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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 access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.6, you require access to the Internet to install your cluster.

You must have Internet access to:

  • Access OpenShift Cluster Manager 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.

  3. 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 have a computer that runs Linux or macOS, with 500 MB of local disk space

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

  2. Select your infrastructure provider.

  3. 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 the installation program and the files that the installation program creates after you finish installing the cluster. Both files are required to delete the cluster.

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

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

    $ tar xvf openshift-install-linux.tar.gz
  5. Download your installation pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager. 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.

Network configuration phases

When specifying a cluster configuration prior to installation, there are several phases in the installation procedures when you can modify the network configuration:

Phase 1

After entering the openshift-install create install-config command. In the install-config.yaml file, you can customize the following network-related fields:

  • networking.networkType

  • networking.clusterNetwork

  • networking.serviceNetwork

  • networking.machineNetwork

    For more information on these fields, refer to "Installation configuration parameters".

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

Phase 2

After entering the openshift-install create manifests command. If you must specify advanced network configuration, during this phase you can define a customized Cluster Network Operator manifest with only the fields you want to modify.

You cannot override the values specified in phase 1 in the install-config.yaml file during phase 2. However, you can further customize the cluster network provider during phase 2.

Creating the installation configuration file

You can customize the OpenShift Container Platform cluster you install on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

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

Procedure
  1. Create the install-config.yaml file.

    1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and run the following command:

      $ ./openshift-install create install-config --dir <installation_directory> (1)
      1 For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name to store the files that the installation program creates.

      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.

    2. At the prompts, provide the configuration details for your cloud:

      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 from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager.

  2. Modify the install-config.yaml file. You can find more information about the available parameters in the Installation configuration parameters section.

  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 installation process. If you want to reuse the file, you must back it up now.

Installation configuration parameters

Before you deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster, you provide parameter values to describe your account on the cloud platform that hosts your cluster and optionally customize your cluster’s platform. When you create the install-config.yaml installation configuration file, you provide values for the required parameters through the command line. If you customize your cluster, you can modify the install-config.yaml file to provide more details about the platform.

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

The openshift-install command does not validate field names for parameters. If an incorrect name is specified, the related file or object is not created, and no error is reported. Ensure that the field names for any parameters that are specified are correct.

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 installer 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, hyphens (-), and periods (.), such as dev.

platform

The configuration for the specific platform upon which to perform the installation: aws, baremetal, azure, openstack, ovirt, vsphere. For additional information about platform.<platform> parameters, consult the following table for your specific platform.

Object

pullSecret

Get a pull secret from the 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.

Only IPv4 addresses are supported.

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 cluster network provider Container Network Interface (CNI) plug-in to install.

Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. The default value is OpenShiftSDN.

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 OpenShift SDN and OVN-Kubernetes network providers support 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. For libvirt, the default value is 192.168.126.0/24.

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

compute

The configuration for the machines that comprise the compute nodes.

Array of machine-pool objects. For details, see the following "Machine-pool" table.

compute.architecture

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, heteregeneous clusters are not supported, so all pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64 (the default).

String

compute.hyperthreading

Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading, on compute machines. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance.

Enabled or Disabled

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, openstack, ovirt, 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.

controlPlane

The configuration for the machines that comprise the control plane.

Array of MachinePool objects. For details, see the following "Machine-pool" table.

controlPlane.architecture

Determines the instruction set architecture of the machines in the pool. Currently, heterogeneous clusters are not supported, so all pools must specify the same architecture. Valid values are amd64 (the default).

String

controlPlane.hyperthreading

Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading, on control plane machines. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance.

Enabled or Disabled

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, openstack, ovirt, vsphere, or {}

controlPlane.replicas

The number of control plane machines to provision.

The only supported value is 3, which is the default value.

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 on CCO modes, see the Cloud Credential Operator entry in the Red Hat Operators reference 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.

The use of FIPS Validated / Modules in Process cryptographic libraries is only supported on OpenShift Container Platform deployments on the x86_64 architecture.

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. To deploy a private cluster, which cannot be accessed from the internet, set publish to Internal. The default value is External.

sshKey

The SSH key or keys to authenticate 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.

One or more keys. For example:

sshKey:
  <key1>
  <key2>
  <key3>

Optional AWS configuration parameters

Optional AWS configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 4. Optional AWS parameters
Parameter Description Values

compute.platform.aws.amiID

The AWS AMI used to boot compute machines for the cluster. This is required for regions that require a custom RHCOS AMI.

Any published or custom RHCOS AMI that belongs to the set AWS region.

compute.platform.aws.rootVolume.iops

The Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) that is reserved for the root volume.

Integer, for example 4000.

compute.platform.aws.rootVolume.size

The size in GiB of the root volume.

Integer, for example 500.

compute.platform.aws.rootVolume.type

The type of the root volume.

Valid AWS EBS volume type, such as io1.

compute.platform.aws.rootVolume.kmsKeyARN

The Amazon Resource Name (key ARN) of a KMS key. This is required to encrypt OS volumes of worker nodes with a specific KMS key.

compute.platform.aws.type

The EC2 instance type for the compute machines.

Valid AWS instance type, such as c5.9xlarge.

compute.platform.aws.zones

The availability zones where the installation program creates machines for the compute machine pool. If you provide your own VPC, you must provide a subnet in that availability zone.

A list of valid AWS availability zones, such as us-east-1c, in a YAML sequence.

compute.aws.region

The AWS region that the installation program creates compute resources in.

Any valid AWS region, such as us-east-1.

controlPlane.platform.aws.amiID

The AWS AMI used to boot control plane machines for the cluster. This is required for regions that require a custom RHCOS AMI.

Any published or custom RHCOS AMI that belongs to the set AWS region.

controlPlane.platform.aws.rootVolume.kmsKeyARN

The Amazon Resource Name (key ARN) of a KMS key. This is required to encrypt OS volumes of control plane nodes with a specific KMS key.

controlPlane.platform.aws.type

The EC2 instance type for the control plane machines.

Valid AWS instance type, such as c5.9xlarge.

controlPlane.platform.aws.zones

The availability zones where the installation program creates machines for the control plane machine pool.

A list of valid AWS availability zones, such as us-east-1c, in a YAML sequence.

controlPlane.aws.region

The AWS region that the installation program creates control plane resources in.

Valid AWS region, such as us-east-1.

platform.aws.amiID

The AWS AMI used to boot all machines for the cluster. If set, the AMI must belong to the same region as the cluster. This is required for regions that require a custom RHCOS AMI.

Any published or custom RHCOS AMI that belongs to the set AWS region.

platform.aws.serviceEndpoints.name

The AWS service endpoint name. Custom endpoints are only required for cases where alternative AWS endpoints, like FIPS, must be used. Custom API endpoints can be specified for EC2, S3, IAM, Elastic Load Balancing, Tagging, Route 53, and STS AWS services.

Valid AWS service endpoint name.

platform.aws.serviceEndpoints.url

The AWS service endpoint URL. The URL must use the https protocol and the host must trust the certificate.

platform.aws.userTags

A map of keys and values that the installation program adds as tags to all resources that it creates.

Any valid YAML map, such as key value pairs in the <key>: <value> format. For more information about AWS tags, see Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources in the AWS documentation.

platform.aws.subnets

If you provide the VPC instead of allowing the installation program to create the VPC for you, specify the subnet for the cluster to use. The subnet must be part of the same machineNetwork[].cidr ranges that you specify. For a standard cluster, specify a public and a private subnet for each availability zone. For a private cluster, specify a private subnet for each availability zone.

Valid subnet IDs.

Sample customized install-config.yaml file for AWS

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. You must obtain your install-config.yaml file by using the installation program and modify it.

apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
credentialsMode: Mint (2)
controlPlane:  (3) (4)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (5)
  name: master
  platform:
    aws:
      zones:
      - us-west-2a
      - us-west-2b
      rootVolume:
        iops: 4000
        size: 500
        type: io1 (6)
      type: m5.xlarge
  replicas: 3
compute: (3)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (5)
  name: worker
  platform:
    aws:
      rootVolume:
        iops: 2000
        size: 500
        type: io1 (6)
      type: c5.4xlarge
      zones:
      - us-west-2c
  replicas: 3
metadata:
  name: test-cluster (1)
networking: (3)
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OpenShiftSDN
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  aws:
    region: us-west-2 (1)
    userTags:
      adminContact: jdoe
      costCenter: 7536
    amiID: ami-96c6f8f7 (7)
    serviceEndpoints: (8)
      - name: ec2
        url: https://vpce-id.ec2.us-west-2.vpce.amazonaws.com
fips: false (9)
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (10)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (1)
1 Required. The installation program prompts you for this value.
2 Optional: Add this parameter to force the Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) to use the specified mode, instead of having the CCO dynamically try to determine the capabilities of the credentials. For details about CCO modes, see the Cloud Credential Operator entry in the Red Hat Operators reference content.
3 If you do not provide these parameters and values, the installation program provides the default value.
4 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. Only one control plane pool is used.
5 Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores. You can disable it by setting the parameter value to Disabled. If you disable simultaneous multithreading in some cluster machines, you must disable it in all cluster machines.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance. Use larger instance types, such as m4.2xlarge or m5.2xlarge, for your machines if you disable simultaneous multithreading.

6 To configure faster storage for etcd, especially for larger clusters, set the storage type as io1 and set iops to 2000.
7 The ID of the AMI used to boot machines for the cluster. If set, the AMI must belong to the same region as the cluster.
8 The AWS service endpoints. Custom endpoints are required when installing to an unknown AWS region. The endpoint URL must use the https protocol and the host must trust the certificate.
9 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.

The use of FIPS Validated / Modules in Process cryptographic libraries is only supported on OpenShift Container Platform deployments on the x86_64 architecture.

10 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.

Configuring the cluster-wide proxy during installation

Production environments can deny direct access to the Internet and instead have an HTTP or HTTPS proxy available. You can configure a new OpenShift Container Platform cluster to use a proxy by configuring the proxy settings in the install-config.yaml file.

Prerequisites
  • You have an existing install-config.yaml file.

  • You reviewed the sites that your cluster requires access to and determined whether any of them need to bypass the proxy. By default, all cluster egress traffic is proxied, including calls to hosting cloud provider APIs. You added sites to the Proxy object’s spec.noProxy field to bypass the proxy if necessary.

    The Proxy object status.noProxy field is populated with the values of the networking.machineNetwork[].cidr, networking.clusterNetwork[].cidr, and networking.serviceNetwork[] fields from your installation configuration.

    For installations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP), the Proxy object status.noProxy field is also populated with the instance metadata endpoint (169.254.169.254).

  • If your cluster is on AWS, you added the ec2.<region>.amazonaws.com, elasticloadbalancing.<region>.amazonaws.com, and s3.<region>.amazonaws.com endpoints to your VPC endpoint. These endpoints are required to complete requests from the nodes to the AWS EC2 API. Because the proxy works on the container level, not the node level, you must route these requests to the AWS EC2 API through the AWS private network. Adding the public IP address of the EC2 API to your allowlist in your proxy server is not sufficient.

Procedure
  1. Edit your install-config.yaml file and add the proxy settings. For example:

    apiVersion: v1
    baseDomain: my.domain.com
    proxy:
      httpProxy: http://<username>:<pswd>@<ip>:<port> (1)
      httpsProxy: https://<username>:<pswd>@<ip>:<port> (2)
      noProxy: example.com (3)
    additionalTrustBundle: | (4)
        -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
        <MY_TRUSTED_CA_CERT>
        -----END CERTIFICATE-----
    ...
    1 A proxy URL to use for creating HTTP connections outside the cluster. The URL scheme must be http.
    2 A proxy URL to use for creating HTTPS connections outside the cluster.
    3 A comma-separated list of destination domain names, IP addresses, or other network CIDRs to exclude from proxying. Preface a domain with . to match subdomains only. For example, .y.com matches x.y.com, but not y.com. Use * to bypass the proxy for all destinations.
    4 If provided, the installation program generates a config map that is named user-ca-bundle in the openshift-config namespace to hold the additional CA certificates. If you provide additionalTrustBundle and at least one proxy setting, the Proxy object is configured to reference the user-ca-bundle config map in the trustedCA field. The Cluster Network Operator then creates a trusted-ca-bundle config map that merges the contents specified for the trustedCA parameter with the RHCOS trust bundle. The additionalTrustBundle field is required unless the proxy’s identity certificate is signed by an authority from the RHCOS trust bundle.

    The installation program does not support the proxy readinessEndpoints field.

  2. Save the file and reference it when installing OpenShift Container Platform.

The installation program creates a cluster-wide proxy that is named cluster that uses the proxy settings in the provided install-config.yaml file. If no proxy settings are provided, a cluster Proxy object is still created, but it will have a nil spec.

Only the Proxy object named cluster is supported, and no additional proxies can be created.

Cluster Network Operator configuration

The configuration for the cluster network is specified as part of the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) configuration and stored in a custom resource (CR) object that is named cluster. The CR specifies the fields for the Network API in the operator.openshift.io API group.

The CNO configuration inherits the following fields during cluster installation from the Network API in the Network.config.openshift.io API group and these fields cannot be changed:

clusterNetwork

IP address pools from which pod IP addresses are allocated.

serviceNetwork

IP address pool for services.

defaultNetwork.type

Cluster network provider, such as OpenShift SDN or OVN-Kubernetes.

You can specify the cluster network provider configuration for your cluster by setting the fields for the defaultNetwork object in the CNO object named cluster.

Cluster Network Operator configuration object

The fields for the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) are described in the following table:

Table 5. Cluster Network Operator configuration object
Field Type Description

metadata.name

string

The name of the CNO object. This name is always cluster.

spec.clusterNetwork

array

A list specifying the blocks of IP addresses from which pod IP addresses are allocated and the subnet prefix length assigned to each individual node in the cluster. For example:

spec:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/19
    hostPrefix: 23
  - cidr: 10.128.32.0/19
    hostPrefix: 23

This value is ready-only and specified in the install-config.yaml file.

spec.serviceNetwork

array

A block of IP addresses for services. The OpenShift SDN and OVN-Kubernetes Container Network Interface (CNI) network providers support only a single IP address block for the service network. For example:

spec:
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/14

This value is ready-only and specified in the install-config.yaml file.

spec.defaultNetwork

object

Configures the Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider for the cluster network.

spec.kubeProxyConfig

object

The fields for this object specify the kube-proxy configuration. If you are using the OVN-Kubernetes cluster network provider, the kube-proxy configuration has no effect.

defaultNetwork object configuration

The values for the defaultNetwork object are defined in the following table:

Table 6. defaultNetwork object
Field Type Description

type

string

Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. The cluster network provider is selected during installation. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

OpenShift Container Platform uses the OpenShift SDN Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider by default.

openshiftSDNConfig

object

This object is only valid for the OpenShift SDN cluster network provider.

ovnKubernetesConfig

object

This object is only valid for the OVN-Kubernetes cluster network provider.

Configuration for the OpenShift SDN CNI cluster network provider

The following table describes the configuration fields for the OpenShift SDN Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider.

Table 7. openshiftSDNConfig object
Field Type Description

mode

string

Configures the network isolation mode for OpenShift SDN. The default value is NetworkPolicy.

The values Multitenant and Subnet are available for backwards compatibility with OpenShift Container Platform 3.x but are not recommended. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

mtu

integer

The maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the VXLAN overlay network. This is detected automatically based on the MTU of the primary network interface. You do not normally need to override the detected MTU.

If the auto-detected value is not what you expected it to be, confirm that the MTU on the primary network interface on your nodes is correct. You cannot use this option to change the MTU value of the primary network interface on the nodes.

If your cluster requires different MTU values for different nodes, you must set this value to 50 less than the lowest MTU value in your cluster. For example, if some nodes in your cluster have an MTU of 9001, and some have an MTU of 1500, you must set this value to 1450.

This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

vxlanPort

integer

The port to use for all VXLAN packets. The default value is 4789. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

If you are running in a virtualized environment with existing nodes that are part of another VXLAN network, then you might be required to change this. For example, when running an OpenShift SDN overlay on top of VMware NSX-T, you must select an alternate port for the VXLAN, because both SDNs use the same default VXLAN port number.

On Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can select an alternate port for the VXLAN between port 9000 and port 9999.

Example OpenShift SDN configuration
defaultNetwork:
  type: OpenShiftSDN
  openshiftSDNConfig:
    mode: NetworkPolicy
    mtu: 1450
    vxlanPort: 4789
Configuration for the OVN-Kubernetes CNI cluster network provider

The following table describes the configuration fields for the OVN-Kubernetes CNI cluster network provider.

Table 8. ovnKubernetesConfig object
Field Type Description

mtu

integer

The maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the Geneve (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation) overlay network. This is detected automatically based on the MTU of the primary network interface. You do not normally need to override the detected MTU.

If the auto-detected value is not what you expected it to be, confirm that the MTU on the primary network interface on your nodes is correct. You cannot use this option to change the MTU value of the primary network interface on the nodes.

If your cluster requires different MTU values for different nodes, you must set this value to 100 less than the lowest MTU value in your cluster. For example, if some nodes in your cluster have an MTU of 9001, and some have an MTU of 1500, you must set this value to 1400.

This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

genevePort

integer

The port to use for all Geneve packets. The default value is 6081. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

Example OVN-Kubernetes configuration
defaultNetwork:
  type: OVNKubernetes
  ovnKubernetesConfig:
    mtu: 1400
    genevePort: 6081

kubeProxyConfig object configuration

The values for the kubeProxyConfig object are defined in the following table:

Table 9. kubeProxyConfig object
Field Type Description

iptablesSyncPeriod

string

The refresh period for iptables rules. The default value is 30s. Valid suffixes include s, m, and h and are described in the Go time package documentation.

Because of performance improvements introduced in OpenShift Container Platform 4.3 and greater, adjusting the iptablesSyncPeriod parameter is no longer necessary.

proxyArguments.iptables-min-sync-period

array

The minimum duration before refreshing iptables rules. This field ensures that the refresh does not happen too frequently. Valid suffixes include s, m, and h and are described in the Go time package. The default value is:

kubeProxyConfig:
  proxyArguments:
    iptables-min-sync-period:
    - 0s

Specifying advanced network configuration

You can use advanced configuration customization to integrate your cluster into your existing network environment by specifying additional configuration for your cluster network provider. You can specify advanced network configuration only before you install the cluster.

Modifying the OpenShift Container Platform manifest files created by the installation program is not supported. Applying a manifest file that you create, as in the following procedure, is supported.

Prerequisites
  • Create the install-config.yaml file and complete any modifications to it.

Procedure
  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

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

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

  2. Create a stub manifest file for the advanced network configuration that is named cluster-network-03-config.yml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    $ cat <<EOF > <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml
    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    kind: Network
    metadata:
      name: cluster
    spec:
    EOF

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

  3. Open the cluster-network-03-config.yml file in an editor and specify the advanced network configuration for your cluster, such as in the following example:

    Specify a different VXLAN port for the OpenShift SDN network provider
    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    kind: Network
    metadata:
      name: cluster
    spec:
      defaultNetwork:
        openshiftSDNConfig:
          vxlanPort: 4800
  4. Save the cluster-network-03-config.yml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

For more information on using a Network Load Balancer (NLB) on AWS, see Configuring Ingress cluster traffic on AWS using a Network Load Balancer.

Configuring an Ingress Controller Network Load Balancer on a new AWS cluster

You can create an Ingress Controller backed by an AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) on a new cluster.

Prerequisites
  • Create the install-config.yaml file and complete any modifications to it.

Procedure

Create an Ingress Controller backed by an AWS NLB on a new cluster.

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

    $ ./openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.
  2. Create a file that is named cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    $ touch <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

    After creating the file, several network configuration files are in the manifests/ directory, as shown:

    $ ls <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml
    Example output
    cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml
  3. Open the cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml file in an editor and enter a CR that describes the Operator configuration you want:

    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    kind: IngressController
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      name: default
      namespace: openshift-ingress-operator
    spec:
      endpointPublishingStrategy:
        loadBalancer:
          scope: External
          providerParameters:
            type: AWS
            aws:
              type: NLB
        type: LoadBalancerService
  4. Save the cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

Configuring hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes

You can configure your cluster to use hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes. This allows a hybrid cluster that supports different node networking configurations. For example, this is necessary to run both Linux and Windows nodes in a cluster.

You must configure hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes during the installation of your cluster. You cannot switch to hybrid networking after the installation process.

Prerequisites
  • You defined OVNKubernetes for the networking.networkType parameter in the install-config.yaml file. See the installation documentation for configuring OpenShift Container Platform network customizations on your chosen cloud provider for more information.

Procedure
  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

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

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

  2. Create a stub manifest file for the advanced network configuration that is named cluster-network-03-config.yml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    $ cat <<EOF > <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml
    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    kind: Network
    metadata:
      name: cluster
    spec:
    EOF

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

  3. Open the cluster-network-03-config.yml file in an editor and configure OVN-Kubernetes with hybrid networking, such as in the following example:

    Specify a hybrid networking configuration
    apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    kind: Network
    metadata:
      name: cluster
    spec:
      defaultNetwork:
        ovnKubernetesConfig:
          hybridOverlayConfig:
            hybridClusterNetwork: (1)
            - cidr: 10.132.0.0/14
              hostPrefix: 23
            hybridOverlayVXLANPort: 9898 (2)
    1 Specify the CIDR configuration used for nodes on the additional overlay network. The hybridClusterNetwork CIDR cannot overlap with the clusterNetwork CIDR.
    2 Specify a custom VXLAN port for the additional overlay network. This is required for running Windows nodes in a cluster installed on vSphere, and must not be configured for any other cloud provider. The custom port can be any open port excluding the default 4789 port. For more information on this requirement, see the Microsoft documentation on Pod-to-pod connectivity between hosts is broken.
  4. Save the cluster-network-03-config.yml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

For more information on using Linux and Windows nodes in the same cluster, see Understanding Windows container workloads.

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. 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.

    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.

    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: "4vYBz-Ee6gm-ymBZj-Wt5AL"
    INFO Time elapsed: 36m22s

    The cluster access and credential information also outputs to <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log when an installation succeeds.

    • 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.

    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.

    The elevated permissions provided by the AdministratorAccess policy are required only during installation.

Installing the OpenShift 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 4.6. Download and install the new version of oc.

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Linux

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

Procedure
  1. Navigate to the OpenShift Container Platform downloads page on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

  2. Select the appropriate version in the Version drop-down menu.

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.6 Linux Client entry and save the file.

  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 OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Windows

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

Procedure
  1. Navigate to the OpenShift Container Platform downloads page on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

  2. Select the appropriate version in the Version drop-down menu.

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.6 Windows Client entry and save the file.

  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 OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

C:\> oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on macOS

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

Procedure
  1. Navigate to the OpenShift Container Platform downloads page on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

  2. Select the appropriate version in the Version drop-down menu.

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.6 MacOSX Client entry and save the file.

  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 OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

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
  • See Accessing the web console for more details about accessing and understanding the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Telemetry access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.6, the Telemetry service, which runs by default to provide metrics about cluster health and the success of updates, requires internet access. If your cluster is connected to the internet, Telemetry runs automatically, and your cluster is registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager.

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

Additional resources