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Installing a cluster quickly on AWS

Prerequisites

  • Review details about the OpenShift Container Platform installation and update processes.

  • Configure an AWS account to host the cluster.

    If you have an AWS profile stored on your computer, it must not use a temporary session token that you generated while using a multi-factor authentication device. The cluster continues to use your current AWS credentials to create AWS resources for the entire life of the cluster, so you must use key-based, long-lived credentials. To generate appropriate keys, see Managing Access Keys for IAM Users in the AWS documentation. You can supply the keys when you run the installation program.

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

  • If you do not allow the system to manage identity and access management (IAM), then a cluster administrator can manually create and maintain IAM credentials. Manual mode can also be used in environments where the cloud IAM APIs are not reachable.

Internet and Telemetry access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.5, you require access to the Internet to install your cluster. The Telemetry service, which runs by default to provide metrics about cluster health and the success of updates, also requires Internet access. If your cluster is connected to the Internet, Telemetry runs automatically, and your cluster is registered to the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager (OCM).

Once you confirm that your Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager inventory is correct, either maintained automatically by Telemetry or manually using OCM, use subscription watch to track your OpenShift Container Platform subscriptions at the account or multi-cluster level.

You must have Internet access to:

  • Access the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager page 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 content that is required and use it to populate a mirror registry with the packages that you need to install a cluster and generate the installation program. 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.

Generating an SSH private key and adding it to the agent

If you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery on your cluster, you must provide an SSH key to both your ssh-agent and the installation program. You can use this key to access the bootstrap machine in a public cluster to troubleshoot installation issues.

In a production environment, you require disaster recovery and debugging.

You can use this key to SSH into the master nodes as the user core. When you deploy the cluster, the key is added to the core user’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys list.

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 SSH key that is configured for password-less authentication on your computer, 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_rsa, of the new SSH key. If you have an existing key pair, ensure your public key is in the your ~/.ssh directory.

    Running this command generates an SSH key that does not require a password in the location that you specified.

    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. Start the ssh-agent process 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.

  1. Add your SSH private key to the ssh-agent:

    $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)
    Example output
    Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)
    1 Specify the path and file name for your SSH private key, such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Next steps

  • When you install OpenShift Container Platform, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OpenShift Container Platform, download the installation file on a local computer.

Prerequisites

  • You must install the cluster from a computer that uses Linux or macOS.

  • You need 500 MB of local disk space to download the installation program.

Procedure

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

  2. Navigate to the page for your installation type, download the installation program for your operating system, 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 both the installation program and the files that the installation program creates after you finish installing the cluster.

    Deleting the files created by the installation program does not remove your cluster, even if the cluster failed during installation. You must complete the OpenShift Container Platform uninstallation procedures outlined for your specific cloud provider to remove your cluster entirely.

  3. Extract the installation program. For example, on a computer that uses a Linux operating system, run the following command:

    $ tar xvf <installation_program>.tar.gz

  4. From the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site, download your installation pull secret as a .txt file. 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.

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

  • Configure an account with the cloud platform that hosts your cluster.

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

Procedure

  1. Run the installation program:

    $ ./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.

    Specify an empty 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.

    Provide values at the prompts:

    1. Optional: Select an SSH key to use to access 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.

    2. Select aws as the platform to target.

    3. If you do not have an Amazon Web Services (AWS) profile stored on your computer, enter the AWS access key ID and secret access key for the user that you configured to run the installation program.

    4. Select the AWS region to deploy the cluster to.

    5. Select the base domain for the Route 53 service that you configured for your cluster.

    6. Enter a descriptive name for your cluster.

    7. Paste the pull secret that you obtained from the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site.

    If the cloud provider account that you configured on your host does not have sufficient permissions to deploy the cluster, the installation process stops, and the missing permissions are displayed.

    When the cluster deployment completes, directions for accessing your cluster, including a link to its web console and credentials for the kubeadmin user, display in your terminal.

    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.

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

  2. Optional: Remove or disable the AdministratorAccess policy from the IAM account that you used to install the cluster.

Installing the CLI by downloading the binary

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) in order to interact with OpenShift Container Platform 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 OpenShift Container Platform 4.5. Download and install the new version of oc.

Installing the CLI on Linux

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) binary on Linux by using the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the Infrastructure Provider page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site.

  2. Select your infrastructure provider, and, if applicable, your installation type.

  3. In the Command line interface section, select Linux from the drop-down menu and click Download command-line tools.

  4. Unpack the archive:

    $ tar xvzf <file>

  5. 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 CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Installing the CLI on Windows

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) binary on Windows by using the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the Infrastructure Provider page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site.

  2. Select your infrastructure provider, and, if applicable, your installation type.

  3. In the Command line interface section, select Windows from the drop-down menu and click Download command-line tools.

  4. Unzip the archive with a ZIP program.

  5. 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 CLI, it is available using the oc command:

C:\> oc <command>

Installing the CLI on macOS

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) binary on macOS by using the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the Infrastructure Provider page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site.

  2. Select your infrastructure provider, and, if applicable, your installation type.

  3. In the Command line interface section, select MacOS from the drop-down menu and click Download command-line tools.

  4. Unpack and unzip the archive.

  5. 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 CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Logging in to the cluster

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

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

  • Install 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

Next steps