1. Documentation
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Installing a cluster on vSphere

Prerequisites

  • You reviewed details about the OKD installation and update processes.

  • You read the documentation on selecting a cluster installation method and preparing it for users.

  • You provisioned persistent storage for your cluster. To deploy a private image registry, your storage must provide ReadWriteMany access modes.

  • The OKD installer requires access to port 443 on the vCenter and ESXi hosts. You verified that port 443 is accessible.

  • If you use a firewall, you confirmed with the administrator that port 443 is accessible. Control plane nodes must be able to reach vCenter and ESXi hosts on port 443 for the installation to succeed.

  • If you use a firewall, you configured it to allow the sites that your cluster requires access to.

    Be sure to also review this site list if you are configuring a proxy.

VMware vSphere infrastructure requirements

You must install the OKD cluster on a VMware vSphere version 7.0 Update 2 or later instance that meets the requirements for the components that you use.

OKD version 4 supports VMware vSphere version 8.0.

You can host the VMware vSphere infrastructure on-premise or on a VMware Cloud Verified provider that meets the requirements outlined in the following table:

Table 1. Version requirements for vSphere virtual environments
Virtual environment product Required version

VMware virtual hardware

15 or later

vSphere ESXi hosts

7.0 Update 2 or later

vCenter host

7.0 Update 2 or later
Table 2. Minimum supported vSphere version for VMware components
Component Minimum supported versions Description

Hypervisor

vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and later with virtual hardware version 15

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

Storage with in-tree drivers

vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and later

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

Optional: Networking (NSX-T)

vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and later

vSphere 7.0 Update 2 is required for OKD. For more information about the compatibility of NSX and OKD, see the Release Notes section of VMware’s NSX container plugin documentation.

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.

Network connectivity requirements

You must configure the network connectivity between machines to allow OKD cluster components to communicate.

Review the following details about the required network ports.

Table 3. 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

virtual extensible LAN (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 4. Ports used for all-machine to control plane communications
Protocol Port Description

TCP

6443

Kubernetes API
Table 5. Ports used for control plane machine to control plane machine communications
Protocol Port Description

TCP

2379-2380

etcd server and peer ports

VMware vSphere CSI Driver Operator requirements

To install the vSphere CSI Driver Operator, the following requirements must be met:

  • VMware vSphere version 7.0 Update 2 or later

  • vCenter 7.0 Update 2 or later

  • Virtual machines of hardware version 15 or later

  • No third-party vSphere CSI driver already installed in the cluster

If a third-party vSphere CSI driver is present in the cluster, OKD does not overwrite it. The presence of a third-party vSphere CSI driver prevents OKD from upgrading to OKD 4.13 or later.

Additional resources

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 global administrative privileges is the simplest way to access all of the necessary permissions.

If you cannot use an account with global administrative privileges, you must create roles to grant the privileges necessary for OKD cluster installation. While most of the privileges are always required, some are required only if you plan for the installation program to provision a folder to contain the OKD cluster on your vCenter instance, which is the default behavior. You must create or amend vSphere roles for the specified objects to grant the required privileges.

An additional role is required if the installation program is to create a vSphere virtual machine folder.

Roles and privileges required for installation in vSphere API
vSphere object for role When required Required privileges in vSphere API

vSphere vCenter

Always

Cns.Searchable
InventoryService.Tagging.AttachTag
InventoryService.Tagging.CreateCategory
InventoryService.Tagging.CreateTag
InventoryService.Tagging.DeleteCategory
InventoryService.Tagging.DeleteTag
InventoryService.Tagging.EditCategory
InventoryService.Tagging.EditTag
Sessions.ValidateSession
StorageProfile.Update
StorageProfile.View

vSphere vCenter Cluster

If VMs will be created in the cluster root

Host.Config.Storage
Resource.AssignVMToPool
VApp.AssignResourcePool
VApp.Import
VirtualMachine.Config.AddNewDisk

vSphere vCenter Resource Pool

If an existing resource pool is provided

Host.Config.Storage
Resource.AssignVMToPool
VApp.AssignResourcePool
VApp.Import
VirtualMachine.Config.AddNewDisk

vSphere Datastore

Always

Datastore.AllocateSpace
Datastore.Browse
Datastore.FileManagement
InventoryService.Tagging.ObjectAttachable

vSphere Port Group

Always

Network.Assign

Virtual Machine Folder

Always

InventoryService.Tagging.ObjectAttachable
Resource.AssignVMToPool
VApp.Import
VirtualMachine.Config.AddExistingDisk
VirtualMachine.Config.AddNewDisk
VirtualMachine.Config.AddRemoveDevice
VirtualMachine.Config.AdvancedConfig
VirtualMachine.Config.Annotation
VirtualMachine.Config.CPUCount
VirtualMachine.Config.DiskExtend
VirtualMachine.Config.DiskLease
VirtualMachine.Config.EditDevice
VirtualMachine.Config.Memory
VirtualMachine.Config.RemoveDisk
VirtualMachine.Config.Rename
VirtualMachine.Config.ResetGuestInfo
VirtualMachine.Config.Resource
VirtualMachine.Config.Settings
VirtualMachine.Config.UpgradeVirtualHardware
VirtualMachine.Interact.GuestControl
VirtualMachine.Interact.PowerOff
VirtualMachine.Interact.PowerOn
VirtualMachine.Interact.Reset
VirtualMachine.Inventory.Create
VirtualMachine.Inventory.CreateFromExisting
VirtualMachine.Inventory.Delete
VirtualMachine.Provisioning.Clone
VirtualMachine.Provisioning.MarkAsTemplate
VirtualMachine.Provisioning.DeployTemplate

vSphere vCenter Datacenter

If the installation program creates the virtual machine folder. For UPI, VirtualMachine.Inventory.Create and VirtualMachine.Inventory.Delete privileges are optional if your cluster does not use the Machine API.

InventoryService.Tagging.ObjectAttachable
Resource.AssignVMToPool
VApp.Import
VirtualMachine.Config.AddExistingDisk
VirtualMachine.Config.AddNewDisk
VirtualMachine.Config.AddRemoveDevice
VirtualMachine.Config.AdvancedConfig
VirtualMachine.Config.Annotation
VirtualMachine.Config.CPUCount
VirtualMachine.Config.DiskExtend
VirtualMachine.Config.DiskLease
VirtualMachine.Config.EditDevice
VirtualMachine.Config.Memory
VirtualMachine.Config.RemoveDisk
VirtualMachine.Config.Rename
VirtualMachine.Config.ResetGuestInfo
VirtualMachine.Config.Resource
VirtualMachine.Config.Settings
VirtualMachine.Config.UpgradeVirtualHardware
VirtualMachine.Interact.GuestControl
VirtualMachine.Interact.PowerOff
VirtualMachine.Interact.PowerOn
VirtualMachine.Interact.Reset
VirtualMachine.Inventory.Create
VirtualMachine.Inventory.CreateFromExisting
VirtualMachine.Inventory.Delete
VirtualMachine.Provisioning.Clone
VirtualMachine.Provisioning.DeployTemplate
VirtualMachine.Provisioning.MarkAsTemplate
Folder.Create
Folder.Delete
Roles and privileges required for installation in vCenter graphical user interface (GUI)
vSphere object for role When required Required privileges in vCenter GUI

vSphere vCenter

Always

Cns.Searchable
"vSphere Tagging"."Assign or Unassign vSphere Tag"
"vSphere Tagging"."Create vSphere Tag Category"
"vSphere Tagging"."Create vSphere Tag"
vSphere Tagging"."Delete vSphere Tag Category"
"vSphere Tagging"."Delete vSphere Tag"
"vSphere Tagging"."Edit vSphere Tag Category"
"vSphere Tagging"."Edit vSphere Tag"
Sessions."Validate session"
"Profile-driven storage"."Profile-driven storage update"
"Profile-driven storage"."Profile-driven storage view"

vSphere vCenter Cluster

If VMs will be created in the cluster root

Host.Configuration."Storage partition configuration"
Resource."Assign virtual machine to resource pool"
VApp."Assign resource pool"
VApp.Import
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add new disk"

vSphere vCenter Resource Pool

If an existing resource pool is provided

Host.Configuration."Storage partition configuration"
Resource."Assign virtual machine to resource pool"
VApp."Assign resource pool"
VApp.Import
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add new disk"

vSphere Datastore

Always

Datastore."Allocate space"
Datastore."Browse datastore"
Datastore."Low level file operations"
"vSphere Tagging"."Assign or Unassign vSphere Tag on Object"

vSphere Port Group

Always

Network."Assign network"

Virtual Machine Folder

Always

"vSphere Tagging"."Assign or Unassign vSphere Tag on Object"
Resource."Assign virtual machine to resource pool"
VApp.Import
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add existing disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add new disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add or remove device"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Advanced configuration"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Set annotation"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change CPU count"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Extend virtual disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Acquire disk lease"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Modify device settings"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change Memory"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Remove disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration".Rename
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Reset guest information"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change resource"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change Settings"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Upgrade virtual machine compatibility"
"Virtual machine".Interaction."Guest operating system management by VIX API"
"Virtual machine".Interaction."Power off"
"Virtual machine".Interaction."Power on"
"Virtual machine".Interaction.Reset
"Virtual machine"."Edit Inventory"."Create new"
"Virtual machine"."Edit Inventory"."Create from existing"
"Virtual machine"."Edit Inventory"."Remove"
"Virtual machine".Provisioning."Clone virtual machine"
"Virtual machine".Provisioning."Mark as template"
"Virtual machine".Provisioning."Deploy template"

vSphere vCenter Datacenter

If the installation program creates the virtual machine folder. For UPI, VirtualMachine.Inventory.Create and VirtualMachine.Inventory.Delete privileges are optional if your cluster does not use the Machine API.

"vSphere Tagging"."Assign or Unassign vSphere Tag on Object"
Resource."Assign virtual machine to resource pool"
VApp.Import
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add existing disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add new disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Add or remove device"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Advanced configuration"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Set annotation"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change CPU count"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Extend virtual disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Acquire disk lease"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Modify device settings"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change Memory"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Remove disk"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration".Rename
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Reset guest information"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change resource"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Change Settings"
"Virtual machine"."Change Configuration"."Upgrade virtual machine compatibility"
"Virtual machine".Interaction."Guest operating system management by VIX API"
"Virtual machine".Interaction."Power off"
"Virtual machine".Interaction."Power on"
"Virtual machine".Interaction.Reset
"Virtual machine"."Edit Inventory"."Create new"
"Virtual machine"."Edit Inventory"."Create from existing"
"Virtual machine"."Edit Inventory"."Remove"
"Virtual machine".Provisioning."Clone virtual machine"
"Virtual machine".Provisioning."Deploy template"
"Virtual machine".Provisioning."Mark as template"
Folder."Create folder"
Folder."Delete folder"

Additionally, the user requires some ReadOnly permissions, and some of the roles require permission to propogate the permissions to child objects. These settings vary depending on whether or not you install the cluster into an existing folder.

Required permissions and propagation settings
vSphere object When required Propagate to children Permissions required

vSphere vCenter

Always

False

Listed required privileges

vSphere vCenter Datacenter

Existing folder

False

ReadOnly permission

Installation program creates the folder

True

Listed required privileges

vSphere vCenter Cluster

Existing resource pool

True

ReadOnly permission

VMs in cluster root

True

Listed required privileges

vSphere vCenter Datastore

Always

False

Listed required privileges

vSphere Switch

Always

False

ReadOnly permission

vSphere Port Group

Always

False

Listed required privileges

vSphere vCenter Virtual Machine Folder

Existing folder

True

Listed required privileges

vSphere vCenter Resource Pool

Existing resource pool

True

Listed required 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

If you intend on using vMotion in your vSphere environment, consider the following before installing an OKD cluster.

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

    To help ensure the uptime of your compute and control plane nodes, it is recommended that you follow the VMware best practices for vMotion. It is also recommended to use VMware anti-affinity rules to improve the availability of OKD during maintenance or hardware issues.

    For more information about vMotion and anti-affinity rules, see the VMware vSphere documentation for vMotion networking requirements and VM anti-affinity rules.

  • 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. You must configure the default gateway to use the DHCP server. All nodes must be in the same VLAN. You cannot scale the cluster using a second VLAN as a Day 2 operation. Additionally, you must create the following networking resources before you install the OKD cluster:

It is recommended that each OKD node in the cluster must have access to a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server that is discoverable via DHCP. Installation is possible without an NTP server. However, asynchronous server clocks will cause errors, which NTP server prevents.

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 6. 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 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.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OKD, download the installation file on the host you are using for installation.

Prerequisites

  • You have a machine that runs Linux, for example Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, with 500 MB of local disk space.

    If you attempt to run the installation program on macOS, a known issue related to the golang compiler causes the installation of the OKD cluster to fail. For more information about this issue, see the section named "Known Issues" in the OKD 4 release notes document.
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.

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

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.

  • Verify the cloud provider account on your host has the correct permissions to deploy the cluster. An account with incorrect permissions causes the installation process to fail with an error message that displays the missing permissions.

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 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.

    When specifying the directory:

    • Verify that the directory has the execute permission. This permission is required to run Terraform binaries under the installation directory.

    • Use an empty directory. Some installation assets, such as bootstrap X.509 certificates, have short expiration intervals, therefore 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. Provide values at the prompts:

    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 data center in your vCenter instance to connect to.

    6. Select the default vCenter datastore to use.

      Datastore and cluster names cannot exceed 60 characters; therefore, ensure the combined string length does not exceed the 60 character limit.

    7. Select the vCenter cluster to install the OKD cluster in. The installation program uses the root resource pool of the vSphere cluster as the default resource pool.

    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.

      Datastore and cluster names cannot exceed 60 characters; therefore, ensure the combined string length does not exceed the 60 character limit.

    13. Paste the pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager.

      • If you do not have a pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager, you can paste the pull secret another private registry.

      • If you do not need the cluster to pull images from a private registry, you can paste {"auths":{"fake":{"auth":"aWQ6cGFzcwo="}}} as the pull secret.

Verification

When the cluster deployment completes successfully:

  • The terminal displays directions for accessing your cluster, including a link to the web console and credentials for the kubeadmin user.

  • Credential information also outputs to <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log.

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

  • 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.

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 xvf <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>

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 Data Foundation.

    OKD supports ReadWriteOnce access for image registry storage when you have only one replica. ReadWriteOnce access also requires that the registry uses the Recreate rollout strategy. 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 -l docker-registry=default
    Example output
    No resourses found in openshift-image-registry namespace

    If you do have a registry pod in your output, you do not need to continue with this procedure.

  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 persistent volume claim (PVC). The PVC is generated based on the default storage class. However, be aware that the default storage class might provide ReadWriteOnce (RWO) volumes, such as a RADOS Block Device (RBD), which can cause issues when replicating to more than one replica.

  4. Check the clusteroperator status:

    $ oc get clusteroperator image-registry
    Example output
    NAME             VERSION                              AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   DEGRADED   SINCE   MESSAGE
image-registry   4.7                                  True        False         False      6h50m

Configuring 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)
  namespace: openshift-image-registry (2)
spec:
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce (3)
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100Gi (4)
      1 A unique name that represents the PersistentVolumeClaim object.
      2 The namespace for the PersistentVolumeClaim object, which is openshift-image-registry.
      3 The access mode of the persistent volume claim. With ReadWriteOnce, the volume can be mounted with read and write permissions by a single node.
      4 The size of the persistent volume claim.

    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.

Additional resources

Configuring an external load balancer

You can configure an OKD cluster to use an external load balancer in place of the default load balancer.

You can also configure an OKD cluster to use an external load balancer that supports multiple subnets. If you use multiple subnets, you can explicitly list all the IP addresses in any networks that are used by your load balancer targets. This configuration can reduce maintenance overhead because you can create and destroy nodes within those networks without reconfiguring the load balancer targets.

If you deploy your ingress pods by using a machine set on a smaller network, such as a /27 or /28, you can simplify your load balancer targets.

You do not need to specify API and Ingress static addresses for your installation program. If you choose this configuration, you must take additional actions to define network targets that accept an IP address from each referenced vSphere subnet.
Prerequisites

  • On your load balancer, TCP over ports 6443, 443, and 80 must be reachable by all users of your system that are located outside the cluster.

  • Load balance the application ports, 443 and 80, between all the compute nodes.

  • Load balance the API port, 6443, between each of the control plane nodes.

  • On your load balancer, port 22623, which is used to serve ignition startup configurations to nodes, is not exposed outside of the cluster.

  • Your load balancer can access the required ports on each node in your cluster. You can ensure this level of access by completing the following actions:

    • The API load balancer can access ports 22623 and 6443 on the control plane nodes.

    • The ingress load balancer can access ports 443 and 80 on the nodes where the ingress pods are located.

  • Optional: If you are using multiple networks, you can create targets for every IP address in the network that can host nodes. This configuration can reduce the maintenance overhead of your cluster.

External load balancing services and the control plane nodes must run on the same L2 network, and on the same VLAN when using VLANs to route traffic between the load balancing services and the control plane nodes.
Procedure

  1. Enable access to the cluster from your load balancer on ports 6443, 443, and 80.

    As an example, note this HAProxy configuration:

    A section of a sample HAProxy configuration
    ...
listen my-cluster-api-6443
    bind 0.0.0.0:6443
    mode tcp
    balance roundrobin
    server my-cluster-master-2 192.0.2.2:6443 check
    server my-cluster-master-0 192.0.2.3:6443 check
    server my-cluster-master-1 192.0.2.1:6443 check
listen my-cluster-apps-443
        bind 0.0.0.0:443
        mode tcp
        balance roundrobin
        server my-cluster-worker-0 192.0.2.6:443 check
        server my-cluster-worker-1 192.0.2.5:443 check
        server my-cluster-worker-2 192.0.2.4:443 check
listen my-cluster-apps-80
        bind 0.0.0.0:80
        mode tcp
        balance roundrobin
        server my-cluster-worker-0 192.0.2.7:80 check
        server my-cluster-worker-1 192.0.2.9:80 check
        server my-cluster-worker-2 192.0.2.8:80 check

  2. Add records to your DNS server for the cluster API and apps over the load balancer. For example:

    <load_balancer_ip_address> api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
<load_balancer_ip_address> apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>

  3. From a command line, use curl to verify that the external load balancer and DNS configuration are operational.

    1. Verify that the cluster API is accessible:

      $ curl https://<loadbalancer_ip_address>:6443/version --insecure

      If the configuration is correct, you receive a JSON object in response:

      {
  "major": "1",
  "minor": "11+",
  "gitVersion": "v1.11.0+ad103ed",
  "gitCommit": "ad103ed",
  "gitTreeState": "clean",
  "buildDate": "2019-01-09T06:44:10Z",
  "goVersion": "go1.10.3",
  "compiler": "gc",
  "platform": "linux/amd64"
}

    2. Verify that cluster applications are accessible:

      You can also verify application accessibility by opening the OKD console in a web browser.

      		 
      $ curl http://console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> -I -L --insecure

      If the configuration is correct, you receive an HTTP response:

      HTTP/1.1 302 Found
content-length: 0
location: https://console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster-name>.<base domain>/
cache-control: no-cacheHTTP/1.1 200 OK
referrer-policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
set-cookie: csrf-token=39HoZgztDnzjJkq/JuLJMeoKNXlfiVv2YgZc09c3TBOBU4NI6kDXaJH1LdicNhN1UsQWzon4Dor9GWGfopaTEQ==; Path=/; Secure
x-content-type-options: nosniff
x-dns-prefetch-control: off
x-frame-options: DENY
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block
date: Tue, 17 Nov 2020 08:42:10 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
set-cookie: 1e2670d92730b515ce3a1bb65da45062=9b714eb87e93cf34853e87a92d6894be; path=/; HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=None
cache-control: private

Next steps