create several resources in your vCenter instance.

A standard OKD installation creates the following vCenter resources:

  • 1 Folder

  • 1 Tag category

  • 1 Tag

  • Virtual machines:

    • 1 template

    • 1 temporary bootstrap node

    • 3 control plane nodes

    • 3 compute machines

Although these resources use 856 GB of storage, the bootstrap node is destroyed during the cluster installation process. A minimum of 800 GB of storage is required to use a standard cluster.

If you deploy more compute machines, the OKD cluster will use more storage.

Cluster limits

Available resources vary between clusters. The number of possible clusters within a vCenter is limited primarily by available storage space and any limitations on the number of required resources. Be sure to consider both limitations to the vCenter resources that the cluster creates and the resources that you require to deploy a cluster, such as IP addresses and networks.

Networking requirements

You must use DHCP for the network and ensure that the DHCP server is configured to provide persistent IP addresses to the cluster machines. Additionally, you must create the following networking resources before you install the OKD cluster:

Required IP Addresses

An installer-provisioned vSphere installation requires two static IP addresses:

  • The API address is used to access the cluster API.

  • The Ingress address is used for cluster ingress traffic.

You must provide these IP addresses to the installation program when you install the OKD cluster.

DNS records

You must create DNS records for two static IP addresses in the appropriate DNS server for the vCenter instance that hosts your OKD cluster. In each record, <cluster_name> is the cluster name and <base_domain> is the cluster base domain that you specify when you install the cluster. A complete DNS record takes the form: <component>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>..

Table 2. Required DNS records
Component Record Description

API VIP

api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

This DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record must point to the load balancer for the control plane machines. This record must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.

Ingress VIP

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

A wildcard DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record that points to the load balancer that targets the machines that run the Ingress router pods, which are the worker nodes by default. This record must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.

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 the installation program. You can use this key to access the bootstrap machine in a public cluster to troubleshoot installation issues.

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.

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 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 ed25519 -N '' \
    -f <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name, such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa, of the new SSH key.

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

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

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

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

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

  • 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. 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.

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

    • 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.

Adding vCenter root CA certificates to your system trust

Because the installation program requires access to your vCenter’s API, you must add your vCenter’s trusted root CA certificates to your system trust before you install an OKD cluster.

Procedure

  1. From the vCenter home page, download the vCenter’s root CA certificates. Click Download trusted root CA certificates in the vSphere Web Services SDK section. The <vCenter>/certs/download.zip file downloads.

  2. Extract the compressed file that contains the vCenter root CA certificates. The contents of the compressed file resemble the following file structure:

    certs
├── lin
│   ├── 108f4d17.0
│   ├── 108f4d17.r1
│   ├── 7e757f6a.0
│   ├── 8e4f8471.0
│   └── 8e4f8471.r0
├── mac
│   ├── 108f4d17.0
│   ├── 108f4d17.r1
│   ├── 7e757f6a.0
│   ├── 8e4f8471.0
│   └── 8e4f8471.r0
└── win
    ├── 108f4d17.0.crt
    ├── 108f4d17.r1.crl
    ├── 7e757f6a.0.crt
    ├── 8e4f8471.0.crt
    └── 8e4f8471.r0.crl

3 directories, 15 files

  3. Add the files for your operating system to the system trust. For example, on a Fedora operating system, run the following command:

    # cp certs/lin/* /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors

  4. Update your system trust. For example, on a Fedora operating system, run the following command:

    # update-ca-trust extract

Creating the installation configuration file

You can customize the OKD cluster you install on VMware vSphere.

Prerequisites

  • Obtain the OKD installation program and the pull secret for your cluster.

Procedure

  1. Create the install-config.yaml file.

    1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and run the following command:

      $ ./openshift-install create install-config --dir=<installation_directory> (1)
      1 For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name to store the files that the installation program creates.

      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.

    2. At the prompts, provide the configuration details for your cloud:

      1. Optional: Select an SSH key to use to access 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.

      2. Select vsphere as the platform to target.

      3. Specify the name of your vCenter instance.

      4. Specify the user name and password for the vCenter account that has the required permissions to create the cluster.

        The installation program connects to your vCenter instance.

      5. Select the datacenter in your vCenter instance to connect to.

      6. Select the default vCenter datastore to use.

      7. Select the vCenter cluster to install the OKD cluster in.

      8. Select the network in the vCenter instance that contains the virtual IP addresses and DNS records that you configured.

      9. Enter the virtual IP address that you configured for control plane API access.

      10. Enter the virtual IP address that you configured for cluster ingress.

      11. Enter the base domain. This base domain must be the same one that you used in the DNS records that you configured.

      12. Enter a descriptive name for your cluster. The cluster name must be the same one that you used in the DNS records that you configured.

      13. Paste the pull secret that you obtained from the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site. This field is optional.

  2. Modify the install-config.yaml file. You can find more information about the available parameters in the Installation configuration parameters section.

  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 installation process. If you want to reuse the file, you must back it up now.

Installation configuration parameters

Before you deploy an OKD cluster, you provide parameter values to describe your account on the cloud platform that hosts your cluster and optionally customize your cluster’s platform. When you create the install-config.yaml installation configuration file, you provide values for the required parameters through the command line. If you customize your cluster, you can modify the install-config.yaml file to provide more details about the platform.

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

The openshift-install command does not validate field names for parameters. If an incorrect name is specified, the related file or object is not created, and no error is reported. Ensure that the field names for any parameters that are specified are correct.
Table 3. 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: aws, baremetal, azure, openstack, ovirt, vsphere. For additional information about platform.<platform> parameters, consult the following table for your specific platform.

Object
Table 4. 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

compute

The configuration for the machines that comprise the compute nodes.

Array of machine-pool objects. For details, see the following "Machine-pool" table.

compute.architecture

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, heteregeneous clusters are not supported, so 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.

aws, azure, gcp, 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. For details, see the following "Machine-pool" table.

controlPlane.architecture

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, heterogeneous clusters are not supported, so all pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64 (the default).

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.

aws, azure, gcp, 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 Red Hat 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

networking

The configuration for the network for the cluster.

Object

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

networking.networkType

The default Container Network Interface (CNI) network provider plug-in to install. Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. The default value is OVNKubernetes.

String

networking.clusterNetwork

The IP address pools for pods. The default is 10.128.0.0/14 with a host prefix of /23.

Array of objects. For example:

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

networking.clusterNetwork.cidr

Required if you use networking.clusterNetwork. The IP block address pool.

IP network. IP networks are represented as strings using Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation with a traditional IP address or network number, followed by the forward slash (/) character, followed by a decimal value between 0 and 32 that describes the number of significant bits. For example, 10.0.0.0/16 represents IP addresses 10.0.0.0 through 10.0.255.255.

networking.clusterNetwork.hostPrefix

Required if you use networking.clusterNetwork. The prefix size to allocate to each node from the CIDR. For example, 24 would allocate 2^8=256 addresses to each node.

Integer

networking.serviceNetwork

The IP address pools for services. The default is 172.30.0.0/16.

Array of IP networks. IP networks are represented as strings using Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation with a traditional IP address or network number, followed by the forward slash (/) character, followed by a decimal value between 0 and 32 that describes the number of significant bits. For example, 10.0.0.0/16 represents IP addresses 10.0.0.0 through 10.0.255.255.

networking.machineNetwork

The IP address pools for machines.

Array of objects

networking.machineNetwork.cidr

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

IP network. IP networks are represented as strings using Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation with a traditional IP address or network number, followed by the forward slash (/) character, followed by a decimal value between 0 and 32 that describes the number of significant bits. For example, 10.0.0.0/16 represents IP addresses 10.0.0.0 through 10.0.255.255.

publish

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

Internal or External. To deploy a private cluster, which cannot be accessed from the internet, set publish to Internal. The default value is External.

sshKey

The SSH key or keys to authenticate access 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.

One or more keys. For example:

sshKey:
  key1...
  key2...
  key3...
Table 5. Additional VMware vSphere cluster parameters
Parameter Description Values

platform.vsphere.vCenter

The fully-qualified host name or IP address of the vCenter server.

String

platform.vsphere.username

The user name to use to connect to the vCenter instance with. This user must have at least the roles and privileges that are required for static or dynamic persistent volume provisioning in vSphere.

String

platform.vsphere.password

The password for the vCenter user name.

String

platform.vsphere.datacenter

The name of the datacenter to use in the vCenter instance.

String

platform.vsphere.defaultDatastore

The name of the default datastore to use for provisioning volumes.

String

platform.vsphere.folder

Optional. The absolute path of an existing folder where the installation program creates the virtual machines. If you do not provide this value, the installation program creates a folder that is named with the infrastructure ID in the datacenter virtual machine folder.

String, for example, /<datacenter_name>/vm/<folder_name>/<subfolder_name>.

platform.vsphere.network

The network in the vCenter instance that contains the virtual IP addresses and DNS records that you configured.

String

platform.vsphere.cluster

The vCenter cluster to install the OKD cluster in.

String

platform.vsphere.apiVIP

The virtual IP (VIP) address that you configured for control plane API access.

An IP address, for example 128.0.0.1.

platform.vsphere.ingressVIP

The virtual IP (VIP) address that you configured for cluster ingress.

An IP address, for example 128.0.0.1.
Table 6. Optional VMware vSphere machine pool parameters
Parameter Description Values

platform.vsphere.clusterOSImage

The location from which the installer downloads the FCOS image. You must set this parameter to perform an installation in a restricted network.

An HTTP or HTTPS URL, optionally with a SHA-256 checksum. For example, https://mirror.openshift.com/images/rhcos-<version>-vmware.<architecture>.ova.

platform.vsphere.osDisk.diskSizeGB

The size of the disk in gigabytes.

Integer

platform.vsphere.cpus

The total number of virtual processor cores to assign a virtual machine.

Integer

platform.vsphere.coresPerSocket

The number of cores per socket in a virtual machine. The number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) on the virtual machine is platform.vsphere.cpus/platform.vsphere.coresPerSocket. The default value is 1

Integer

platform.vsphere.memoryMB

The size of a virtual machine’s memory in megabytes.

Integer

Sample install-config.yaml file for an installer-provisioned VMware vSphere cluster

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: 3
  platform:
    vsphere: (4)
      cpus: 2
      coresPerSocket: 2
      memoryMB: 8196
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 120
controlPlane: (2)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  name: master
  replicas: 3
  platform:
    vsphere: (4)
      cpus: 4
      coresPerSocket: 2
      memoryMB: 16384
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 120
metadata:
  name: cluster (5)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OVNKubernetes
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenter: your.vcenter.server
    username: username
    password: password
    datacenter: datacenter
    defaultDatastore: datastore
    folder: folder
    network: VM_Network
    cluster: vsphere_cluster_name
    apiVIP: api_vip
    ingressVIP: ingress_vip
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}'
sshKey: 'ssh-ed25519 AAAA...'
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 Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores. You can disable it by setting the parameter value to Disabled. If you disable simultaneous multithreading in some cluster machines, you must disable it in all cluster machines.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance. Your machines must use at least 8 CPUs and 32 GB of RAM if you disable simultaneous multithreading.
4 Optional: Provide additional configuration for the machine pool parameters for the compute and control plane machines.
5 The cluster name that you specified in your DNS records.

Modifying advanced network configuration parameters

You can modify the advanced network configuration parameters only before you install the cluster. Advanced configuration customization lets you integrate your cluster into your existing network environment by specifying an MTU or VXLAN port, by allowing customization of kube-proxy settings, and by specifying a different mode for the openshiftSDNConfig parameter.

Modifying the OKD manifest files created by the installation program is not supported. Applying a manifest file that you create, as in the following procedure, is supported.
Prerequisites

  • Create the install-config.yaml file and complete any modifications to it.

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

    $ ./openshift-install create manifests --dir=<installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

  2. Create a file that is named cluster-network-03-config.yml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    $ touch <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

    After creating the file, several network configuration files are in the manifests/ directory, as shown:

    $ ls <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-*
    Example output
    cluster-network-01-crd.yml
cluster-network-02-config.yml
cluster-network-03-config.yml

  3. Open the cluster-network-03-config.yml file in an editor and enter a custom resource (CR) that describes the Operator configuration you want:

    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
kind: Network
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec: (1)
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
  defaultNetwork:
    type: OpenShiftSDN
    openshiftSDNConfig:
      mode: NetworkPolicy
      mtu: 1450
      vxlanPort: 4789
    1 The parameters for the spec parameter are only an example. Specify your configuration for the Cluster Network Operator in the CR.

    The CNO provides default values for the parameters in the CR, so you must specify only the parameters that you want to change.

  4. Save the cluster-network-03-config.yml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

Cluster Network Operator configuration

The configuration for the cluster network is specified as part of the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) configuration and stored in a custom resource (CR) object that is named cluster. The CR specifies the parameters for the Network API in the operator.openshift.io API group.

You can specify the cluster network configuration for your OKD cluster by setting the parameter values for the defaultNetwork parameter in the CNO CR. The following CR displays the default configuration for the CNO and explains both the parameters you can configure and the valid parameter values:

Cluster Network Operator custom resource
apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
kind: Network
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
  clusterNetwork: (1)
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  serviceNetwork: (1)
  - 172.30.0.0/16
  defaultNetwork: (2)
    ...
  kubeProxyConfig: (3)
    iptablesSyncPeriod: 30s (4)
    proxyArguments:
      iptables-min-sync-period: (5)
      - 0s
1 Specified in the install-config.yaml file.
2 Configures the default Container Network Interface (CNI) network provider for the cluster network.
3 The parameters for this object specify the kube-proxy configuration. If you do not specify the parameter values, the Cluster Network Operator applies the displayed default parameter values. If you are using the OVN-Kubernetes default CNI network provider, the kube-proxy configuration has no effect.
4 The refresh period for iptables rules. The default value is 30s. Valid suffixes include s, m, and h and are described in the Go time package documentation.
Because of performance improvements introduced in OKD 4.3 and greater, adjusting the iptablesSyncPeriod parameter is no longer necessary.
5 The minimum duration before refreshing iptables rules. This parameter ensures that the refresh does not happen too frequently. Valid suffixes include s, m, and h and are described in the Go time package.

OKD uses the OVN-Kubernetes Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider by default.

Configuration parameters for the OpenShift SDN CNI cluster network provider

The following YAML object describes the configuration parameters for the OpenShift SDN default Container Network Interface (CNI) network provider.

defaultNetwork:
  type: OpenShiftSDN (1)
  openshiftSDNConfig: (2)
    mode: NetworkPolicy (3)
    mtu: 1450 (4)
    vxlanPort: 4789 (5)
1 Specified in the install-config.yaml file.
2 Specify only if you want to override part of the OpenShift SDN configuration.
3 Configures the network isolation mode for OpenShift SDN. The allowed values are Multitenant, Subnet, or NetworkPolicy. The default value is NetworkPolicy.
4 The maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the VXLAN overlay network. This is detected automatically based on the MTU of the primary network interface. You do not normally need to override the detected MTU.

If the auto-detected value is not what you expected it to be, confirm that the MTU on the primary network interface on your nodes is correct. You cannot use this option to change the MTU value of the primary network interface on the nodes.

If your cluster requires different MTU values for different nodes, you must set this value to 50 less than the lowest MTU value in your cluster. For example, if some nodes in your cluster have an MTU of 9001, and some have an MTU of 1500, you must set this value to 1450.
5 The port to use for all VXLAN packets. The default value is 4789. If you are running in a virtualized environment with existing nodes that are part of another VXLAN network, then you might be required to change this. For example, when running an OpenShift SDN overlay on top of VMware NSX-T, you must select an alternate port for VXLAN, since both SDNs use the same default VXLAN port number.

On Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can select an alternate port for the VXLAN between port 9000 and port 9999.

Configuration parameters for the OVN-Kubernetes CNI cluster network provider

The following YAML object describes the configuration parameters for the OVN-Kubernetes default CNI network provider.

defaultNetwork:
  type: OVNKubernetes (1)
  ovnKubernetesConfig: (2)
    mtu: 1400 (3)
    genevePort: 6081 (4)
    ipsecConfig: {} (5)
1 Specified in the install-config.yaml file.
2 Specify only if you want to override part of the OVN-Kubernetes configuration.
3 The maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the Geneve (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation) overlay network. This is detected automatically based on the MTU of the primary network interface. You do not normally need to override the detected MTU.

If the auto-detected value is not what you expected it to be, confirm that the MTU on the primary network interface on your nodes is correct. You cannot use this option to change the MTU value of the primary network interface on the nodes.

If your cluster requires different MTU values for different nodes, you must set this value to 100 less than the lowest MTU value in your cluster. For example, if some nodes in your cluster have an MTU of 9001, and some have an MTU of 1500, you must set this value to 1400.
4 The UDP port for the Geneve overlay network.
5 Specify an empty object to enable IPsec encryption.

Cluster Network Operator example configuration

A complete CR object for the CNO is displayed in the following example:

Cluster Network Operator example CR
apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
kind: Network
metadata:
  name: cluster
spec:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
  defaultNetwork:
    type: OpenShiftSDN
    openshiftSDNConfig:
      mode: NetworkPolicy
      mtu: 1450
      vxlanPort: 4789
  kubeProxyConfig:
    iptablesSyncPeriod: 30s
    proxyArguments:
      iptables-min-sync-period:
      - 0s

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

  • Obtain the OKD installation program and the pull secret for your cluster.

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and initialize the cluster deployment:

    $ ./openshift-install create cluster --dir=<installation_directory> \ (1)
    --log-level=info (2)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the location of your customized ./install-config.yaml file.
    2 To view different installation details, specify warn, debug, or error instead of info.

    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.

    Example output
    ...
INFO Install complete!
INFO To access the cluster as the system:admin user when using 'oc', run 'export KUBECONFIG=/home/myuser/install_dir/auth/kubeconfig'
INFO Access the OpenShift web-console here: https://console-openshift-console.apps.mycluster.example.com
INFO Login to the console with user: "kubeadmin", and password: "4vYBz-Ee6gm-ymBZj-Wt5AL"
INFO Time elapsed: 36m22s

    The cluster access and credential information also outputs to <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log when an installation succeeds.

    The Ignition config files that the 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.

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

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 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 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 CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Logging in to the cluster by using the CLI

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

  • You deployed an OKD cluster.

  • You installed 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
    Example output
    system:admin

Creating registry storage

After you install the cluster, you must create storage for the registry Operator.

Image registry removed during installation

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

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

The Prometheus console provides an ImageRegistryRemoved alert, for example:

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

Image registry storage configuration

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

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

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

Configuring registry storage for VMware vSphere

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

Prerequisites

  • Cluster administrator permissions.

  • A cluster on VMware vSphere.

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

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

  • Must have "100Gi" capacity.

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

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

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

    When using shared storage, review your security settings to prevent outside access.

  2. Verify that you do not have a registry pod:

    $ oc get pod -n openshift-image-registry

    If the storage type is emptyDIR, the replica number cannot be greater than 1.

  3. Check the registry configuration:

    $ oc edit configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io
    Example output
    storage:
  pvc:
    claim: (1)
    1 Leave the claim field blank to allow the automatic creation of an image-registry-storage PVC.

  4. Check the clusteroperator status:

    $ oc get clusteroperator image-registry

Configuring block registry storage for VMware vSphere

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

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

  1. To set the image registry storage as a block storage type, patch the registry so that it uses the Recreate rollout strategy and runs with only 1 replica:

    $ oc patch config.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster --type=merge -p '{"spec":{"rolloutStrategy":"Recreate","replicas":1}}'

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

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

      kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: image-registry-storage (1)
spec:
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce (2)
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100Gi (3)
      1 A unique name that represents the PersistentVolumeClaim object.
      2 The access mode of the PersistentVolumeClaim. With ReadWriteOnce, the volume can be mounted with read and write permissions by a single node.
      3 The size of the PersistentVolumeClaim.

    2. Create the PersistentVolumeClaim object from the file:

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

  3. Edit the registry configuration so that it references the correct PVC:

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

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

Backing up VMware vSphere volumes

OKD provisions new volumes as independent persistent disks to freely attach and detach the volume on any node in the cluster. As a consequence, it is not possible to back up volumes that use snapshots, or to restore volumes from snapshots. See Snapshot Limitations for more information.

Procedure

To create a backup of persistent volumes:

  1. Stop the application that is using the persistent volume.

  2. Clone the persistent volume.

  3. Restart the application.

  4. Create a backup of the cloned volume.

  5. Delete the cloned volume.

Next steps