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Creating a machine set on Azure

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Microsoft Azure. For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.5 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.5 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines

A fundamental unit that describes the host for a Node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.

Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler

The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.

Cluster autoscaler

This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.

Machine health check

The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on Azure

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs in the 1 Microsoft Azure zone in the centralus region and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructureID> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructureID> (1)
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> (2)
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> (2)
  name: <infrastructureID>-<role>-<region> (3)
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructureID> (1)
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructureID>-<role>-<region> (3)
  template:
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructureID> (1)
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> (2)
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> (2)
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructureID>-<role>-<region> (3)
    spec:
      metadata:
        creationTimestamp: null
        labels:
          node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "" (2)
      providerSpec:
        value:
          apiVersion: azureproviderconfig.openshift.io/v1beta1
          credentialsSecret:
            name: azure-cloud-credentials
            namespace: openshift-machine-api
          image:
            offer: ""
            publisher: ""
            resourceID: /resourceGroups/<infrastructureID>-rg/providers/Microsoft.Compute/images/<infrastructureID>
            sku: ""
            version: ""
          internalLoadBalancer: ""
          kind: AzureMachineProviderSpec
          location: centralus
          managedIdentity: <infrastructureID>-identity (1)
          metadata:
            creationTimestamp: null
          natRule: null
          networkResourceGroup: ""
          osDisk:
            diskSizeGB: 128
            managedDisk:
              storageAccountType: Premium_LRS
            osType: Linux
          publicIP: false
          publicLoadBalancer: ""
          resourceGroup: <infrastructureID>-rg (1)
          sshPrivateKey: ""
          sshPublicKey: ""
          subnet: <infrastructureID>-<role>-subnet  (1) (2)
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data (2)
          vmSize: qeci-22538-vnet
          vnet: <infrastructureID>-vnet (1)
          zone: "1" (4)
1 Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command: 
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster

You can obtain the subnet by running the following command:

$  oc -n openshift-machine-api \
    -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.providerSpec.value.subnet}{"\n"}' \
    get machineset/<infrastructureID>-worker-centralus1

You can obtain the vnet by running the following command:

$  oc -n openshift-machine-api \
    -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.providerSpec.value.vnet}{"\n"}' \
    get machineset/<infrastructureID>-worker-centralus1
2 Specify the node label to add.
3 Specify the infrastructure ID, node label, and region.
4 Specify the zone within your region to place Machines on. Be sure that your region supports the zone that you specify.

Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).

  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure about which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster.

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api
      Example output
      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
     openshift-machine-api -o yaml
      Example output
      ...
template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk (1)
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker (2)
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a
      1 The cluster ID.
      2 A default node label.

  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml

  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api
    Example output
    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.