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In OpenShift Container Platform version 4.8, you can install a cluster on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using infrastructure that you provide and an internal mirror of the installation release content.

While you can install an OpenShift Container Platform cluster by using mirrored installation release content, your cluster still requires internet access to use the AWS APIs.

One way to create this infrastructure is to use the provided CloudFormation templates. You can modify the templates to customize your infrastructure or use the information that they contain to create AWS objects according to your company’s policies.

The steps for performing a user-provisioned infrastructure installation are provided as an example only. Installing a cluster with infrastructure you provide requires knowledge of the cloud provider and the installation process of OpenShift Container Platform. Several CloudFormation templates are provided to assist in completing these steps or to help model your own. You are also free to create the required resources through other methods; the templates are just an example.

Prerequisites

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.

Because of the complexity of the configuration for user-provisioned installations, consider completing a standard user-provisioned infrastructure installation before you attempt a restricted network installation using user-provisioned infrastructure. Completing this test installation might make it easier to isolate and troubleshoot any issues that might arise during your installation in a restricted network.

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.

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.

Required AWS infrastructure components

To install OpenShift Container Platform on user-provisioned infrastructure in Amazon Web Services (AWS), you must manually create both the machines and their supporting infrastructure.

For more information about the integration testing for different platforms, see the OpenShift Container Platform 4.x Tested Integrations page.

By using the provided CloudFormation templates, you can create stacks of AWS resources that represent the following components:

  • An AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

  • Networking and load balancing components

  • Security groups and roles

  • An OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap node

  • OpenShift Container Platform control plane nodes

  • An OpenShift Container Platform compute node

Alternatively, you can manually create the components or you can reuse existing infrastructure that meets the cluster requirements. Review the CloudFormation templates for more details about how the components interrelate.

Other infrastructure components

  • A VPC

  • DNS entries

  • Load balancers (classic or network) and listeners

  • A public and a private Route 53 zone

  • Security groups

  • IAM roles

  • S3 buckets

If you are working in a disconnected environment or use a proxy, you cannot reach the public IP addresses for EC2 and ELB endpoints. To reach these endpoints, you must create a VPC endpoint and attach it to the subnet that the clusters are using. Create the following endpoints:

  • ec2.<region>.amazonaws.com

  • elasticloadbalancing.<region>.amazonaws.com

  • s3.<region>.amazonaws.com

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.

Required DNS and load balancing components

Your DNS and load balancer configuration needs to use a public hosted zone and can use a private hosted zone similar to the one that the installation program uses if it provisions the cluster’s infrastructure. You must create a DNS entry that resolves to your load balancer. An entry for api.<cluster_name>.<domain> must point to the external load balancer, and an entry for api-int.<cluster_name>.<domain> must point to the internal load balancer.

The cluster also requires load balancers and listeners for port 6443, which are required for the Kubernetes API and its extensions, and port 22623, which are required for the Ignition config files for new machines. The targets will be the control plane nodes (also known as the master nodes). Port 6443 must be accessible to both clients external to the cluster and nodes within the cluster. Port 22623 must be accessible to nodes within the cluster.

Component AWS type Description

DNS

AWS::Route53::HostedZone

The hosted zone for your internal DNS.

etcd record sets

AWS::Route53::RecordSet

The registration records for etcd for your control plane machines.

Public load balancer

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::LoadBalancer

The load balancer for your public subnets.

External API server record

AWS::Route53::RecordSetGroup

Alias records for the external API server.

External listener

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::Listener

A listener on port 6443 for the external load balancer.

External target group

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::TargetGroup

The target group for the external load balancer.

Private load balancer

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::LoadBalancer

The load balancer for your private subnets.

Internal API server record

AWS::Route53::RecordSetGroup

Alias records for the internal API server.

Internal listener

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::Listener

A listener on port 22623 for the internal load balancer.

Internal target group

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::TargetGroup

The target group for the internal load balancer.

Internal listener

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::Listener

A listener on port 6443 for the internal load balancer.

Internal target group

AWS::ElasticLoadBalancingV2::TargetGroup

The target group for the internal load balancer.

Security groups

The control plane and worker machines require access to the following ports:

Group Type IP Protocol Port range

MasterSecurityGroup

AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup

icmp

0

tcp

22

tcp

6443

tcp

22623

WorkerSecurityGroup

AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup

icmp

0

tcp

22

BootstrapSecurityGroup

AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup

tcp

22

tcp

19531

Control plane Ingress

The control plane machines require the following Ingress groups. Each Ingress group is a AWS::EC2::SecurityGroupIngress resource.

Ingress group Description IP protocol Port range

MasterIngressEtcd

etcd

tcp

2379- 2380

MasterIngressVxlan

Vxlan packets

udp

4789

MasterIngressWorkerVxlan

Vxlan packets

udp

4789

MasterIngressInternal

Internal cluster communication and Kubernetes proxy metrics

tcp

9000 - 9999

MasterIngressWorkerInternal

Internal cluster communication

tcp

9000 - 9999

MasterIngressKube

Kubernetes kubelet, scheduler and controller manager

tcp

10250 - 10259

MasterIngressWorkerKube

Kubernetes kubelet, scheduler and controller manager

tcp

10250 - 10259

MasterIngressIngressServices

Kubernetes Ingress services

tcp

30000 - 32767

MasterIngressWorkerIngressServices

Kubernetes Ingress services

tcp

30000 - 32767

MasterIngressGeneve

Geneve packets

udp

6081

MasterIngressWorkerGeneve

Geneve packets

udp

6081

MasterIngressIpsecIke

IPsec IKE packets

udp

500

MasterIngressWorkerIpsecIke

IPsec IKE packets

udp

500

MasterIngressIpsecNat

IPsec NAT-T packets

udp

4500

MasterIngressWorkerIpsecNat

IPsec NAT-T packets

udp

4500

MasterIngressIpsecEsp

IPsec ESP packets

50

All

MasterIngressWorkerIpsecEsp

IPsec ESP packets

50

All

MasterIngressInternalUDP

Internal cluster communication

udp

9000 - 9999

MasterIngressWorkerInternalUDP

Internal cluster communication

udp

9000 - 9999

MasterIngressIngressServicesUDP

Kubernetes Ingress services

udp

30000 - 32767

MasterIngressWorkerIngressServicesUDP

Kubernetes Ingress services

udp

30000 - 32767

Worker Ingress

The worker machines require the following Ingress groups. Each Ingress group is a AWS::EC2::SecurityGroupIngress resource.

Ingress group Description IP protocol Port range

WorkerIngressVxlan

Vxlan packets

udp

4789

WorkerIngressWorkerVxlan

Vxlan packets

udp

4789

WorkerIngressInternal

Internal cluster communication

tcp

9000 - 9999

WorkerIngressWorkerInternal

Internal cluster communication

tcp

9000 - 9999

WorkerIngressKube

Kubernetes kubelet, scheduler, and controller manager

tcp

10250

WorkerIngressWorkerKube

Kubernetes kubelet, scheduler, and controller manager

tcp

10250

WorkerIngressIngressServices

Kubernetes Ingress services

tcp

30000 - 32767

WorkerIngressWorkerIngressServices

Kubernetes Ingress services

tcp

30000 - 32767

WorkerIngressGeneve

Geneve packets

udp

6081

WorkerIngressMasterGeneve

Geneve packets

udp

6081

WorkerIngressIpsecIke

IPsec IKE packets

udp

500

WorkerIngressMasterIpsecIke

IPsec IKE packets

udp

500

WorkerIngressIpsecNat

IPsec NAT-T packets

udp

4500

WorkerIngressMasterIpsecNat

IPsec NAT-T packets

udp

4500

WorkerIngressIpsecEsp

IPsec ESP packets

50

All

WorkerIngressMasterIpsecEsp

IPsec ESP packets

50

All

WorkerIngressInternalUDP

Internal cluster communication

udp

9000 - 9999

WorkerIngressMasterInternalUDP

Internal cluster communication

udp

9000 - 9999

WorkerIngressIngressServicesUDP

Kubernetes Ingress services

udp

30000 - 32767

WorkerIngressMasterIngressServicesUDP

Kubernetes Ingress services

udp

30000 - 32767

Roles and instance profiles

You must grant the machines permissions in AWS. The provided CloudFormation templates grant the machines Allow permissions for the following AWS::IAM::Role objects and provide a AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile for each set of roles. If you do not use the templates, you can grant the machines the following broad permissions or the following individual permissions.

Role Effect Action Resource

Master

Allow

ec2:*

*

Allow

elasticloadbalancing:*

*

Allow

iam:PassRole

*

Allow

s3:GetObject

*

Worker

Allow

ec2:Describe*

*

Bootstrap

Allow

ec2:Describe*

*

Allow

ec2:AttachVolume

*

Allow

ec2:DetachVolume

*

Cluster machines

You need AWS::EC2::Instance objects for the following machines:

  • A bootstrap machine. This machine is required during installation, but you can remove it after your cluster deploys.

  • Three control plane machines. The control plane machines are not governed by a machine set.

  • Compute machines. You must create at least two compute machines, which are also known as worker machines, during installation. These machines are not governed by a machine set.

Certificate signing requests management

Because your cluster has limited access to automatic machine management when you use infrastructure that you provision, you must provide a mechanism for approving cluster certificate signing requests (CSRs) after installation. The kube-controller-manager only approves the kubelet client CSRs. The machine-approver cannot guarantee the validity of a serving certificate that is requested by using kubelet credentials because it cannot confirm that the correct machine issued the request. You must determine and implement a method of verifying the validity of the kubelet serving certificate requests and approving them.

Supported AWS machine types

The following Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance types are supported with OpenShift Container Platform.

Instance types for machines
Instance type Bootstrap Control plane Compute

i3.large

x

m4.large

x

m4.xlarge

x

x

m4.2xlarge

x

x

m4.4xlarge

x

x

m4.10xlarge

x

x

m4.16xlarge

x

x

m5.large

x

m5.xlarge

x

x

m5.2xlarge

x

x

m5.4xlarge

x

x

m5.8xlarge

x

x

m5.12xlarge

x

x

m5.16xlarge

x

x

m5a.large

x

m5a.xlarge

x

x

m5a.2xlarge

x

x

m5a.4xlarge

x

x

m5a.8xlarge

x

x

m5a.12xlarge

x

x

m5a.16xlarge

x

x

m6i.xlarge

x

x

m6i.2xlarge

x

x

m6i.4xlarge

x

x

m6i.8xlarge

x

x

m6i.16xlarge

x

x

c4.2xlarge

x

x

c4.4xlarge

x

x

c4.8xlarge

x

x

c5.xlarge

x

c5.2xlarge

x

x

c5.4xlarge

x

x

c5.9xlarge

x

x

c5.12xlarge

x

x

c5.18xlarge

x

x

c5.24xlarge

x

x

c5a.xlarge

x

c5a.2xlarge

x

x

c5a.4xlarge

x

x

c5a.8xlarge

x

x

c5a.12xlarge

x

x

c5a.16xlarge

x

x

c5a.24xlarge

x

x

r4.large

x

r4.xlarge

x

x

r4.2xlarge

x

x

r4.4xlarge

x

x

r4.8xlarge

x

x

r4.16xlarge

x

x

r5.large

x

r5.xlarge

x

x

r5.2xlarge

x

x

r5.4xlarge

x

x

r5.8xlarge

x

x

r5.12xlarge

x

x

r5.16xlarge

x

x

r5.24xlarge

x

x

r5a.large

x

r5a.xlarge

x

x

r5a.2xlarge

x

x

r5a.4xlarge

x

x

r5a.8xlarge

x

x

r5a.12xlarge

x

x

r5a.16xlarge

x

x

r5a.24xlarge

x

x

t3.large

x

t3.xlarge

x

t3.2xlarge

x

t3a.large

x

t3a.xlarge

x

t3a.2xlarge

x

Required AWS permissions for the IAM user

Your IAM user must have the permission tag:GetResources in the region us-east-1 to delete the base cluster resources. As part of the AWS API requirement, the OpenShift Container Platform installation program performs various actions in this region.

When you attach the AdministratorAccess policy to the IAM user that you create in Amazon Web Services (AWS), you grant that user all of the required permissions. To deploy all components of an OpenShift Container Platform cluster, the IAM user requires the following permissions:

Required EC2 permissions for installation
  • ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupEgress

  • ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress

  • ec2:CopyImage

  • ec2:CreateNetworkInterface

  • ec2:AttachNetworkInterface

  • ec2:CreateSecurityGroup

  • ec2:CreateTags

  • ec2:CreateVolume

  • ec2:DeleteSecurityGroup

  • ec2:DeleteSnapshot

  • ec2:DeleteTags

  • ec2:DeregisterImage

  • ec2:DescribeAccountAttributes

  • ec2:DescribeAddresses

  • ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones

  • ec2:DescribeDhcpOptions

  • ec2:DescribeImages

  • ec2:DescribeInstanceAttribute

  • ec2:DescribeInstanceCreditSpecifications

  • ec2:DescribeInstances

  • ec2:DescribeInstanceTypes

  • ec2:DescribeInternetGateways

  • ec2:DescribeKeyPairs

  • ec2:DescribeNatGateways

  • ec2:DescribeNetworkAcls

  • ec2:DescribeNetworkInterfaces

  • ec2:DescribePrefixLists

  • ec2:DescribeRegions

  • ec2:DescribeRouteTables

  • ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups

  • ec2:DescribeSubnets

  • ec2:DescribeTags

  • ec2:DescribeVolumes

  • ec2:DescribeVpcAttribute

  • ec2:DescribeVpcClassicLink

  • ec2:DescribeVpcClassicLinkDnsSupport

  • ec2:DescribeVpcEndpoints

  • ec2:DescribeVpcs

  • ec2:GetEbsDefaultKmsKeyId

  • ec2:ModifyInstanceAttribute

  • ec2:ModifyNetworkInterfaceAttribute

  • ec2:RevokeSecurityGroupEgress

  • ec2:RevokeSecurityGroupIngress

  • ec2:RunInstances

  • ec2:TerminateInstances

Required permissions for creating network resources during installation
  • ec2:AllocateAddress

  • ec2:AssociateAddress

  • ec2:AssociateDhcpOptions

  • ec2:AssociateRouteTable

  • ec2:AttachInternetGateway

  • ec2:CreateDhcpOptions

  • ec2:CreateInternetGateway

  • ec2:CreateNatGateway

  • ec2:CreateRoute

  • ec2:CreateRouteTable

  • ec2:CreateSubnet

  • ec2:CreateVpc

  • ec2:CreateVpcEndpoint

  • ec2:ModifySubnetAttribute

  • ec2:ModifyVpcAttribute

If you use an existing VPC, your account does not require these permissions for creating network resources.

Required Elastic Load Balancing permissions (ELB) for installation
  • elasticloadbalancing:AddTags

  • elasticloadbalancing:ApplySecurityGroupsToLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:AttachLoadBalancerToSubnets

  • elasticloadbalancing:ConfigureHealthCheck

  • elasticloadbalancing:CreateLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:CreateLoadBalancerListeners

  • elasticloadbalancing:DeleteLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:DeregisterInstancesFromLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeInstanceHealth

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags

  • elasticloadbalancing:ModifyLoadBalancerAttributes

  • elasticloadbalancing:RegisterInstancesWithLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:SetLoadBalancerPoliciesOfListener

Required Elastic Load Balancing permissions (ELBv2) for installation
  • elasticloadbalancing:AddTags

  • elasticloadbalancing:CreateListener

  • elasticloadbalancing:CreateLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:CreateTargetGroup

  • elasticloadbalancing:DeleteLoadBalancer

  • elasticloadbalancing:DeregisterTargets

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroupAttributes

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealth

  • elasticloadbalancing:ModifyLoadBalancerAttributes

  • elasticloadbalancing:ModifyTargetGroup

  • elasticloadbalancing:ModifyTargetGroupAttributes

  • elasticloadbalancing:RegisterTargets

Required IAM permissions for installation
  • iam:AddRoleToInstanceProfile

  • iam:CreateInstanceProfile

  • iam:CreateRole

  • iam:DeleteInstanceProfile

  • iam:DeleteRole

  • iam:DeleteRolePolicy

  • iam:GetInstanceProfile

  • iam:GetRole

  • iam:GetRolePolicy

  • iam:GetUser

  • iam:ListInstanceProfilesForRole

  • iam:ListRoles

  • iam:ListUsers

  • iam:PassRole

  • iam:PutRolePolicy

  • iam:RemoveRoleFromInstanceProfile

  • iam:SimulatePrincipalPolicy

  • iam:TagRole

If you have not created an elastic load balancer (ELB) in your AWS account, the IAM user also requires the iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole permission.

Required Route 53 permissions for installation
  • route53:ChangeResourceRecordSets

  • route53:ChangeTagsForResource

  • route53:CreateHostedZone

  • route53:DeleteHostedZone

  • route53:GetChange

  • route53:GetHostedZone

  • route53:ListHostedZones

  • route53:ListHostedZonesByName

  • route53:ListResourceRecordSets

  • route53:ListTagsForResource

  • route53:UpdateHostedZoneComment

Required S3 permissions for installation
  • s3:CreateBucket

  • s3:DeleteBucket

  • s3:GetAccelerateConfiguration

  • s3:GetBucketAcl

  • s3:GetBucketCors

  • s3:GetBucketLocation

  • s3:GetBucketLogging

  • s3:GetBucketObjectLockConfiguration

  • s3:GetBucketReplication

  • s3:GetBucketRequestPayment

  • s3:GetBucketTagging

  • s3:GetBucketVersioning

  • s3:GetBucketWebsite

  • s3:GetEncryptionConfiguration

  • s3:GetLifecycleConfiguration

  • s3:GetReplicationConfiguration

  • s3:ListBucket

  • s3:PutBucketAcl

  • s3:PutBucketTagging

  • s3:PutEncryptionConfiguration

S3 permissions that cluster Operators require
  • s3:DeleteObject

  • s3:GetObject

  • s3:GetObjectAcl

  • s3:GetObjectTagging

  • s3:GetObjectVersion

  • s3:PutObject

  • s3:PutObjectAcl

  • s3:PutObjectTagging

Required permissions to delete base cluster resources
  • autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups

  • ec2:DeleteNetworkInterface

  • ec2:DeleteVolume

  • elasticloadbalancing:DeleteTargetGroup

  • elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroups

  • iam:DeleteAccessKey

  • iam:DeleteUser

  • iam:ListAttachedRolePolicies

  • iam:ListInstanceProfiles

  • iam:ListRolePolicies

  • iam:ListUserPolicies

  • s3:DeleteObject

  • s3:ListBucketVersions

  • tag:GetResources

Required permissions to delete network resources
  • ec2:DeleteDhcpOptions

  • ec2:DeleteInternetGateway

  • ec2:DeleteNatGateway

  • ec2:DeleteRoute

  • ec2:DeleteRouteTable

  • ec2:DeleteSubnet

  • ec2:DeleteVpc

  • ec2:DeleteVpcEndpoints

  • ec2:DetachInternetGateway

  • ec2:DisassociateRouteTable

  • ec2:ReleaseAddress

  • ec2:ReplaceRouteTableAssociation

If you use an existing VPC, your account does not require these permissions to delete network resources. Instead, your account only requires the tag:UntagResources permission to delete network resources.

Required permissions to delete a cluster with shared instance roles
  • iam:UntagRole

Additional IAM and S3 permissions that are required to create manifests
  • iam:DeleteAccessKey

  • iam:DeleteUser

  • iam:DeleteUserPolicy

  • iam:GetUserPolicy

  • iam:ListAccessKeys

  • iam:PutUserPolicy

  • iam:TagUser

  • iam:GetUserPolicy

  • iam:ListAccessKeys

  • s3:PutBucketPublicAccessBlock

  • s3:GetBucketPublicAccessBlock

  • s3:PutLifecycleConfiguration

  • s3:HeadBucket

  • s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads

  • s3:AbortMultipartUpload

If you are managing your cloud provider credentials with mint mode, the IAM user also requires the iam:CreateAccessKey and iam:CreateUser permissions.

Optional permissions for instance and quota checks for installation
  • ec2:DescribeInstanceTypeOfferings

  • servicequotas:ListAWSDefaultServiceQuotas

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. If you install a cluster on infrastructure that you provision, you must provide the key to the installation program.

Creating the installation files for AWS

To install OpenShift Container Platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using user-provisioned infrastructure, you must generate the files that the installation program needs to deploy your cluster and modify them so that the cluster creates only the machines that it will use. You generate and customize the install-config.yaml file, Kubernetes manifests, and Ignition config files. You also have the option to first set up a separate var partition during the preparation phases of installation.

Optional: Creating a separate /var partition

It is recommended that disk partitioning for OpenShift Container Platform be left to the installer. However, there are cases where you might want to create separate partitions in a part of the filesystem that you expect to grow.

OpenShift Container Platform supports the addition of a single partition to attach storage to either the /var partition or a subdirectory of /var. For example:

  • /var/lib/containers: Holds container-related content that can grow as more images and containers are added to a system.

  • /var/lib/etcd: Holds data that you might want to keep separate for purposes such as performance optimization of etcd storage.

  • /var: Holds data that you might want to keep separate for purposes such as auditing.

Storing the contents of a /var directory separately makes it easier to grow storage for those areas as needed and reinstall OpenShift Container Platform at a later date and keep that data intact. With this method, you will not have to pull all your containers again, nor will you have to copy massive log files when you update systems.

Because /var must be in place before a fresh installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS), the following procedure sets up the separate /var partition by creating a machine config manifest that is inserted during the openshift-install preparation phases of an OpenShift Container Platform installation.

If you follow the steps to create a separate /var partition in this procedure, it is not necessary to create the Kubernetes manifest and Ignition config files again as described later in this section.

Procedure
  1. Create a directory to hold the OpenShift Container Platform installation files:

    $ mkdir $HOME/clusterconfig
  2. Run openshift-install to create a set of files in the manifest and openshift subdirectories. Answer the system questions as you are prompted:

    $ openshift-install create manifests --dir $HOME/clusterconfig
    Example output
    ? SSH Public Key ...
    INFO Credentials loaded from the "myprofile" profile in file "/home/myuser/.aws/credentials"
    INFO Consuming Install Config from target directory
    INFO Manifests created in: $HOME/clusterconfig/manifests and $HOME/clusterconfig/openshift
  3. Optional: Confirm that the installation program created manifests in the clusterconfig/openshift directory:

    $ ls $HOME/clusterconfig/openshift/
    Example output
    99_kubeadmin-password-secret.yaml
    99_openshift-cluster-api_master-machines-0.yaml
    99_openshift-cluster-api_master-machines-1.yaml
    99_openshift-cluster-api_master-machines-2.yaml
    ...
  4. Create a Butane config that configures the additional partition. For example, name the file $HOME/clusterconfig/98-var-partition.bu, change the disk device name to the name of the storage device on the worker systems, and set the storage size as appropriate. This example places the /var directory on a separate partition:

    variant: openshift
    version: 4.9.0
    metadata:
      labels:
        machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
      name: 98-var-partition
    storage:
      disks:
      - device: /dev/<device_name> (1)
        partitions:
        - label: var
          start_mib: <partition_start_offset> (2)
          size_mib: <partition_size> (3)
      filesystems:
        - device: /dev/disk/by-partlabel/var
          path: /var
          format: xfs
          mount_options: [defaults, prjquota] (4)
          with_mount_unit: true
    1 The storage device name of the disk that you want to partition.
    2 When adding a data partition to the boot disk, a minimum value of 25000 MiB (Mebibytes) is recommended. The root file system is automatically resized to fill all available space up to the specified offset. If no value is specified, or if the specified value is smaller than the recommended minimum, the resulting root file system will be too small, and future reinstalls of RHCOS might overwrite the beginning of the data partition.
    3 The size of the data partition in mebibytes.
    4 The prjquota mount option must be enabled for filesystems used for container storage.

    When creating a separate /var partition, you cannot use different instance types for worker nodes, if the different instance types do not have the same device name.

  5. Create a manifest from the Butane config and save it to the clusterconfig/openshift directory. For example, run the following command:

    $ butane $HOME/clusterconfig/98-var-partition.bu -o $HOME/clusterconfig/openshift/98-var-partition.yaml
  6. Run openshift-install again to create Ignition configs from a set of files in the manifest and openshift subdirectories:

    $ openshift-install create ignition-configs --dir $HOME/clusterconfig
    $ ls $HOME/clusterconfig/
    auth  bootstrap.ign  master.ign  metadata.json  worker.ign

Now you can use the Ignition config files as input to the installation procedures to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) systems.

Creating the installation configuration file

Generate and customize the installation configuration file that the installation program needs to deploy your cluster.

Prerequisites
  • You obtained the OpenShift Container Platform installation program for user-provisioned infrastructure and the pull secret for your cluster. For a restricted network installation, these files are on your mirror host.

  • You checked that you are deploying your cluster to a region with an accompanying Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) AMI published by Red Hat. If you are deploying to a region that requires a custom AMI, such as an AWS GovCloud region, you must create the install-config.yaml file manually.

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 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.

        The AWS access key ID and secret access key are stored in ~/.aws/credentials in the home directory of the current user on the installation host. You are prompted for the credentials by the installation program if the credentials for the exported profile are not present in the file. Any credentials that you provide to the installation program are stored in the file.

      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":{"<local_registry>": {"auth": "<credentials>","email": "you@example.com"}}}'

      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.

    2. Add the additionalTrustBundle parameter and value. 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.

      additionalTrustBundle: |
        -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
        ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
        -----END CERTIFICATE-----
    3. Add the image content resources:

      imageContentSources:
      - 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

      Use the imageContentSources section from the output of the command to mirror the repository or the values that you used when you mirrored the content from the media that you brought into your restricted network.

    4. Optional: Set the publishing strategy to Internal:

      publish: Internal

      By setting this option, you create an internal Ingress Controller and a private load balancer.

  3. Optional: Back up the install-config.yaml file.

    The install-config.yaml file is consumed during the installation process. If you want to reuse the file, you must back it up now.

Additional resources

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.

Creating the Kubernetes manifest and Ignition config files

Because you must modify some cluster definition files and manually start the cluster machines, you must generate the Kubernetes manifest and Ignition config files that the cluster needs to configure the machines.

The installation configuration file transforms into the Kubernetes manifests. The manifests wrap into the Ignition configuration files, which are later used to configure the cluster machines.

  • The Ignition config files that the OpenShift Container Platform 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.

Prerequisites
  • You obtained the OpenShift Container Platform installation program. For a restricted network installation, these files are on your mirror host.

  • You created the install-config.yaml installation configuration file.

Procedure
  1. Change to the directory that contains the OpenShift Container Platform installation program and generate the Kubernetes manifests for the cluster:

    $ ./openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the installation directory that contains the install-config.yaml file you created.
  2. Remove the Kubernetes manifest files that define the control plane machines:

    $ rm -f <installation_directory>/openshift/99_openshift-cluster-api_master-machines-*.yaml

    By removing these files, you prevent the cluster from automatically generating control plane machines.

  3. Remove the Kubernetes manifest files that define the worker machines:

    $ rm -f <installation_directory>/openshift/99_openshift-cluster-api_worker-machineset-*.yaml

    Because you create and manage the worker machines yourself, you do not need to initialize these machines.

  4. Check that the mastersSchedulable parameter in the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-scheduler-02-config.yml Kubernetes manifest file is set to false. This setting prevents pods from being scheduled on the control plane machines:

    1. Open the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-scheduler-02-config.yml file.

    2. Locate the mastersSchedulable parameter and ensure that it is set to false.

    3. Save and exit the file.

  5. Optional: If you do not want the Ingress Operator to create DNS records on your behalf, remove the privateZone and publicZone sections from the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-dns-02-config.yml DNS configuration file:

    apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1
    kind: DNS
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      name: cluster
    spec:
      baseDomain: example.openshift.com
      privateZone: (1)
        id: mycluster-100419-private-zone
      publicZone: (1)
        id: example.openshift.com
    status: {}
    1 Remove this section completely.

    If you do so, you must add ingress DNS records manually in a later step.

  6. To create the Ignition configuration files, run the following command from the directory that contains the installation program:

    $ ./openshift-install create ignition-configs --dir <installation_directory> (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the same installation directory.

    Ignition config files are created for the bootstrap, control plane, and compute nodes in the installation directory. The kubeadmin-password and kubeconfig files are created in the ./<installation_directory>/auth directory:

    .
    ├── auth
    │   ├── kubeadmin-password
    │   └── kubeconfig
    ├── bootstrap.ign
    ├── master.ign
    ├── metadata.json
    └── worker.ign

Extracting the infrastructure name

The Ignition config files contain a unique cluster identifier that you can use to uniquely identify your cluster in Amazon Web Services (AWS). The infrastructure name is also used to locate the appropriate AWS resources during an OpenShift Container Platform installation. The provided CloudFormation templates contain references to this infrastructure name, so you must extract it.

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

  • You generated the Ignition config files for your cluster.

  • You installed the jq package.

Procedure
  • To extract and view the infrastructure name from the Ignition config file metadata, run the following command:

    $ jq -r .infraID <installation_directory>/metadata.json (1)