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Installation configuration parameters for vSphere

Before you deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster on vSphere, you provide parameters to customize your cluster and the platform that hosts it. When you create the install-config.yaml file, you provide values for the required parameters through the command line. You can then modify the install-config.yaml file to customize your cluster further.

Available installation configuration parameters for vSphere

The following tables specify the required, optional, and vSphere-specific installation configuration parameters that you can set as part of the installation process.

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

Required configuration parameters

Required installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 1. Required parameters
Parameter Description Values 
apiVersion:

The API version for the install-config.yaml content. The current version is v1. The installation program 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 OpenShift Container Platform 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 and hyphens (-), such as dev.

 
platform:

The configuration for the specific platform upon which to perform the installation: aws, baremetal, azure, gcp, ibmcloud, nutanix, openstack, powervs, vsphere, or {}. For additional information about platform.<platform> parameters, consult the table for your specific platform that follows.

Object

 
pullSecret:

Get a pull secret from Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager to authenticate downloading container images for OpenShift Container Platform components from services such as Quay.io.

 
{
   "auths":{
      "cloud.openshift.com":{
         "auth":"b3Blb=",
         "email":"you@example.com"
      },
      "quay.io":{
         "auth":"b3Blb=",
         "email":"you@example.com"
      }
   }
}

Network configuration parameters

You can customize your installation configuration based on the requirements of your existing network infrastructure. For example, you can expand the IP address block for the cluster network or provide different IP address blocks than the defaults.

Consider the following information before you configure network parameters for your cluster:

  • If you use the Red Hat OpenShift Networking OVN-Kubernetes network plugin, both IPv4 and IPv6 address families are supported.

  • If you deployed nodes in an OpenShift Container Platform cluster with a network that supports both IPv4 and non-link-local IPv6 addresses, configure your cluster to use a dual-stack network.

    • For clusters configured for dual-stack networking, both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic must use the same network interface as the default gateway. This ensures that in a multiple network interface controller (NIC) environment, a cluster can detect what NIC to use based on the available network interface. For more information, see "OVN-Kubernetes IPv6 and dual-stack limitations" in About the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin.

    • To prevent network connectivity issues, do not install a single-stack IPv4 cluster on a host that supports dual-stack networking.

On VMware vSphere, dual-stack networking can specify either IPv4 or IPv6 as the primary address family.

If you configure your cluster to use both IP address families, review the following requirements:

  • Both IP families must use the same network interface for the default gateway.

  • Both IP families must have the default gateway.

  • You must specify IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in the same order for all network configuration parameters. For example, in the following configuration IPv4 addresses are listed before IPv6 addresses.

    networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  - cidr: fd00:10:128::/56
    hostPrefix: 64
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
  - fd00:172:16::/112
Table 2. Network parameters
Parameter Description Values 
networking:

The configuration for the cluster network.

Object

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

 
networking:
  networkType:

The Red Hat OpenShift Networking network plugin to install.

OVNKubernetes. OVNKubernetes is a CNI plugin for Linux networks and hybrid networks that contain both Linux and Windows servers. The default value is OVNKubernetes.

 
networking:
  clusterNetwork:

The IP address blocks for pods.

The default value is 10.128.0.0/14 with a host prefix of /23.

If you specify multiple IP address blocks, the blocks must not overlap.

An array of objects. For example:

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

Required if you use networking.clusterNetwork. An IP address block.

An IPv4 network.

An IP address block in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation. The prefix length for an IPv4 block is between 0 and 32.

 
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
    hostPrefix:

The subnet prefix length to assign to each individual node. For example, if hostPrefix is set to 23 then each node is assigned a /23 subnet out of the given cidr. A hostPrefix value of 23 provides 510 (2^(32 - 23) - 2) pod IP addresses.

A subnet prefix.

The default value is 23.

 
networking:
  serviceNetwork:

The IP address block for services. The default value is 172.30.0.0/16.

The OVN-Kubernetes network plugins supports only a single IP address block for the service network.

An array with an IP address block in CIDR format. For example:

networking:
  serviceNetwork:
   - 172.30.0.0/16
 
networking:
  machineNetwork:

The IP address blocks for machines.

If you specify multiple IP address blocks, the blocks must not overlap.

An array of objects. For example:

networking:
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
 
networking:
  machineNetwork:
    cidr:

Required if you use networking.machineNetwork. An IP address block. The default value is 10.0.0.0/16 for all platforms other than libvirt and IBM Power® Virtual Server. For libvirt, the default value is 192.168.126.0/24. For IBM Power® Virtual Server, the default value is 192.168.0.0/24.

An IP network block in CIDR notation.

For example, 10.0.0.0/16.

Set the networking.machineNetwork to match the CIDR that the preferred NIC resides in.

Optional configuration parameters

Optional installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 3. 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

 
capabilities:

Controls the installation of optional core cluster components. You can reduce the footprint of your OpenShift Container Platform cluster by disabling optional components. For more information, see the "Cluster capabilities" page in Installing.

String array

 
capabilities:
  baselineCapabilitySet:

Selects an initial set of optional capabilities to enable. Valid values are None, v4.11, v4.12 and vCurrent. The default value is vCurrent.

String

 
capabilities:
  additionalEnabledCapabilities:

Extends the set of optional capabilities beyond what you specify in baselineCapabilitySet. You may specify multiple capabilities in this parameter.

String array

 
cpuPartitioningMode:

Enables workload partitioning, which isolates OpenShift Container Platform services, cluster management workloads, and infrastructure pods to run on a reserved set of CPUs. Workload partitioning can only be enabled during installation and cannot be disabled after installation. While this field enables workload partitioning, it does not configure workloads to use specific CPUs. For more information, see the Workload partitioning page in the Scalability and Performance section.

None or AllNodes. None is the default value.

 
compute:

The configuration for the machines that comprise the compute nodes.

Array of MachinePool objects.

 
compute:
  architecture:

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, clusters with varied architectures are not supported. All pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64 (the default).

String

 
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, ibmcloud, nutanix, openstack, powervs, 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.

 
featureSet:

Enables the cluster for a feature set. A feature set is a collection of OpenShift Container Platform features that are not enabled by default. For more information about enabling a feature set during installation, see "Enabling features using feature gates".

String. The name of the feature set to enable, such as TechPreviewNoUpgrade.

 
controlPlane:

The configuration for the machines that comprise the control plane.

Array of MachinePool objects.

 
controlPlane:
  architecture:

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, clusters with varied architectures are not supported. All pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64 (the default).

String

 
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, ibmcloud, nutanix, openstack, powervs, vsphere, or {}

 
controlPlane:
  replicas:

The number of control plane machines to provision.

Supported values are 3, or 1 when deploying single-node OpenShift.

 
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 about CCO modes, see the "Managing cloud provider credentials" entry in the Authentication and authorization content.

Mint, Passthrough, Manual or an empty string ("").

 
fips:

Enable or disable FIPS mode. The default is false (disabled). 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.

To enable FIPS mode for your cluster, you must run the installation program from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) computer configured to operate in FIPS mode. For more information about configuring FIPS mode on RHEL, see Switching RHEL to FIPS mode.

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.

If you are using Azure File storage, you cannot enable FIPS mode.

false or true

 
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

 
publish:

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

Internal or External. The default value is External.

Setting this field to Internal is not supported on non-cloud platforms.

If the value of the field is set to Internal, the cluster will become non-functional. For more information, refer to BZ#1953035.

 
sshKey:

The SSH key to authenticate access to your cluster machines.

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.

For example, sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA...

Additional VMware vSphere configuration parameters

Additional VMware vSphere configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 4. Additional VMware vSphere cluster parameters
Parameter Description Values 
platform:
  vsphere:

Describes your account on the cloud platform that hosts your cluster. You can use the parameter to customize the platform. If you provide additional configuration settings for compute and control plane machines in the machine pool, the parameter is not required.

A dictionary of vSphere configuration objects

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    apiVIPs:

Virtual IP (VIP) addresses that you configured for control plane API access.

This parameter applies only to installer-provisioned infrastructure without an external load balancer configured. You must not specify this parameter in user-provisioned infrastructure.

Multiple IP addresses

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    diskType:

Optional: The disk provisioning method. This value defaults to the vSphere default storage policy if not set.

Valid values are thin, thick, or eagerZeroedThick.

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:

Establishes the relationships between a region and zone. You define a failure domain by using vCenter objects, such as a datastore object. A failure domain defines the vCenter location for OpenShift Container Platform cluster nodes.

An array of failure domain configuration objects.

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      name:

The name of the failure domain.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      region:

If you define multiple failure domains for your cluster, you must attach the tag to each vCenter data center. To define a region, use a tag from the openshift-region tag category. For a single vSphere data center environment, you do not need to attach a tag, but you must enter an alphanumeric value, such as datacenter, for the parameter.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      server:

Specifies the fully-qualified hostname or IP address of the VMware vCenter server, so that a client can access failure domain resources. You must apply the server role to the vSphere vCenter server location.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      zone:

If you define multiple failure domains for your cluster, you must attach a tag to each vCenter cluster. To define a zone, use a tag from the openshift-zone tag category. For a single vSphere data center environment, you do not need to attach a tag, but you must enter an alphanumeric value, such as cluster, for the parameter.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology:
        computeCluster:

The path to the vSphere compute cluster.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology:
        datacenter:

Lists and defines the data centers where OpenShift Container Platform virtual machines (VMs) operate. The list of data centers must match the list of data centers specified in the vcenters field.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology:
        datastore:

Specifies the path to a vSphere datastore that stores virtual machines files for a failure domain. You must apply the datastore role to the vSphere vCenter datastore location.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology:
        folder:

Optional: The absolute path of an existing folder where the user creates the virtual machines, for example, /<data_center_name>/vm/<folder_name>/<subfolder_name>. If you do not provide this value, the installation program creates a top-level folder in the data center virtual machine folder that is named with the infrastructure ID. If you are providing the infrastructure for the cluster and you do not want to use the default StorageClass object, named thin, you can omit the folder parameter from the install-config.yaml file.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology:
        networks:

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

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology:
        resourcePool:

Optional: The absolute path of an existing resource pool where the installation program creates the virtual machines, for example, /<data_center_name>/host/<cluster_name>/Resources/<resource_pool_name>/<optional_nested_resource_pool_name>. If you do not specify a value, the installation program installs the resources in the root of the cluster under /<data_center_name>/host/<cluster_name>/Resources.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    failureDomains:
      topology
        template:

Specifies the absolute path to a pre-existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) image template or virtual machine. The installation program can use the image template or virtual machine to quickly install RHCOS on vSphere hosts. Consider using this parameter as an alternative to uploading an RHCOS image on vSphere hosts. This parameter is available for use only on installer-provisioned infrastructure.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    ingressVIPs:

Virtual IP (VIP) addresses that you configured for cluster Ingress.

This parameter applies only to installer-provisioned infrastructure without an external load balancer configured. You must not specify this parameter in user-provisioned infrastructure.

Multiple IP addresses

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenters:

Configures the connection details so that services can communicate with a vCenter server.

An array of vCenter configuration objects.

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenters:
      datacenters:

Lists and defines the data centers where OpenShift Container Platform virtual machines (VMs) operate. The list of data centers must match the list of data centers specified in the failureDomains field.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenters:
      password:

The password associated with the vSphere user.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenters:
      port:

The port number used to communicate with the vCenter server.

Integer

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenters:
      server:

The fully qualified host name (FQHN) or IP address of the vCenter server.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    vcenters:
      user:

The username associated with the vSphere user.

String

Deprecated VMware vSphere configuration parameters

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.13, the following vSphere configuration parameters are deprecated. You can continue to use these parameters, but the installation program does not automatically specify these parameters in the install-config.yaml file.

The following table lists each deprecated vSphere configuration parameter:

Table 5. Deprecated VMware vSphere cluster parameters
Parameter Description Values 
platform:
  vsphere:
    apiVIP:

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

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 and later, the apiVIP configuration setting is deprecated. Instead, use a List format to enter a value in the apiVIPs configuration setting.

An IP address, for example 128.0.0.1.

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    cluster:

The vCenter cluster to install the OpenShift Container Platform cluster in.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    datacenter:

Defines the data center where OpenShift Container Platform virtual machines (VMs) operate.

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 data center virtual machine folder.

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

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    ingressVIP:

Virtual IP (VIP) addresses that you configured for cluster Ingress.

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 and later, the ingressVIP configuration setting is deprecated. Instead, use a List format to enter a value in the ingressVIPs configuration setting.

An IP address, for example 128.0.0.1.

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    network:

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

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    password:

The password for the vCenter user name.

String

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    resourcePool:

Optional: The absolute path of an existing resource pool where the installation program creates the virtual machines. If you do not specify a value, the installation program installs the resources in the root of the cluster under /<data_center_name>/host/<cluster_name>/Resources.

String, for example, /<data_center_name>/host/<cluster_name>/Resources/<resource_pool_name>/<optional_nested_resource_pool_name>.

 
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:
    vCenter:

The fully-qualified hostname or IP address of a vCenter server.

String

Optional VMware vSphere machine pool configuration parameters

Optional VMware vSphere machine pool configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 6. Optional VMware vSphere machine pool parameters
Parameter Description Values 
platform:
  vsphere:
    clusterOSImage:

The location from which the installation program downloads the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) image. Before setting a path value for this parameter, ensure that the default RHCOS boot image in the OpenShift Container Platform release matches the RHCOS image template or virtual machine version; otherwise, cluster installation might fail.

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. The value of platform.vsphere.cpus must be a multiple of platform.vsphere.coresPerSocket value.

Integer

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    coresPerSocket:

The number of cores per socket in a virtual machine. The number of virtual sockets on the virtual machine is platform.vsphere.cpus/platform.vsphere.coresPerSocket. The default value for control plane nodes and worker nodes is 4 and 2, respectively.

Integer

 
platform:
  vsphere:
    memoryMB:

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

Integer