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Installing a cluster on OpenStack on your own infrastructure

In OpenShift Container Platform version 4.11, you can install a cluster on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) that runs on user-provisioned infrastructure.

Using your own infrastructure allows you to integrate your cluster with existing infrastructure and modifications. The process requires more labor on your part than installer-provisioned installations, because you must create all RHOSP resources, like Nova servers, Neutron ports, and security groups. However, Red Hat provides Ansible playbooks to help you in the deployment process.

Prerequisites

Internet access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.11, you require access to the internet to install your cluster.

You must have internet access to:

  • Access OpenShift Cluster Manager to download the installation program and perform subscription management. If the cluster has internet access and you do not disable Telemetry, that service automatically entitles your cluster.

  • Access Quay.io to obtain the packages that are required to install your cluster.

  • Obtain the packages that are required to perform cluster updates.

If your cluster cannot have direct internet access, you can perform a restricted network installation on some types of infrastructure that you provision. During that process, you download the required content and use it to populate a mirror registry with the installation packages. With some installation types, the environment that you install your cluster in will not require internet access. Before you update the cluster, you update the content of the mirror registry.

Resource guidelines for installing OpenShift Container Platform on RHOSP

To support an OpenShift Container Platform installation, your Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) quota must meet the following requirements:

Table 1. Recommended resources for a default OpenShift Container Platform cluster on RHOSP
Resource Value

Floating IP addresses

3

Ports

15

Routers

1

Subnets

1

RAM

112 GB

vCPUs

28

Volume storage

275 GB

Instances

7

Security groups

3

Security group rules

60

Server groups

2 - plus 1 for each additional availability zone in each machine pool

A cluster might function with fewer than recommended resources, but its performance is not guaranteed.

If RHOSP object storage (Swift) is available and operated by a user account with the swiftoperator role, it is used as the default backend for the OpenShift Container Platform image registry. In this case, the volume storage requirement is 175 GB. Swift space requirements vary depending on the size of the image registry.
By default, your security group and security group rule quotas might be low. If you encounter problems, run openstack quota set --secgroups 3 --secgroup-rules 60 <project> as an administrator to increase them.

An OpenShift Container Platform deployment comprises control plane machines, compute machines, and a bootstrap machine.

Control plane machines

By default, the OpenShift Container Platform installation process creates three control plane machines.

Each machine requires:

  • An instance from the RHOSP quota

  • A port from the RHOSP quota

  • A flavor with at least 16 GB memory, 4 vCPUs, and 100 GB storage space

Compute machines

By default, the OpenShift Container Platform installation process creates three compute machines.

Each machine requires:

  • An instance from the RHOSP quota

  • A port from the RHOSP quota

  • A flavor with at least 8 GB memory, 2 vCPUs, and 100 GB storage space

Compute machines host the applications that you run on OpenShift Container Platform; aim to run as many as you can.

Bootstrap machine

During installation, a bootstrap machine is temporarily provisioned to stand up the control plane. After the production control plane is ready, the bootstrap machine is deprovisioned.

The bootstrap machine requires:

  • An instance from the RHOSP quota

  • A port from the RHOSP quota

  • A flavor with at least 16 GB memory, 4 vCPUs, and 100 GB storage space

Downloading playbook dependencies

The Ansible playbooks that simplify the installation process on user-provisioned infrastructure require several Python modules. On the machine where you will run the installer, add the modules' repositories and then download them.

These instructions assume that you are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.
Prerequisites

  • Python 3 is installed on your machine.

Procedure

  1. On a command line, add the repositories:

    1. Register with Red Hat Subscription Manager:

      $ sudo subscription-manager register # If not done already

    2. Pull the latest subscription data:

      $ sudo subscription-manager attach --pool=$YOUR_POOLID # If not done already

    3. Disable the current repositories:

      $ sudo subscription-manager repos --disable=* # If not done already

    4. Add the required repositories:

      $ sudo subscription-manager repos \
  --enable=rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms \
  --enable=openstack-16-tools-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms \
  --enable=ansible-2.9-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms \
  --enable=rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms

  2. Install the modules:

    $ sudo yum install python3-openstackclient ansible python3-openstacksdk python3-netaddr

  3. Ensure that the python command points to python3:

    $ sudo alternatives --set python /usr/bin/python3

Downloading the installation playbooks

Download Ansible playbooks that you can use to install OpenShift Container Platform on your own Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) infrastructure.

Prerequisites

  • The curl command-line tool is available on your machine.

Procedure

  • To download the playbooks to your working directory, run the following script from a command line:

    $ xargs -n 1 curl -O <<< '
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/bootstrap.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/common.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/compute-nodes.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/control-plane.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/inventory.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/network.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/security-groups.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-bootstrap.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-compute-nodes.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-control-plane.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-load-balancers.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-network.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-security-groups.yaml
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/installer/release-4.11/upi/openstack/down-containers.yaml'

The playbooks are downloaded to your machine.

During the installation process, you can modify the playbooks to configure your deployment.

Retain all playbooks for the life of your cluster. You must have the playbooks to remove your OpenShift Container Platform cluster from RHOSP.

You must match any edits you make in the bootstrap.yaml, compute-nodes.yaml, control-plane.yaml, network.yaml, and security-groups.yaml files to the corresponding playbooks that are prefixed with down-. For example, edits to the bootstrap.yaml file must be reflected in the down-bootstrap.yaml file, too. If you do not edit both files, the supported cluster removal process will fail.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OpenShift Container Platform, 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. Access the Infrastructure Provider page on the OpenShift Cluster Manager site. If you have a Red Hat account, log in with your credentials. If you do not, create an account.

  2. Select your infrastructure provider.

  3. Navigate to the page for your installation type, download the installation program that corresponds with your host operating system and architecture, and place the file in the directory where you will store the installation configuration files.

    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 OpenShift Container Platform uninstallation procedures for your specific cloud provider.

  4. 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

  5. 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 OpenShift Container Platform components.

Generating a key pair for cluster node SSH access

During an OpenShift Container Platform installation, you can provide an SSH public key to the installation program. The key is passed to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) 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 RHCOS 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.
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 OpenShift Container Platform 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 OpenShift Container Platform, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

Creating the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) image

The OpenShift Container Platform installation program requires that a Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) image be present in the Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) cluster. Retrieve the latest RHCOS image, then upload it using the RHOSP CLI.

Prerequisites

  • The RHOSP CLI is installed.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the Red Hat Customer Portal’s Product Downloads page.

  2. Under Version, select the most recent release of OpenShift Container Platform 4.11 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.

    The RHCOS images might not change with every release of OpenShift Container Platform. You must download images with the highest version that is less than or equal to the OpenShift Container Platform version that you install. Use the image versions that match your OpenShift Container Platform version if they are available.

  3. Download the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) - OpenStack Image (QCOW).

  4. Decompress the image.

    You must decompress the RHOSP image before the cluster can use it. The name of the downloaded file might not contain a compression extension, like .gz or .tgz. To find out if or how the file is compressed, in a command line, enter:

    $ file <name_of_downloaded_file>

  5. From the image that you downloaded, create an image that is named rhcos in your cluster by using the RHOSP CLI:

    $ openstack image create --container-format=bare --disk-format=qcow2 --file rhcos-${RHCOS_VERSION}-openstack.qcow2 rhcos
    Depending on your RHOSP environment, you might be able to upload the image in either .raw or .qcow2 formats. If you use Ceph, you must use the .raw format.
    If the installation program finds multiple images with the same name, it chooses one of them at random. To avoid this behavior, create unique names for resources in RHOSP.

After you upload the image to RHOSP, it is usable in the installation process.

Verifying external network access

The OpenShift Container Platform installation process requires external network access. You must provide an external network value to it, or deployment fails. Before you begin the process, verify that a network with the external router type exists in Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP).

Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. Using the RHOSP CLI, verify the name and ID of the 'External' network:

    $ openstack network list --long -c ID -c Name -c "Router Type"
    Example output
    +--------------------------------------+----------------+-------------+
| ID                                   | Name           | Router Type |
+--------------------------------------+----------------+-------------+
| 148a8023-62a7-4672-b018-003462f8d7dc | public_network | External    |
+--------------------------------------+----------------+-------------+

A network with an external router type appears in the network list. If at least one does not, see Creating a default floating IP network and Creating a default provider network.

If the Neutron trunk service plug-in is enabled, a trunk port is created by default. For more information, see Neutron trunk port.

Enabling access to the environment

At deployment, all OpenShift Container Platform machines are created in a Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP)-tenant network. Therefore, they are not accessible directly in most RHOSP deployments.

You can configure OpenShift Container Platform API and application access by using floating IP addresses (FIPs) during installation. You can also complete an installation without configuring FIPs, but the installer will not configure a way to reach the API or applications externally.

Enabling access with floating IP addresses

Create floating IP (FIP) addresses for external access to the OpenShift Container Platform API, cluster applications, and the bootstrap process.

Proced