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Installing a cluster on Azure Stack Hub with customizations

In OpenShift Container Platform version 4.17, you can install a cluster on Microsoft Azure Stack Hub with an installer-provisioned infrastructure. However, you must manually configure the install-config.yaml file to specify values that are specific to Azure Stack Hub.

While you can select azure when using the installation program to deploy a cluster using installer-provisioned infrastructure, this option is only supported for the Azure Public Cloud.

Prerequisites

Uploading the RHCOS cluster image

You must download the RHCOS virtual hard disk (VHD) cluster image and upload it to your Azure Stack Hub environment so that it is accessible during deployment.

Prerequisites

  • Generate the Ignition config files for your cluster.

Procedure

  1. Obtain the RHCOS VHD cluster image:

    1. Export the URL of the RHCOS VHD to an environment variable.

      $ export COMPRESSED_VHD_URL=$(openshift-install coreos print-stream-json | jq -r '.architectures.x86_64.artifacts.azurestack.formats."vhd.gz".disk.location')

    2. Download the compressed RHCOS VHD file locally.

      $ curl -O -L ${COMPRESSED_VHD_URL}

  2. Decompress the VHD file.

    The decompressed VHD file is approximately 16 GB, so be sure that your host system has 16 GB of free space available. The VHD file can be deleted once you have uploaded it.

  3. Upload the local VHD to the Azure Stack Hub environment, making sure that the blob is publicly available. For example, you can upload the VHD to a blob using the az cli or the web portal.

Manually creating the installation configuration file

Installing the cluster requires that you manually create the installation configuration file.

Prerequisites

  • You have an SSH public key on your local machine to provide to the installation program. The key will be used for SSH authentication onto your cluster nodes for debugging and disaster recovery.

  • You have obtained the OpenShift Container Platform installation program and the pull secret for your cluster.

Procedure

  1. Create an installation directory to store your required installation assets in:

    $ mkdir <installation_directory>

    You must create a 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 OpenShift Container Platform version.

  2. Customize the sample install-config.yaml file template that is provided and save it in the <installation_directory>.

    You must name this configuration file install-config.yaml.

    Make the following modifications:

    1. Specify the required installation parameters.

    2. Update the platform.azure section to specify the parameters that are specific to Azure Stack Hub.

    3. Optional: Update one or more of the default configuration parameters to customize the installation.

      For more information about the parameters, see "Installation configuration parameters".

  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 next step of the installation process. You must back it up now.
Additional resources

Sample customized install-config.yaml file for Azure Stack Hub

You can customize the install-config.yaml file to specify more details about your OpenShift Container Platform cluster’s platform or modify the values of the required parameters.

This sample YAML file is provided for reference only. Use it as a resource to enter parameter values into the installation configuration file that you created manually.

 
apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
credentialsMode: Manual
controlPlane:  (2) (3)
  name: master
  platform:
    azure:
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 1024 (4)
        diskType: premium_LRS
  replicas: 3
compute: (2)
- name: worker
  platform:
    azure:
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 512 (4)
        diskType: premium_LRS
  replicas: 3
metadata:
  name: test-cluster  (1) (5)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OVNKubernetes (6)
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  azure:
    armEndpoint: azurestack_arm_endpoint  (1) (7)
    baseDomainResourceGroupName: resource_group  (1) (8)
    region: azure_stack_local_region  (1) (9)
    resourceGroupName: existing_resource_group (10)
    outboundType: Loadbalancer
    cloudName: AzureStackCloud (1)
    clusterOSimage: https://vhdsa.blob.example.example.com/vhd/rhcos-410.84.202112040202-0-azurestack.x86_64.vhd  (1) (11)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}'  (1) (12)
fips: false (13)
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (14)
additionalTrustBundle: | (15)
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    <MY_TRUSTED_CA_CERT>
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----
1 Required.
2 If you do not provide these parameters and values, the installation program provides the default value.
3 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 OpenShift Container Platform will support defining multiple compute pools during installation. Only one control plane pool is used.
4 You can specify the size of the disk to use in GB. Minimum recommendation for control plane nodes is 1024 GB.
5 The name of the cluster.
6 The cluster network plugin to install. The default value OVNKubernetes is the only supported value.
7 The Azure Resource Manager endpoint that your Azure Stack Hub operator provides.
8 The name of the resource group that contains the DNS zone for your base domain.
9 The name of your Azure Stack Hub local region.
10 The name of an existing resource group to install your cluster to. If undefined, a new resource group is created for the cluster.
11 The URL of a storage blob in the Azure Stack environment that contains an RHCOS VHD.
12 The pull secret required to authenticate your cluster.
13 Whether to enable or disable FIPS mode. By default, FIPS mode is not enabled. If FIPS mode is enabled, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines that OpenShift Container Platform runs on bypass the default Kubernetes cryptography suite and use the cryptography modules that are provided with RHCOS instead.

When running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) booted in FIPS mode, OpenShift Container Platform core components use the RHEL cryptographic libraries that have been submitted to NIST for FIPS 140-2/140-3 Validation on only the x86_64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures.
14 You can optionally provide the sshKey value that you use to access the machines in your cluster.

For production OpenShift Container Platform clusters on which you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, specify an SSH key that your ssh-agent process uses.
15 If the Azure Stack Hub environment is using an internal Certificate Authority (CA), adding the CA certificate is required.

Manually manage cloud credentials

The Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) only supports your cloud provider in manual mode. As a result, you must specify the identity and access management (IAM) secrets for your cloud provider.

Procedure

  1. If you have not previously created installation manifest files, do so by running the following command:

    $ openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory>

    where <installation_directory> is the directory in which the installation program creates files.

  2. Set a $RELEASE_IMAGE variable with the release image from your installation file by running the following command:

    $ RELEASE_IMAGE=$(./openshift-install version | awk '/release image/ {print $3}')

  3. Extract the list of CredentialsRequest custom resources (CRs) from the OpenShift Container Platform release image by running the following command:

    $ oc adm release extract \
  --from=$RELEASE_IMAGE \
  --credentials-requests \
  --included \(1)
  --install-config=<path_to_directory_with_installation_configuration>/install-config.yaml \(2)
  --to=<path_to_directory_for_credentials_requests> (3)
    1 The --included parameter includes only the manifests that your specific cluster configuration requires.
    2 Specify the location of the install-config.yaml file.
    3 Specify the path to the directory where you want to store the CredentialsRequest objects. If the specified directory does not exist, this command creates it.

    This command creates a YAML file for each CredentialsRequest object.

    Sample CredentialsRequest object
    apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
kind: CredentialsRequest
metadata:
  name: <component_credentials_request>
  namespace: openshift-cloud-credential-operator
  ...
spec:
  providerSpec:
    apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
    kind: AzureProviderSpec
    roleBindings:
    - role: Contributor
  ...

  4. Create YAML files for secrets in the openshift-install manifests directory that you generated previously. The secrets must be stored using the namespace and secret name defined in the spec.secretRef for each CredentialsRequest object.

    Sample CredentialsRequest object with secrets
    apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
kind: CredentialsRequest
metadata:
  name: <component_credentials_request>
  namespace: openshift-cloud-credential-operator
  ...
spec:
  providerSpec:
    apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
    kind: AzureProviderSpec
    roleBindings:
    - role: Contributor
      ...
  secretRef:
    name: <component_secret>
    namespace: <component_namespace>
  ...
    Sample Secret object
    apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: <component_secret>
  namespace: <component_namespace>
data:
  azure_subscription_id: <base64_encoded_azure_subscription_id>
  azure_client_id: <base64_encoded_azure_client_id>
  azure_client_secret: <base64_encoded_azure_client_secret>
  azure_tenant_id: <base64_encoded_azure_tenant_id>
  azure_resource_prefix: <base64_encoded_azure_resource_prefix>
  azure_resourcegroup: <base64_encoded_azure_resourcegroup>
  azure_region: <base64_encoded_azure_region>

Before upgrading a cluster that uses manually maintained credentials, you must ensure that the CCO is in an upgradeable state.
Additional resources

Configuring the cluster to use an internal CA

If the Azure Stack Hub environment is using an internal Certificate Authority (CA), update the cluster-proxy-01-config.yaml file to configure the cluster to use the internal CA.

Prerequisites

  • Create the install-config.yaml file and specify the certificate trust bundle in .pem format.

  • Create the cluster manifests.

Procedure

  1. From the directory in which the installation program creates files, go to the manifests directory.

  2. Add user-ca-bundle to the spec.trustedCA.name field.

    Example cluster-proxy-01-config.yaml file
    apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1
kind: Proxy
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: cluster
spec:
  trustedCA:
    name: user-ca-bundle
status: {}

  3. Optional: Back up the manifests/ cluster-proxy-01-config.yaml file. The installation program consumes the manifests/ directory when you deploy the cluster.

Deploying the cluster

You can install OpenShift Container Platform on a compatible cloud platform.

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

  • You have configured an account with the cloud platform that hosts your cluster.

  • You have the OpenShift Container Platform installation program and the pull secret for your cluster.

  • You have verified that 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

  • 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.
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: "password"
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.

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 OpenShift Container Platform installation.

Prerequisites

  • You deployed an OpenShift Container Platform 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

Logging in to the cluster by using the web console

The kubeadmin user exists by default after an OpenShift Container Platform installation. You can log in to your cluster as the kubeadmin user by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Prerequisites

  • You have access to the installation host.

  • You completed a cluster installation and all cluster Operators are available.

Procedure

  1. Obtain the password for the kubeadmin user from the kubeadmin-password file on the installation host:

    $ cat <installation_directory>/auth/kubeadmin-password

    Alternatively, you can obtain the kubeadmin password from the <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log log file on the installation host.

  2. List the OpenShift Container Platform web console route:

    $ oc get routes -n openshift-console | grep 'console-openshift'

    Alternatively, you can obtain the OpenShift Container Platform route from the <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log log file on the installation host.
    Example output
    console     console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>            console     https   reencrypt/Redirect   None

  3. Navigate to the route detailed in the output of the preceding command in a web browser and log in as the kubeadmin user.

Additional resources

Next steps