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Installing a cluster on vSphere

Prerequisites

  • You reviewed details about the OpenShift Container Platform 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 OpenShift Container Platform 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.

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 Hybrid Cloud Console 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.

VMware vSphere infrastructure requirements

You must install the OpenShift Container Platform cluster on a VMware vSphere version 7 instance that meets the requirements for the components that you use.

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

VM hardware version

15 or later

vSphere ESXi hosts

7.0.2 or later

vCenter host

7.0.2 or later

Installing a cluster on VMware vSphere version 7.0.1 or earlier is now deprecated. These versions are still fully supported, but version 4.11 of OpenShift Container Platform requires vSphere virtual hardware version 15 or later. Hardware version 15 is now the default for vSphere virtual machines in OpenShift Container Platform. To update the hardware version for your vSphere nodes, see the "Updating hardware on nodes running in vSphere" article.

If your vSphere nodes are below hardware version 15 or your VMware vSphere version is earlier than 6.7.3, upgrading from OpenShift Container Platform 4.10 to OpenShift Container Platform 4.11 is not available.
Table 2. Minimum supported vSphere version for VMware components
Component Minimum supported versions Description

Hypervisor

vSphere 6.7u3 and later with HW version 15

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

Storage with in-tree drivers

vSphere 6.7u3 and later

This plugin creates vSphere storage by using the in-tree storage drivers for vSphere included in OpenShift Container Platform.

Optional: Networking (NSX-T)

vSphere 7.0.1 and later

vSphere 7.0.1 is required for OpenShift Container Platform. VMware’s NSX Container Plugin (NCP) is certified with OpenShift Container Platform 4.6 and NSX-T 3.x+.

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

Network connectivity requirements

You must configure the network connectivity between machines to allow OpenShift Container Platform 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

The following requirements must be met in order to install the CSI Driver Operator:

  • VMware vSphere version 7.0.1 or later

  • Virtual machines of hardware version 15 or later

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

If a third-party CSI driver is present in the cluster, OpenShift Container Platform does not overwrite it. The presence of a third-party CSI driver prevents OpenShift Container Platform from upgrading in a future release.

Additional resources

vCenter requirements

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

Required vCenter account privileges

To install an OpenShift Container Platform 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 OpenShift Container Platform 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 OpenShift Container Platform 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