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Prerequisites

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

  • You read the documentation on selecting a cluster installation method and preparing it for users.

  • You mirrored the images for a disconnected installation to your registry and obtained the imageContentSources data for your version of OpenShift Container Platform.

    Because the installation media is on the mirror host, you can use that computer to complete all installation steps.

  • You have an existing VPC in AWS. When installing to a restricted network using installer-provisioned infrastructure, you cannot use the installer-provisioned VPC. You must use a user-provisioned VPC that satisfies one of the following requirements:

    • Contains the mirror registry

    • Has firewall rules or a peering connection to access the mirror registry hosted elsewhere

  • You configured 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.

  • You downloaded the AWS CLI and installed it on your computer. See Install the AWS CLI Using the Bundled Installer (Linux, macOS, or Unix) in the AWS documentation.

  • If you use a firewall and plan to use the Telemetry service, you configured the firewall to allow the sites that your cluster requires access to.

    If you are configuring a proxy, be sure to also review this site list.

  • If the cloud identity and access management (IAM) APIs are not accessible in your environment, or if you do not want to store an administrator-level credential secret in the kube-system namespace, you can manually create and maintain IAM credentials.

About installations in restricted networks

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.8, you can perform an installation that does not require an active connection to the internet to obtain software components. Restricted network installations can be completed using installer-provisioned infrastructure or user-provisioned infrastructure, depending on the cloud platform to which you are installing the cluster.

If you choose to perform a restricted network installation on a cloud platform, you still require access to its cloud APIs. Some cloud functions, like Amazon Web Service’s Route 53 DNS and IAM services, require internet access. Depending on your network, you might require less internet access for an installation on bare metal hardware or on VMware vSphere.

To complete a restricted network installation, you must create a registry that mirrors the contents of the OpenShift Container Platform registry and contains the installation media. You can create this registry on a mirror host, which can access both the internet and your closed network, or by using other methods that meet your restrictions.

Additional limits

Clusters in restricted networks have the following additional limitations and restrictions:

  • The ClusterVersion status includes an Unable to retrieve available updates error.

  • By default, you cannot use the contents of the Developer Catalog because you cannot access the required image stream tags.

About using a custom VPC

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.8, you can deploy a cluster into existing subnets in an existing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in Amazon Web Services (AWS). By deploying OpenShift Container Platform into an existing AWS VPC, you might be able to avoid limit constraints in new accounts or more easily abide by the operational constraints that your company’s guidelines set. If you cannot obtain the infrastructure creation permissions that are required to create the VPC yourself, use this installation option.

Because the installation program cannot know what other components are also in your existing subnets, it cannot choose subnet CIDRs and so forth on your behalf. You must configure networking for the subnets that you install your cluster to yourself.

Requirements for using your VPC

The installation program no longer creates the following components:

  • Internet gateways

  • NAT gateways

  • Subnets

  • Route tables

  • VPCs

  • VPC DHCP options

  • VPC endpoints

The installation program requires that you use the cloud-provided DNS server. Using a custom DNS server is not supported and causes the installation to fail.

If you use a custom VPC, you must correctly configure it and its subnets for the installation program and the cluster to use. See Amazon VPC console wizard configurations and Work with VPCs and subnets in the AWS documentation for more information on creating and managing an AWS VPC.

The installation program cannot:

  • Subdivide network ranges for the cluster to use.

  • Set route tables for the subnets.

  • Set VPC options like DHCP.

You must complete these tasks before you install the cluster. See VPC networking components and Route tables for your VPC for more information on configuring networking in an AWS VPC.

Your VPC must meet the following characteristics:

  • The VPC must not use the kubernetes.io/cluster/.*: owned tag.

    The installation program modifies your subnets to add the kubernetes.io/cluster/.*: shared tag, so your subnets must have at least one free tag slot available for it. See Tag Restrictions in the AWS documentation to confirm that the installation program can add a tag to each subnet that you specify.

  • You must enable the enableDnsSupport and enableDnsHostnames attributes in your VPC, so that the cluster can use the Route 53 zones that are attached to the VPC to resolve cluster’s internal DNS records. See DNS Support in Your VPC in the AWS documentation.

    If you prefer to use your own Route 53 hosted private zone, you must associate the existing hosted zone with your VPC prior to installing a cluster. You can define your hosted zone using the platform.aws.hostedZone field in the install-config.yaml file.

  • If you use a cluster with public access, you must create a public and a private subnet for each availability zone that your cluster uses. Each availability zone can contain no more than one public and one private subnet.

If you are working in a disconnected environment, you are unable to reach the public IP addresses for EC2 and ELB endpoints. To resolve this, you must create a VPC endpoint and attach it to the subnet that the clusters are using. The endpoints should be named as follows:

Government regions
  • ec2.<region>.amazonaws.com

  • elasticloadbalancing.<region>.amazonaws.com

  • s3.<region>.amazonaws.com

Top secret region
  • ec2.<region>.c2s.ic.gov

  • elasticloadbalancing.<region>.c2s.ic.gov

  • s3.<region>.c2s.ic.gov

Required VPC components

You must provide a suitable VPC and subnets that allow communication to your machines.

Component AWS type Description

VPC

  • AWS::EC2::VPC

  • AWS::EC2::VPCEndpoint

You must provide a public VPC for the cluster to use. The VPC uses an endpoint that references the route tables for each subnet to improve communication with the registry that is hosted in S3.

Public subnets

  • AWS::EC2::Subnet

  • AWS::EC2::SubnetNetworkAclAssociation

Your VPC must have public subnets for between 1 and 3 availability zones and associate them with appropriate Ingress rules.

Internet gateway

  • AWS::EC2::InternetGateway

  • AWS::EC2::VPCGatewayAttachment

  • AWS::EC2::RouteTable

  • AWS::EC2::Route

  • AWS::EC2::SubnetRouteTableAssociation

  • AWS::EC2::NatGateway

  • AWS::EC2::EIP

You must have a public internet gateway, with public routes, attached to the VPC. In the provided templates, each public subnet has a NAT gateway with an EIP address. These NAT gateways allow cluster resources, like private subnet instances, to reach the internet and are not required for some restricted network or proxy scenarios.

Network access control

  • AWS::EC2::NetworkAcl

  • AWS::EC2::NetworkAclEntry

You must allow the VPC to access the following ports:

Port

Reason

80

Inbound HTTP traffic

443

Inbound HTTPS traffic

22

Inbound SSH traffic

1024 - 65535

Inbound ephemeral traffic

0 - 65535

Outbound ephemeral traffic

Private subnets

  • AWS::EC2::Subnet

  • AWS::EC2::RouteTable

  • AWS::EC2::SubnetRouteTableAssociation

Your VPC can have private subnets. The provided CloudFormation templates can create private subnets for between 1 and 3 availability zones. If you use private subnets, you must provide appropriate routes and tables for them.

VPC validation

To ensure that the subnets that you provide are suitable, the installation program confirms the following data:

  • All the subnets that you specify exist.

  • You provide private subnets.

  • The subnet CIDRs belong to the machine CIDR that you specified.

  • You provide subnets for each availability zone. Each availability zone contains no more than one public and one private subnet. If you use a private cluster, provide only a private subnet for each availability zone. Otherwise, provide exactly one public and private subnet for each availability zone.

  • You provide a public subnet for each private subnet availability zone. Machines are not provisioned in availability zones that you do not provide private subnets for.

If you destroy a cluster that uses an existing VPC, the VPC is not deleted. When you remove the OpenShift Container Platform cluster from a VPC, the kubernetes.io/cluster/.*: shared tag is removed from the subnets that it used.

Division of permissions

Starting with OpenShift Container Platform 4.3, you do not need all of the permissions that are required for an installation program-provisioned infrastructure cluster to deploy a cluster. This change mimics the division of permissions that you might have at your company: some individuals can create different resource in your clouds than others. For example, you might be able to create application-specific items, like instances, buckets, and load balancers, but not networking-related components such as VPCs, subnets, or ingress rules.

The AWS credentials that you use when you create your cluster do not need the networking permissions that are required to make VPCs and core networking components within the VPC, such as subnets, routing tables, internet gateways, NAT, and VPN. You still need permission to make the application resources that the machines within the cluster require, such as ELBs, security groups, S3 buckets, and nodes.

Isolation between clusters

If you deploy OpenShift Container Platform to an existing network, the isolation of cluster services is reduced in the following ways:

  • You can install multiple OpenShift Container Platform clusters in the same VPC.

  • ICMP ingress is allowed from the entire network.

  • TCP 22 ingress (SSH) is allowed to the entire network.

  • Control plane TCP 6443 ingress (Kubernetes API) is allowed to the entire network.

  • Control plane TCP 22623 ingress (MCS) is allowed to the entire network.

Internet access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.8, you require access to the internet to obtain the images that are necessary 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 a key pair for cluster node SSH access

During an OpenShift Container Platform installation, you can provide an SSH public key to the installation program. The key is passed to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) nodes through their Ignition config files and is used to authenticate SSH access to the nodes. The key is added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys list for the core user on each node, which enables password-less authentication.

After the key is passed to the nodes, you can use the key pair to SSH in to the RHCOS nodes as the user core. To access the nodes through SSH, the private key identity must be managed by SSH for your local user.

If you want to SSH in to your cluster nodes to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, you must provide the SSH public key during the installation process. The ./openshift-install gather command also requires the SSH public key to be in place on the cluster nodes.

Do not skip this procedure in production environments, where disaster recovery and debugging is required.

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 existing SSH key pair on your local machine to use for authentication onto your cluster nodes, 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_ed25519, of the new SSH key. If you have an existing key pair, ensure your public key is in the your ~/.ssh directory.

    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. View the public SSH key:

    $ cat <path>/<file_name>.pub

    For example, run the following to view the ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub public key:

    $ cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
  3. Add the SSH private key identity to the SSH agent for your local user, if it has not already been added. SSH agent management of the key is required for password-less SSH authentication onto your cluster nodes, or if you want to use the ./openshift-install gather command.

    On some distributions, default SSH private key identities such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_dsa are managed automatically.

    1. If the ssh-agent process is not already running for your local user, start it 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.

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

    $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name for your SSH private key, such as ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
    Example output
    Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)
Next steps
  • When you install OpenShift Container Platform, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

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. For a restricted network installation, these files are on your mirror host.

  • Have the imageContentSources values that were generated during mirror registry creation.

  • Obtain the contents of the certificate for your mirror registry.

  • Obtain service principal permissions at the subscription level.

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. Edit the install-config.yaml file to provide the additional information that is required for an installation in a restricted network.

    1. Update the pullSecret value to contain the authentication information for your registry:

      pullSecret: '{"auths":{"<mirror_host_name>:5000": {"auth": "<credentials>","email": "you@example.com"}}}'

      For <mirror_host_name>, specify the registry domain name that you specified in the certificate for your mirror registry, and for <credentials>, specify the base64-encoded user name and password for your mirror registry.

    2. Add the additionalTrustBundle parameter and value.

      additionalTrustBundle: |
        -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
        ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
        -----END CERTIFICATE-----

      The value must be the contents of the certificate file that you used for your mirror registry, which can be an existing, trusted certificate authority or the self-signed certificate that you generated for the mirror registry.

    3. Define the subnets for the VPC to install the cluster in:

      subnets:
      - subnet-1
      - subnet-2
      - subnet-3
    4. Add the image content resources, which look like this excerpt:

      imageContentSources:
      - mirrors:
        - <mirror_host_name>:5000/<repo_name>/release
        source: quay.example.com/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release
      - mirrors:
        - <mirror_host_name>:5000/<repo_name>/release
        source: registry.example.com/ocp/release

      To complete these values, use the imageContentSources that you recorded during mirror registry creation.

  3. Make any other modifications to the install-config.yaml file that you require. You can find more information about the available parameters in the Installation configuration parameters section.

  4. 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, gcp, openstack, ovirt, 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 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) plugin 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 MachinePool 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 Cluster 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.iamRole

A pre-existing AWS IAM role applied to the compute machine pool instance profiles. You can use these fields to match naming schemes and include predefined permissions boundaries for your IAM roles. If undefined, the installation program creates a new IAM role.

The name of a valid AWS IAM role.

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 m4.2xlarge. See the Instance types for machines table that follows.

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.iamRole

A pre-existing AWS IAM role applied to the control plane machine pool instance profiles. You can use these fields to match naming schemes and include predefined permissions boundaries for your IAM roles. If undefined, the installation program creates a new IAM role.

The name of a valid AWS IAM role.

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 m5.xlarge. See the Instance types for machines table that follows.

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.hostedZone

An existing Route 53 private hosted zone for the cluster. You can only use a pre-existing hosted zone when also supplying your own VPC. The hosted zone must already be associated with the user-provided VPC before installation. Also, the domain of the hosted zone must be the cluster domain or a parent of the cluster domain. If undefined, the installation program creates a new hosted zone.

String, for example Z3URY6TWQ91KVV.

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:
  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
    subnets: (7)
    - subnet-1
    - subnet-2
    - subnet-3
    amiID: ami-96c6f8f7 (8)
    serviceEndpoints: (9)
      - name: ec2
        url: https://vpce-id.ec2.us-west-2.vpce.amazonaws.com
    hostedZone: Z3URY6TWQ91KVV (10)
fips: false (11)
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (12)
pullSecret: '{"auths":{"<local_registry>": {"auth": "<credentials>","email": "you@example.com"}}}' (13)
additionalTrustBundle: | (14)
    -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    <MY_TRUSTED_CA_CERT>
    -----END CERTIFICATE-----
imageContentSources: (15)
- mirrors:
  - <local_registry>/<local_repository_name>/release
  source: quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release
- mirrors:
  - <local_registry>/<local_repository_name>/release
  source: quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev
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 Platform 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 If you provide your own VPC, specify subnets for each availability zone that your cluster uses.
8 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.
9 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.
10 The ID of your existing Route 53 private hosted zone. Providing an existing hosted zone requires that you supply your own VPC and the hosted zone is already associated with the VPC prior to installing your cluster. If undefined, the installation program creates a new hosted zone.
11 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.

12 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.

13 For <local_registry>, specify the registry domain name, and optionally the port, that your mirror registry uses to serve content. For example registry.example.com or registry.example.com:5000. For <credentials>, specify the base64-encoded user name and password for your mirror registry.
14 Provide the contents of the certificate file that you used for your mirror registry.
15 Provide the imageContentSources section from the output of the command to mirror the repository.

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.

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) 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 4.8. 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 v4.8 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 v4.8 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 v4.8 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

Disabling the default OperatorHub sources

Operator catalogs that source content provided by Red Hat and community projects are configured for OperatorHub by default during an OpenShift Container Platform installation. In a restricted network environment, you must disable the default catalogs as a cluster administrator.

Procedure
  • Disable the sources for the default catalogs by adding disableAllDefaultSources: true to the OperatorHub object:

    $ oc patch OperatorHub cluster --type json \
        -p '[{"op": "add", "path": "/spec/disableAllDefaultSources", "value": true}]'

Alternatively, you can use the web console to manage catalog sources. From the AdministrationCluster SettingsGlobal ConfigurationOperatorHub page, click the Sources tab, where you can create, delete, disable, and enable individual sources.

Telemetry access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.8, 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

Next steps