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Installing a cluster with RHEL KVM on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE

In OpenShift Container Platform version 4.17, you can install a cluster on IBM Z® or IBM® LinuxONE infrastructure that you provision.

While this document refers only to IBM Z®, all information in it also applies to IBM® LinuxONE.

Additional considerations exist for non-bare metal platforms. Review the information in the guidelines for deploying OpenShift Container Platform on non-tested platforms before you install an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

Prerequisites

Internet access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.17, you require access to the internet to install your cluster.

You must have internet access to:

  • Access OpenShift Cluster Manager to download the installation program and perform subscription management. If the cluster has internet access and you do not disable Telemetry, that service automatically entitles your cluster.

  • Access Quay.io to obtain the packages that are required to install your cluster.

  • Obtain the packages that are required to perform cluster updates.

If your cluster cannot have direct internet access, you can perform a restricted network installation on some types of infrastructure that you provision. During that process, you download the required content and use it to populate a mirror registry with the installation packages. 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.

Machine requirements for a cluster with user-provisioned infrastructure

For a cluster that contains user-provisioned infrastructure, you must deploy all of the required machines.

One or more KVM host machines based on RHEL 8.6 or later. Each RHEL KVM host machine must have libvirt installed and running. The virtual machines are provisioned under each RHEL KVM host machine.

Required machines

The smallest OpenShift Container Platform clusters require the following hosts:

Table 1. Minimum required hosts
Hosts Description

One temporary bootstrap machine

The cluster requires the bootstrap machine to deploy the OpenShift Container Platform cluster on the three control plane machines. You can remove the bootstrap machine after you install the cluster.

Three control plane machines

The control plane machines run the Kubernetes and OpenShift Container Platform services that form the control plane.

At least two compute machines, which are also known as worker machines.

The workloads requested by OpenShift Container Platform users run on the compute machines.

To improve high availability of your cluster, distribute the control plane machines over different RHEL instances on at least two physical machines.

The bootstrap, control plane, and compute machines must use Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) as the operating system.

See Red Hat Enterprise Linux technology capabilities and limits.

Network connectivity requirements

The OpenShift Container Platform installer creates the Ignition files, which are necessary for all the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) virtual machines. The automated installation of OpenShift Container Platform is performed by the bootstrap machine. It starts the installation of OpenShift Container Platform on each node, starts the Kubernetes cluster, and then finishes. During this bootstrap, the virtual machine must have an established network connection either through a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server or static IP address.

IBM Z network connectivity requirements

To install on IBM Z® under RHEL KVM, you need:

  • A RHEL KVM host configured with an OSA or RoCE network adapter.

  • Either a RHEL KVM host that is configured to use bridged networking in libvirt or MacVTap to connect the network to the guests.

    See Types of virtual machine network connections.

Host machine resource requirements

The RHEL KVM host in your environment must meet the following requirements to host the virtual machines that you plan for the OpenShift Container Platform environment. See Enabling virtualization on IBM Z®.

You can install OpenShift Container Platform version 4.17 on the following IBM® hardware:

  • IBM® z16 (all models), IBM® z15 (all models), IBM® z14 (all models)

  • IBM® LinuxONE 4 (all models), IBM® LinuxONE III (all models), IBM® LinuxONE Emperor II, IBM® LinuxONE Rockhopper II

Minimum IBM Z system environment

Hardware requirements

  • The equivalent of six Integrated Facilities for Linux (IFL), which are SMT2 enabled, for each cluster.

  • At least one network connection to both connect to the LoadBalancer service and to serve data for traffic outside the cluster.

You can use dedicated or shared IFLs to assign sufficient compute resources. Resource sharing is one of the key strengths of IBM Z®. However, you must adjust capacity correctly on each hypervisor layer and ensure sufficient resources for every OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

Since the overall performance of the cluster can be impacted, the LPARs that are used to set up the OpenShift Container Platform clusters must provide sufficient compute capacity. In this context, LPAR weight management, entitlements, and CPU shares on the hypervisor level play an important role.

Operating system requirements

  • One LPAR running on RHEL 8.6 or later with KVM, which is managed by libvirt

On your RHEL KVM host, set up:

  • Three guest virtual machines for OpenShift Container Platform control plane machines

  • Two guest virtual machines for OpenShift Container Platform compute machines

  • One guest virtual machine for the temporary OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap machine

Minimum resource requirements

Each cluster virtual machine must meet the following minimum requirements:

Virtual Machine Operating System vCPU [1] Virtual RAM Storage IOPS

Bootstrap

RHCOS

4

16 GB

100 GB

N/A

Control plane

RHCOS

4

16 GB

100 GB

N/A

Compute

RHCOS

2

8 GB

100 GB

N/A

  1. One physical core (IFL) provides two logical cores (threads) when SMT-2 is enabled. The hypervisor can provide two or more vCPUs.

Preferred IBM Z system environment

Hardware requirements

  • Three LPARS that each have the equivalent of six IFLs, which are SMT2 enabled, for each cluster.

  • Two network connections to both connect to the LoadBalancer service and to serve data for traffic outside the cluster.

Operating system requirements

  • For high availability, two or three LPARs running on RHEL 8.6 or later with KVM, which are managed by libvirt.

On your RHEL KVM host, set up:

  • Three guest virtual machines for OpenShift Container Platform control plane machines, distributed across the RHEL KVM host machines.

  • At least six guest virtual machines for OpenShift Container Platform compute machines, distributed across the RHEL KVM host machines.

  • One guest virtual machine for the temporary OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap machine.

  • To ensure the availability of integral components in an overcommitted environment, increase the priority of the control plane by using cpu_shares. Do the same for infrastructure nodes, if they exist. See schedinfo in IBM® Documentation.

Preferred resource requirements

The preferred requirements for each cluster virtual machine are:

Virtual Machine Operating System vCPU Virtual RAM Storage

Bootstrap

RHCOS

4

16 GB

120 GB

Control plane

RHCOS

8

16 GB

120 GB

Compute

RHCOS

6

8 GB

120 GB

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.

Additional resources

Networking requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure

All the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines require networking to be configured in initramfs during boot to fetch their Ignition config files.

During the initial boot, the machines require an IP address configuration that is set either through a DHCP server or statically by providing the required boot options. After a network connection is established, the machines download their Ignition config files from an HTTP or HTTPS server. The Ignition config files are then used to set the exact state of each machine. The Machine Config Operator completes more changes to the machines, such as the application of new certificates or keys, after installation.

It is recommended to use a DHCP server for long-term management of the cluster machines. Ensure that the DHCP server is configured to provide persistent IP addresses, DNS server information, and hostnames to the cluster machines.

If a DHCP service is not available for your user-provisioned infrastructure, you can instead provide the IP networking configuration and the address of the DNS server to the nodes at RHCOS install time. These can be passed as boot arguments if you are installing from an ISO image. See the Installing RHCOS and starting the OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap process section for more information about static IP provisioning and advanced networking options.

The Kubernetes API server must be able to resolve the node names of the cluster machines. If the API servers and worker nodes are in different zones, you can configure a default DNS search zone to allow the API server to resolve the node names. Another supported approach is to always refer to hosts by their fully-qualified domain names in both the node objects and all DNS requests.

Setting the cluster node hostnames through DHCP

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines, the hostname is set through NetworkManager. By default, the machines obtain their hostname through DHCP. If the hostname is not provided by DHCP, set statically through kernel arguments, or another method, it is obtained through a reverse DNS lookup. Reverse DNS lookup occurs after the network has been initialized on a node and can take time to resolve. Other system services can start prior to this and detect the hostname as localhost or similar. You can avoid this by using DHCP to provide the hostname for each cluster node.

Additionally, setting the hostnames through DHCP can bypass any manual DNS record name configuration errors in environments that have a DNS split-horizon implementation.

Network connectivity requirements

You must configure the network connectivity between machines to allow OpenShift Container Platform cluster components to communicate. Each machine must be able to resolve the hostnames of all other machines in the cluster.

This section provides details about the ports that are required.

In connected OpenShift Container Platform environments, all nodes are required to have internet access to pull images for platform containers and provide telemetry data to Red Hat.

The RHEL KVM host must be configured to use bridged networking in libvirt or MacVTap to connect the network to the virtual machines. The virtual machines must have access to the network, which is attached to the RHEL KVM host. Virtual Networks, for example network address translation (NAT), within KVM are not a supported configuration.
Table 2. Ports used for all-machine to all-machine communications
Protocol Port Description

ICMP

N/A

Network reachability tests

TCP

1936

Metrics

9000-9999

Host level services, including the node exporter on ports 9100-9101 and the Cluster Version Operator on port 9099.

10250-10259

The default ports that Kubernetes reserves

UDP

4789

VXLAN

6081

Geneve

9000-9999

Host level services, including the node exporter on ports 9100-9101.

500

IPsec IKE packets

4500

IPsec NAT-T packets

123

Network Time Protocol (NTP) on UDP port 123

If an external NTP time server is configured, you must open UDP port 123.

TCP/UDP

30000-32767

Kubernetes node port

ESP

N/A

IPsec Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
Table 3. Ports used for all-machine to control plane communications
Protocol Port Description

TCP

6443

Kubernetes API
Table 4. Ports used for control plane machine to control plane machine communications
Protocol Port Description

TCP

2379-2380

etcd server and peer ports

NTP configuration for user-provisioned infrastructure

OpenShift Container Platform clusters are configured to use a public Network Time Protocol (NTP) server by default. If you want to use a local enterprise NTP server, or if your cluster is being deployed in a disconnected network, you can configure the cluster to use a specific time server. For more information, see the documentation for Configuring chrony time service.

If a DHCP server provides NTP server information, the chrony time service on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines read the information and can sync the clock with the NTP servers.

Additional resources

User-provisioned DNS requirements

In OpenShift Container Platform deployments, DNS name resolution is required for the following components:

  • The Kubernetes API

  • The OpenShift Container Platform application wildcard

  • The bootstrap, control plane, and compute machines

Reverse DNS resolution is also required for the Kubernetes API, the bootstrap machine, the control plane machines, and the compute machines.

DNS A/AAAA or CNAME records are used for name resolution and PTR records are used for reverse name resolution. The reverse records are important because Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) uses the reverse records to set the hostnames for all the nodes, unless the hostnames are provided by DHCP. Additionally, the reverse records are used to generate the certificate signing requests (CSR) that OpenShift Container Platform needs to operate.

The following DNS records are required for a user-provisioned OpenShift Container Platform cluster and they must be in place before installation. In each record, <cluster_name> is the cluster name and <base_domain> is the base domain that you specify in the install-config.yaml file. A complete DNS record takes the form: <component>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>..

Table 5. Required DNS records
Component Record Description

Kubernetes API

api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record, and a DNS PTR record, to identify the API load balancer. These records must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.

api-int.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record, and a DNS PTR record, to internally identify the API load balancer. These records must be resolvable from all the nodes within the cluster.

The API server must be able to resolve the worker nodes by the hostnames that are recorded in Kubernetes. If the API server cannot resolve the node names, then proxied API calls can fail, and you cannot retrieve logs from pods.

routes

*.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A wildcard DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record that refers to the application ingress load balancer. The application ingress load balancer targets the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default. These records must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.

For example, console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> is used as a wildcard route to the OpenShift Container Platform console.

Bootstrap machine

bootstrap.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

A DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record, and a DNS PTR record, to identify the bootstrap machine. These records must be resolvable by the nodes within the cluster.

Control plane machines

<control_plane><n>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

DNS A/AAAA or CNAME records and DNS PTR records to identify each machine for the control plane nodes. These records must be resolvable by the nodes within the cluster.

Compute machines

<compute><n>.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.

DNS A/AAAA or CNAME records and DNS PTR records to identify each machine for the worker nodes. These records must be resolvable by the nodes within the cluster.

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.4 and later, you do not need to specify etcd host and SRV records in your DNS configuration.

You can use the dig command to verify name and reverse name resolution. See the section on Validating DNS resolution for user-provisioned infrastructure for detailed validation steps.

Example DNS configuration for user-provisioned clusters

This section provides A and PTR record configuration samples that meet the DNS requirements for deploying OpenShift Container Platform on user-provisioned infrastructure. The samples are not meant to provide advice for choosing one DNS solution over another.

In the examples, the cluster name is ocp4 and the base domain is example.com.

Example DNS A record configuration for a user-provisioned cluster

The following example is a BIND zone file that shows sample A records for name resolution in a user-provisioned cluster.

Sample DNS zone database 
$TTL 1W
@	IN	SOA	ns1.example.com.	root (
			2019070700	; serial
			3H		; refresh (3 hours)
			30M		; retry (30 minutes)
			2W		; expiry (2 weeks)
			1W )		; minimum (1 week)
	IN	NS	ns1.example.com.
	IN	MX 10	smtp.example.com.
;
;
ns1.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5
smtp.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5
;
helper.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5
helper.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.5
;
api.ocp4.example.com.		IN	A	192.168.1.5 (1)
api-int.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.5 (2)
;
*.apps.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.5 (3)
;
bootstrap.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.96 (4)
;
control-plane0.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.97 (5)
control-plane1.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.98 (5)
control-plane2.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.99 (5)
;
compute0.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.11 (6)
compute1.ocp4.example.com.	IN	A	192.168.1.7 (6)
;
;EOF
1 Provides name resolution for the Kubernetes API. The record refers to the IP address of the API load balancer.
2 Provides name resolution for the Kubernetes API. The record refers to the IP address of the API load balancer and is used for internal cluster communications.
3 Provides name resolution for the wildcard routes. The record refers to the IP address of the application ingress load balancer. The application ingress load balancer targets the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default.

In the example, the same load balancer is used for the Kubernetes API and application ingress traffic. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.
4 Provides name resolution for the bootstrap machine.
5 Provides name resolution for the control plane machines.
6 Provides name resolution for the compute machines.
Example DNS PTR record configuration for a user-provisioned cluster

The following example BIND zone file shows sample PTR records for reverse name resolution in a user-provisioned cluster.

Sample DNS zone database for reverse records 
$TTL 1W
@	IN	SOA	ns1.example.com.	root (
			2019070700	; serial
			3H		; refresh (3 hours)
			30M		; retry (30 minutes)
			2W		; expiry (2 weeks)
			1W )		; minimum (1 week)
	IN	NS	ns1.example.com.
;
5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	api.ocp4.example.com. (1)
5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	api-int.ocp4.example.com. (2)
;
96.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	bootstrap.ocp4.example.com. (3)
;
97.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	control-plane0.ocp4.example.com. (4)
98.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	control-plane1.ocp4.example.com. (4)
99.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	control-plane2.ocp4.example.com. (4)
;
11.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	compute0.ocp4.example.com. (5)
7.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR	compute1.ocp4.example.com. (5)
;
;EOF
1 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the Kubernetes API. The PTR record refers to the record name of the API load balancer.
2 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the Kubernetes API. The PTR record refers to the record name of the API load balancer and is used for internal cluster communications.
3 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the bootstrap machine.
4 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the control plane machines.
5 Provides reverse DNS resolution for the compute machines.

A PTR record is not required for the OpenShift Container Platform application wildcard.

Load balancing requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure

Before you install OpenShift Container Platform, you must provision the API and application Ingress load balancing infrastructure. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application Ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.

If you want to deploy the API and application Ingress load balancers with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instance, you must purchase the RHEL subscription separately.

The load balancing infrastructure must meet the following requirements:

  1. API load balancer: Provides a common endpoint for users, both human and machine, to interact with and configure the platform. Configure the following conditions:

    • Layer 4 load balancing only. This can be referred to as Raw TCP or SSL Passthrough mode.

    • A stateless load balancing algorithm. The options vary based on the load balancer implementation.

    Do not configure session persistence for an API load balancer. Configuring session persistence for a Kubernetes API server might cause performance issues from excess application traffic for your OpenShift Container Platform cluster and the Kubernetes API that runs inside the cluster.

    Configure the following ports on both the front and back of the load balancers:

    Table 6. API load balancer
    Port Back-end machines (pool members) Internal External Description

    6443

    Bootstrap and control plane. You remove the bootstrap machine from the load balancer after the bootstrap machine initializes the cluster control plane. You must configure the /readyz endpoint for the API server health check probe.

    X

    X

    Kubernetes API server

    22623

    Bootstrap and control plane. You remove the bootstrap machine from the load balancer after the bootstrap machine initializes the cluster control plane.

    X

    Machine config server

    The load balancer must be configured to take a maximum of 30 seconds from the time the API server turns off the /readyz endpoint to the removal of the API server instance from the pool. Within the time frame after /readyz returns an error or becomes healthy, the endpoint must have been removed or added. Probing every 5 or 10 seconds, with two successful requests to become healthy and three to become unhealthy, are well-tested values.

  2. Application Ingress load balancer: Provides an ingress point for application traffic flowing in from outside the cluster. A working configuration for the Ingress router is required for an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

    Configure the following conditions:

    • Layer 4 load balancing only. This can be referred to as Raw TCP or SSL Passthrough mode.

    • A connection-based or session-based persistence is recommended, based on the options available and types of applications that will be hosted on the platform.

    If the true IP address of the client can be seen by the application Ingress load balancer, enabling source IP-based session persistence can improve performance for applications that use end-to-end TLS encryption.

    Configure the following ports on both the front and back of the load balancers:

    Table 7. Application Ingress load balancer
    Port Back-end machines (pool members) Internal External Description

    443

    The machines that run the Ingress Controller pods, compute, or worker, by default.

    X

    X

    HTTPS traffic

    80

    The machines that run the Ingress Controller pods, compute, or worker, by default.

    X

    X

    HTTP traffic

    If you are deploying a three-node cluster with zero compute nodes, the Ingress Controller pods run on the control plane nodes. In three-node cluster deployments, you must configure your application Ingress load balancer to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the control plane nodes.

Example load balancer configuration for user-provisioned clusters

This section provides an example API and application Ingress load balancer configuration that meets the load balancing requirements for user-provisioned clusters. The sample is an /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg configuration for an HAProxy load balancer. The example is not meant to provide advice for choosing one load balancing solution over another.

In the example, the same load balancer is used for the Kubernetes API and application ingress traffic. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.

If you are using HAProxy as a load balancer and SELinux is set to enforcing, you must ensure that the HAProxy service can bind to the configured TCP port by running setsebool -P haproxy_connect_any=1.
Sample API and application Ingress load balancer configuration 
global
  log         127.0.0.1 local2
  pidfile     /var/run/haproxy.pid
  maxconn     4000
  daemon
defaults
  mode                    http
  log                     global
  option                  dontlognull
  option http-server-close
  option                  redispatch
  retries                 3
  timeout http-request    10s
  timeout queue           1m
  timeout connect         10s
  timeout client          1m
  timeout server          1m
  timeout http-keep-alive 10s
  timeout check           10s
  maxconn                 3000
listen api-server-6443 (1)
  bind *:6443
  mode tcp
  option  httpchk GET /readyz HTTP/1.0
  option  log-health-checks
  balance roundrobin
  server bootstrap bootstrap.ocp4.example.com:6443 verify none check check-ssl inter 10s fall 2 rise 3 backup (2)
  server master0 master0.ocp4.example.com:6443 weight 1 verify none check check-ssl inter 10s fall 2 rise 3
  server master1 master1.ocp4.example.com:6443 weight 1 verify none check check-ssl inter 10s fall 2 rise 3
  server master2 master2.ocp4.example.com:6443 weight 1 verify none check check-ssl inter 10s fall 2 rise 3
listen machine-config-server-22623 (3)
  bind *:22623
  mode tcp
  server bootstrap bootstrap.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s backup (2)
  server master0 master0.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s
  server master1 master1.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s
  server master2 master2.ocp4.example.com:22623 check inter 1s
listen ingress-router-443 (4)
  bind *:443
  mode tcp
  balance source
  server compute0 compute0.ocp4.example.com:443 check inter 1s
  server compute1 compute1.ocp4.example.com:443 check inter 1s
listen ingress-router-80 (5)
  bind *:80
  mode tcp
  balance source
  server compute0 compute0.ocp4.example.com:80 check inter 1s
  server compute1 compute1.ocp4.example.com:80 check inter 1s
1 Port 6443 handles the Kubernetes API traffic and points to the control plane machines.
2 The bootstrap entries must be in place before the OpenShift Container Platform cluster installation and they must be removed after the bootstrap process is complete.
3 Port 22623 handles the machine config server traffic and points to the control plane machines.
4 Port 443 handles the HTTPS traffic and points to the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default.
5 Port 80 handles the HTTP traffic and points to the machines that run the Ingress Controller pods. The Ingress Controller pods run on the compute machines by default.

If you are deploying a three-node cluster with zero compute nodes, the Ingress Controller pods run on the control plane nodes. In three-node cluster deployments, you must configure your application Ingress load balancer to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the control plane nodes.

If you are using HAProxy as a load balancer, you can check that the haproxy process is listening on ports 6443, 22623, 443, and 80 by running netstat -nltupe on the HAProxy node.

Preparing the user-provisioned infrastructure

Before you install OpenShift Container Platform on user-provisioned infrastructure, you must prepare the underlying infrastructure.

This section provides details about the high-level steps required to set up your cluster infrastructure in preparation for an OpenShift Container Platform installation. This includes configuring IP networking and network connectivity for your cluster nodes, enabling the required ports through your firewall, and setting up the required DNS and load balancing infrastructure.

After preparation, your cluster infrastructure must meet the requirements outlined in the Requirements for a cluster with user-provisioned infrastructure section.

Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. If you are using DHCP to provide the IP networking configuration to your cluster nodes, configure your DHCP service.

    1. Add persistent IP addresses for the nodes to your DHCP server configuration. In your configuration, match the MAC address of the relevant network interface to the intended IP address for each node.

    2. When you use DHCP to configure IP addressing for the cluster machines, the machines also obtain the DNS server information through DHCP. Define the persistent DNS server address that is used by the cluster nodes through your DHCP server configuration.

      If you are not using a DHCP service, you must provide the IP networking configuration and the address of the DNS server to the nodes at RHCOS install time. These can be passed as boot arguments if you are installing from an ISO image. See the Installing RHCOS and starting the OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap process section for more information about static IP provisioning and advanced networking options.

    3. Define the hostnames of your cluster nodes in your DHCP server configuration. See the Setting the cluster node hostnames through DHCP section for details about hostname considerations.

      If you are not using a DHCP service, the cluster nodes obtain their hostname through a reverse DNS lookup.

  2. Choose to perform either a fast track installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) or a full installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS). For the full installation, you must set up an HTTP or HTTPS server to provide Ignition files and install images to the cluster nodes. For the fast track installation an HTTP or HTTPS server is not required, however, a DHCP server is required. See sections “Fast-track installation: Creating Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines" and “Full installation: Creating Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines".

  3. Ensure that your network infrastructure provides the required network connectivity between the cluster components. See the Networking requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for details about the requirements.

  4. Configure your firewall to enable the ports required for the OpenShift Container Platform cluster components to communicate. See Networking requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for details about the ports that are required.

    By default, port 1936 is accessible for an OpenShift Container Platform cluster, because each control plane node needs access to this port.

    Avoid using the Ingress load balancer to expose this port, because doing so might result in the exposure of sensitive information, such as statistics and metrics, related to Ingress Controllers.

  5. Setup the required DNS infrastructure for your cluster.

    1. Configure DNS name resolution for the Kubernetes API, the application wildcard, the bootstrap machine, the control plane machines, and the compute machines.

    2. Configure reverse DNS resolution for the Kubernetes API, the bootstrap machine, the control plane machines, and the compute machines.

      See the User-provisioned DNS requirements section for more information about the OpenShift Container Platform DNS requirements.

  6. Validate your DNS configuration.

    1. From your installation node, run DNS lookups against the record names of the Kubernetes API, the wildcard routes, and the cluster nodes. Validate that the IP addresses in the responses correspond to the correct components.

    2. From your installation node, run reverse DNS lookups against the IP addresses of the load balancer and the cluster nodes. Validate that the record names in the responses correspond to the correct components.

      See the Validating DNS resolution for user-provisioned infrastructure section for detailed DNS validation steps.

  7. Provision the required API and application ingress load balancing infrastructure. See the Load balancing requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for more information about the requirements.

Some load balancing solutions require the DNS name resolution for the cluster nodes to be in place before the load balancing is initialized.

Validating DNS resolution for user-provisioned infrastructure

You can validate your DNS configuration before installing OpenShift Container Platform on user-provisioned infrastructure.

The validation steps detailed in this section must succeed before you install your cluster.
Prerequisites

  • You have configured the required DNS records for your user-provisioned infrastructure.

Procedure

  1. From your installation node, run DNS lookups against the record names of the Kubernetes API, the wildcard routes, and the cluster nodes. Validate that the IP addresses contained in the responses correspond to the correct components.

    1. Perform a lookup against the Kubernetes API record name. Check that the result points to the IP address of the API load balancer:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> (1)
      1 Replace <nameserver_ip> with the IP address of the nameserver, <cluster_name> with your cluster name, and <base_domain> with your base domain name.
      Example output
      api.ocp4.example.com.		604800	IN	A	192.168.1.5

    2. Perform a lookup against the Kubernetes internal API record name. Check that the result points to the IP address of the API load balancer:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> api-int.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      api-int.ocp4.example.com.		604800	IN	A	192.168.1.5

    3. Test an example *.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain> DNS wildcard lookup. All of the application wildcard lookups must resolve to the IP address of the application ingress load balancer:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> random.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      random.apps.ocp4.example.com.		604800	IN	A	192.168.1.5

      In the example outputs, the same load balancer is used for the Kubernetes API and application ingress traffic. In production scenarios, you can deploy the API and application ingress load balancers separately so that you can scale the load balancer infrastructure for each in isolation.

      You can replace random with another wildcard value. For example, you can query the route to the OpenShift Container Platform console:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      console-openshift-console.apps.ocp4.example.com. 604800 IN	A 192.168.1.5

    4. Run a lookup against the bootstrap DNS record name. Check that the result points to the IP address of the bootstrap node:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> bootstrap.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>
      Example output
      bootstrap.ocp4.example.com.		604800	IN	A	192.168.1.96

    5. Use this method to perform lookups against the DNS record names for the control plane and compute nodes. Check that the results correspond to the IP addresses of each node.

  2. From your installation node, run reverse DNS lookups against the IP addresses of the load balancer and the cluster nodes. Validate that the record names contained in the responses correspond to the correct components.

    1. Perform a reverse lookup against the IP address of the API load balancer. Check that the response includes the record names for the Kubernetes API and the Kubernetes internal API:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> -x 192.168.1.5
      Example output
      5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 604800	IN	PTR	api-int.ocp4.example.com. (1)
5.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 604800	IN	PTR	api.ocp4.example.com. (2)
      1 Provides the record name for the Kubernetes internal API.
      2 Provides the record name for the Kubernetes API.

      A PTR record is not required for the OpenShift Container Platform application wildcard. No validation step is needed for reverse DNS resolution against the IP address of the application ingress load balancer.

    2. Perform a reverse lookup against the IP address of the bootstrap node. Check that the result points to the DNS record name of the bootstrap node:

      $ dig +noall +answer @<nameserver_ip> -x 192.168.1.96
      Example output
      96.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 604800	IN	PTR	bootstrap.ocp4.example.com.

    3. Use this method to perform reverse lookups against the IP addresses for the control plane and compute nodes. Check that the results correspond to the DNS record names of each node.

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.
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 the RHEL cryptographic libraries that have been submitted to NIST for FIPS 140-2/140-3 Validation on only the x86_64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures, 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.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OpenShift Container Platform, download the installation file on your provisioning machine.

Prerequisites

  • You have a machine that runs Linux, for example Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8, with at least 1.2 GB of local disk space.

Procedure

  1. Go to the Cluster Type page on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. If you have a Red Hat account, log in with your credentials. If you do not, create an account.

  2. Select your infrastructure provider from the Run it yourself section of the page.

  3. Select your host operating system and architecture from the dropdown menus under OpenShift Installer and click Download Installer.

  4. Place the downloaded file in the directory where you want to store the installation configuration files.

    • The installation program creates several files on the computer that you use to install your cluster. You must keep the installation program and the files that the installation program creates after you finish installing the cluster. Both of the files are required to delete the cluster.

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

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

    $ tar -xvf openshift-install-linux.tar.gz

  6. Download your installation pull secret from Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager. This pull secret allows you to authenticate with the services that are provided by the included authorities, including Quay.io, which serves the container images for OpenShift Container Platform components.

Alternatively, you can retrieve the installation program from the Red Hat Customer Portal, where you can specify a version of the installation program to download. However, you must have an active subscription to access this page.

Installing the OpenShift CLI

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 4.17. 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 architecture from the Product Variant drop-down list.

  3. Select the appropriate version from the Version drop-down list.

  4. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.17 Linux Clients entry and save the file.

  5. Unpack the archive:

    $ tar xvf <file>

  6. Place the oc binary in a directory that is on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, execute the following command:

    $ echo $PATH
Verification

  • 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 from the Version drop-down list.

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.17 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
Verification

  • 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 from the Version drop-down list.

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.17 macOS Clients entry and save the file.

    For macOS arm64, choose the OpenShift v4.17 macOS arm64 Client entry.

  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
Verification

  • Verify your installation by using an oc command:

    $ oc <command>

Manually creating the installation configuration file

Installing the cluster requires that you manually create the installation configuration file.

Prerequisites

  • You have an SSH public key on your local machine to provide to the installation program. The key will be used for SSH authentication onto your cluster nodes for debugging and disaster recovery.

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

Procedure

  1. Create an installation directory to store your required installation assets in:

    $ mkdir <installation_directory>

    You must create a 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. Customize the sample install-config.yaml file template that is provided and save it in the <installation_directory>.

    You must name this configuration file install-config.yaml.

  3. Back up the install-config.yaml file so that you can use it to install multiple clusters.

    The install-config.yaml file is consumed during the next step of the installation process. You must back it up now.
Additional resources

Sample install-config.yaml file for IBM Z

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.

apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
compute: (2)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  name: worker
  replicas: 0 (4)
  architecture: s390x
controlPlane: (2)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  name: master
  replicas: 3 (5)
  architecture: s390x
metadata:
  name: test (6)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14 (7)
    hostPrefix: 23 (8)
  networkType: OVNKubernetes (9)
  serviceNetwork: (10)
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  none: {} (11)
fips: false (12)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (13)
sshKey: 'ssh-ed25519 AAAA...' (14)
1 The base domain of the cluster. All DNS records must be sub-domains of this base and include the cluster name.
2 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.
3 Specifies whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading (SMT), or hyperthreading. By default, SMT is enabled to increase the performance of the cores in your machines. You can disable it by setting the parameter value to Disabled. If you disable SMT, you must disable it in all cluster machines; this includes both control plane and compute machines.

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is enabled by default. If SMT is not available on your OpenShift Container Platform nodes, the hyperthreading parameter has no effect.

If you disable hyperthreading, whether on your OpenShift Container Platform nodes or in the install-config.yaml file, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance.
4 You must set this value to 0 when you install OpenShift Container Platform on user-provisioned infrastructure. In installer-provisioned installations, the parameter controls the number of compute machines that the cluster creates and manages for you. In user-provisioned installations, you must manually deploy the compute machines before you finish installing the cluster.

If you are installing a three-node cluster, do not deploy any compute machines when you install the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines.
5 The number of control plane machines that you add to the cluster. Because the cluster uses these values as the number of etcd endpoints in the cluster, the value must match the number of control plane machines that you deploy.
6 The cluster name that you specified in your DNS records.
7 A block of IP addresses from which pod IP addresses are allocated. This block must not overlap with existing physical networks. These IP addresses are used for the pod network. If you need to access the pods from an external network, you must configure load balancers and routers to manage the traffic.

Class E CIDR range is reserved for a future use. To use the Class E CIDR range, you must ensure your networking environment accepts the IP addresses within the Class E CIDR range.
8 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, which allows for 510 (2^(32 - 23) - 2) pod IP addresses. If you are required to provide access to nodes from an external network, configure load balancers and routers to manage the traffic.
9 The cluster network plugin to install. The default value OVNKubernetes is the only supported value.
10 The IP address pool to use for service IP addresses. You can enter only one IP address pool. This block must not overlap with existing physical networks. If you need to access the services from an external network, configure load balancers and routers to manage the traffic.
11 You must set the platform to none. You cannot provide additional platform configuration variables for IBM Z® infrastructure.

Clusters that are installed with the platform type none are unable to use some features, such as managing compute machines with the Machine API. This limitation applies even if the compute machines that are attached to the cluster are installed on a platform that would normally support the feature. This parameter cannot be changed after installation.
12 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.

To enable FIPS mode for your cluster, you must run the installation program from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) computer configured to operate in FIPS mode. For more information about configuring FIPS mode on RHEL, see Switching RHEL to FIPS mode.

When running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) booted in FIPS mode, OpenShift Container Platform core components use the RHEL cryptographic libraries that have been submitted to NIST for FIPS 140-2/140-3 Validation on only the x86_64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures.
13 The pull secret from Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager. This pull secret allows you to authenticate with the services that are provided by the included authorities, including Quay.io, which serves the container images for OpenShift Container Platform components.
14 The SSH public key for the core user in Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS).

For production OpenShift Container Platform clusters on which you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, specify an SSH key that your ssh-agent process uses.

Configuring the cluster-wide proxy during installation

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

Prerequisites

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

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

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

    For installations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP), the Proxy object status.noProxy field is also populated with the instance metadata endpoint (169.254.169.254).
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-----
additionalTrustBundlePolicy: <policy_to_add_additionalTrustBundle> (5)
    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 that contains one or more additional CA certificates that are required for proxying HTTPS connections. The Cluster Network Operator then creates a trusted-ca-bundle config map that merges these contents with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) trust bundle, and this config map is referenced in the trustedCA field of the Proxy object. The additionalTrustBundle field is required unless the proxy’s identity certificate is signed by an authority from the RHCOS trust bundle.
    5 Optional: The policy to determine the configuration of the Proxy object to reference the user-ca-bundle config map in the trustedCA field. The allowed values are Proxyonly and Always. Use Proxyonly to reference the user-ca-bundle config map only when http/https proxy is configured. Use Always to always reference the user-ca-bundle config map. The default value is Proxyonly.

    The installation program does not support the proxy readinessEndpoints field.

    If the installer times out, restart and then complete the deployment by using the wait-for command of the installer. For example:

    $ ./openshift-install wait-for install-complete --log-level debug

  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.

Configuring a three-node cluster

Optionally, you can deploy zero compute machines in a minimal three node cluster that consists of three control plane machines only. This provides smaller, more resource efficient clusters for cluster administrators and developers to use for testing, development, and production.

In three-node OpenShift Container Platform environments, the three control plane machines are schedulable, which means that your application workloads are scheduled to run on them.

Prerequisites

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

Procedure

  • Ensure that the number of compute replicas is set to 0 in your install-config.yaml file, as shown in the following compute stanza:

    compute:
- name: worker
  platform: {}
  replicas: 0

    You must set the value of the replicas parameter for the compute machines to 0 when you install OpenShift Container Platform on user-provisioned infrastructure, regardless of the number of compute machines you are deploying. In installer-provisioned installations, the parameter controls the number of compute machines that the cluster creates and manages for you. This does not apply to user-provisioned installations, where the compute machines are deployed manually.

    The preferred resource for control plane nodes is six vCPUs and 21 GB. For three control plane nodes this is the memory + vCPU equivalent of a minimum five-node cluster. You should back the three nodes, each installed on a 120 GB disk, with three IFLs that are SMT2 enabled. The minimum tested setup is three vCPUs and 10 GB on a 120 GB disk for each control plane node.

For three-node cluster installations, follow these next steps:

  • If you are deploying a three-node cluster with zero compute nodes, the Ingress Controller pods run on the control plane nodes. In three-node cluster deployments, you must configure your application ingress load balancer to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the control plane nodes. See the Load balancing requirements for user-provisioned infrastructure section for more information.

  • When you create the Kubernetes manifest files in the following procedure, ensure that the mastersSchedulable parameter in the <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-scheduler-02-config.yml file is set to true. This enables your application workloads to run on the control plane nodes.

  • Do not deploy any compute nodes when you create the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines.

Cluster Network Operator configuration

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

The CNO configuration inherits the following fields during cluster installation from the Network API in the Network.config.openshift.io API group:

clusterNetwork

IP address pools from which pod IP addresses are allocated.

serviceNetwork

IP address pool for services.

defaultNetwork.type

Cluster network plugin. OVNKubernetes is the only supported plugin during installation.

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

Cluster Network Operator configuration object

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

Table 8. Cluster Network Operator configuration object
Field Type Description

metadata.name

string

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

spec.clusterNetwork

array

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

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

spec.serviceNetwork

array

A block of IP addresses for services. The OVN-Kubernetes network plugin supports only a single IP address block for the service network. For example:

spec:
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/14

You can customize this field only in the install-config.yaml file before you create the manifests. The value is read-only in the manifest file.

spec.defaultNetwork

object

Configures the network plugin for the cluster network.

spec.kubeProxyConfig

object

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

defaultNetwork object configuration

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

Table 9. defaultNetwork object
Field Type Description

type

string

OVNKubernetes. The Red Hat OpenShift Networking network plugin is selected during installation. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

OpenShift Container Platform uses the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin by default. OpenShift SDN is no longer available as an installation choice for new clusters.

ovnKubernetesConfig

object

This object is only valid for the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin.
Configuration for the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin

The following table describes the configuration fields for the OVN-Kubernetes network plugin:

Table 10. ovnKubernetesConfig object
Field Type Description

mtu

integer

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

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

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

genevePort

integer

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

ipsecConfig

object

Specify a configuration object for customizing the IPsec configuration.

ipv4

object

Specifies a configuration object for IPv4 settings.

ipv6

object

Specifies a configuration object for IPv6 settings.

policyAuditConfig

object

Specify a configuration object for customizing network policy audit logging. If unset, the defaults audit log settings are used.

gatewayConfig

object

Optional: Specify a configuration object for customizing how egress traffic is sent to the node gateway.

While migrating egress traffic, you can expect some disruption to workloads and service traffic until the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) successfully rolls out the changes.
Table 11. ovnKubernetesConfig.ipv4 object
Field Type Description

internalTransitSwitchSubnet

string

If your existing network infrastructure overlaps with the 100.88.0.0/16 IPv4 subnet, you can specify a different IP address range for internal use by OVN-Kubernetes. The subnet for the distributed transit switch that enables east-west traffic. This subnet cannot overlap with any other subnets used by OVN-Kubernetes or on the host itself. It must be large enough to accommodate one IP address per node in your cluster.

The default value is 100.88.0.0/16.

internalJoinSubnet

string

If your existing network infrastructure overlaps with the 100.64.0.0/16 IPv4 subnet, you can specify a different IP address range for internal use by OVN-Kubernetes. You must ensure that the IP address range does not overlap with any other subnet used by your OpenShift Container Platform installation. The IP address range must be larger than the maximum number of nodes that can be added to the cluster. For example, if the clusterNetwork.cidr value is 10.128.0.0/14 and the clusterNetwork.hostPrefix value is /23, then the maximum number of nodes is 2^(23-14)=512.

The default value is 100.64.0.0/16.
Table 12. ovnKubernetesConfig.ipv6 object
Field Type Description

internalTransitSwitchSubnet

string

If your existing network infrastructure overlaps with the fd97::/64 IPv6 subnet, you can specify a different IP address range for internal use by OVN-Kubernetes. The subnet for the distributed transit switch that enables east-west traffic. This subnet cannot overlap with any other subnets used by OVN-Kubernetes or on the host itself. It must be large enough to accommodate one IP address per node in your cluster.

The default value is fd97::/64.

internalJoinSubnet

string

If your existing network infrastructure overlaps with the fd98::/64 IPv6 subnet, you can specify a different IP address range for internal use by OVN-Kubernetes. You must ensure that the IP address range does not overlap with any other subnet used by your OpenShift Container Platform installation. The IP address range must be larger than the maximum number of nodes that can be added to the cluster.

The default value is fd98::/64.
Table 13. policyAuditConfig object
Field Type Description

rateLimit

integer

The maximum number of messages to generate every second per node. The default value is 20 messages per second.

maxFileSize

integer

The maximum size for the audit log in bytes. The default value is 50000000 or 50 MB.

maxLogFiles

integer

The maximum number of log files that are retained.

destination

string

One of the following additional audit log targets:

libc

The libc syslog() function of the journald process on the host.

udp:<host>:<port>

A syslog server. Replace <host>:<port> with the host and port of the syslog server.

unix:<file>

A Unix Domain Socket file specified by <file>.

null

Do not send the audit logs to any additional target.

syslogFacility

string

The syslog facility, such as kern, as defined by RFC5424. The default value is local0.
Table 14. gatewayConfig object
Field Type Description

routingViaHost

boolean

Set this field to true to send egress traffic from pods to the host networking stack. For highly-specialized installations and applications that rely on manually configured routes in the kernel routing table, you might want to route egress traffic to the host networking stack. By default, egress traffic is processed in OVN to exit the cluster and is not affected by specialized routes in the kernel routing table. The default value is false.

This field has an interaction with the Open vSwitch hardware offloading feature. If you set this field to true, you do not receive the performance benefits of the offloading because egress traffic is processed by the host networking stack.

ipForwarding

object

You can control IP forwarding for all traffic on OVN-Kubernetes managed interfaces by using the ipForwarding specification in the Network resource. Specify Restricted to only allow IP forwarding for Kubernetes related traffic. Specify Global to allow forwarding of all IP traffic. For new installations, the default is Restricted. For updates to OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 or later, the default is Global.

ipv4

object

Optional: Specify an object to configure the internal OVN-Kubernetes masquerade address for host to service traffic for IPv4 addresses.

ipv6

object

Optional: Specify an object to configure the internal OVN-Kubernetes masquerade address for host to service traffic for IPv6 addresses.
Table 15. gatewayConfig.ipv4 object
Field Type Description

internalMasqueradeSubnet

string

The masquerade IPv4 addresses that are used internally to enable host to service traffic. The host is configured with these IP addresses as well as the shared gateway bridge interface. The default value is 169.254.169.0/29.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.17 and later versions, clusters use 169.254.0.0/17 as the default masquerade subnet. For upgraded clusters, there is no change to the default masquerade subnet.
Table 16. gatewayConfig.ipv6 object
Field Type Description

internalMasqueradeSubnet

string

The masquerade IPv6 addresses that are used internally to enable host to service traffic. The host is configured with these IP addresses as well as the shared gateway bridge interface. The default value is fd69::/125.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.17 and later versions, clusters use fd69::/112 as the default masquerade subnet. For upgraded clusters, there is no change to the default masquerade subnet.
Table 17. ipsecConfig object
Field Type Description

mode

string

Specifies the behavior of the IPsec implementation. Must be one of the following values:

  • Disabled: IPsec is not enabled on cluster nodes.

  • External: IPsec is enabled for network traffic with external hosts.

  • Full: IPsec is enabled for pod traffic and network traffic with external hosts.
Example OVN-Kubernetes configuration with IPSec enabled
defaultNetwork:
  type: OVNKubernetes
  ovnKubernetesConfig:
    mtu: 1400
    genevePort: 6081
      ipsecConfig:
        mode: Full

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.

The installation program that generates the manifest and Ignition files is architecture specific and can be obtained from the client image mirror. The Linux version of the installation program runs on s390x only. This installer program is also available as a Mac OS version.
Prerequisites

  • You obtained the OpenShift Container Platform installation program.

  • 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.

    If you are installing a three-node cluster, skip the following step to allow the control plane nodes to be schedulable.

    When you configure control plane nodes from the default unschedulable to schedulable, additional subscriptions are required. This is because control plane nodes then become compute nodes.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

Installing RHCOS and starting the OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap process

To install OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Z® infrastructure that you provision, you must install Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) guest virtual machines. When you install RHCOS, you must provide the Ignition config file that was generated by the OpenShift Container Platform installation program for the type of machine you are installing. If you have configured suitable networking, DNS, and load balancing infrastructure, the OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap process begins automatically after the RHCOS machines have rebooted.

You can perform a fast-track installation of RHCOS that uses a prepackaged QEMU copy-on-write (QCOW2) disk image. Alternatively, you can perform a full installation on a new QCOW2 disk image.

To add further security to your system, you can optionally install RHCOS using IBM® Secure Execution before proceeding to the fast-track installation.

Installing RHCOS using IBM Secure Execution

Before you install RHCOS using IBM® Secure Execution, you must prepare the underlying infrastructure.

Prerequisites

  • IBM® z15 or later, or IBM® LinuxONE III or later.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 or later.

  • You have a bootstrap Ignition file. The file is not protected, enabling others to view and edit it.

  • You have verified that the boot image has not been altered after installation.

  • You must run all your nodes as IBM® Secure Execution guests.

Procedure

  1. Prepare your RHEL KVM host to support IBM® Secure Execution.

    • By default, KVM hosts do not support guests in IBM® Secure Execution mode. To support guests in IBM® Secure Execution mode, KVM hosts must boot in LPAR mode with the kernel parameter specification prot_virt=1. To enable prot_virt=1 on RHEL 8, follow these steps:

      1. Navigate to /boot/loader/entries/ to modify your bootloader configuration file *.conf.

      2. Add the kernel command line parameter prot_virt=1.

      3. Run the zipl command and reboot your system.

        KVM hosts that successfully start with support for IBM® Secure Execution for Linux issue the following kernel message:

        prot_virt: Reserving <amount>MB as ultravisor base storage.

      4. To verify that the KVM host now supports IBM® Secure Execution, run the following command:

        # cat /sys/firmware/uv/prot_virt_host
        Example output
        1

        The value of this attribute is 1 for Linux instances that detect their environment as consistent with that of a secure host. For other instances, the value is 0.

  2. Add your host keys to the KVM guest via Ignition.

    During the first boot, RHCOS looks for your host keys to re-encrypt itself with them. RHCOS searches for files starting with ibm-z-hostkey- in the /etc/se-hostkeys directory. All host keys, for each machine the cluster is running on, must be loaded into the directory by the administrator. After first boot, you cannot run the VM on any other machines.

    You need to prepare your Ignition file on a safe system. For example, another IBM® Secure Execution guest.

    For example:

    {
  "ignition": { "version": "3.0.0" },
  "storage": {
    "files": [
      {
        "path": "/etc/se-hostkeys/ibm-z-hostkey-<your-hostkey>.crt",
        "contents": {
          "source": "data:;base64,<base64 encoded hostkey document>"
        },
        "mode": 420
      },
      {
        "path": "/etc/se-hostkeys/ibm-z-hostkey-<your-hostkey>.crt",
        "contents": {
          "source": "data:;base64,<base64 encoded hostkey document>"
        },
        "mode": 420
      }
    ]
  }
}
```

    You can add as many host keys as required if you want your node to be able to run on multiple IBM Z® machines.

  3. To generate the Base64 encoded string, run the following command:

    base64 <your-hostkey>.crt

    Compared to guests not running IBM® Secure Execution, the first boot of the machine is longer because the entire image is encrypted with a randomly generated LUKS passphrase before the Ignition phase.

  4. Add Ignition protection

    To protect the secrets that are stored in the Ignition config file from being read or even modified, you must encrypt the Ignition config file.

    To achieve the desired security, Ignition logging and local login are disabled by default when running IBM® Secure Execution.

    1. Fetch the public GPG key for the secex-qemu.qcow2 image and encrypt the Ignition config with the key by running the following command:

      gpg --recipient-file /path/to/ignition.gpg.pub --yes --output /path/to/config.ign.gpg --verbose --armor --encrypt /path/to/config.ign

  5. Follow the fast-track installation of RHCOS to install nodes by using the IBM® Secure Execution QCOW image.

    Before you start the VM, replace serial=ignition with serial=ignition_crypted, and add the launchSecurity parameter.
Verification

When you have completed the fast-track installation of RHCOS and Ignition runs at the first boot, verify if decryption is successful.

  • If the decryption is successful, you can expect an output similar to the following example:

    Example output
    [    2.801433] systemd[1]: Starting coreos-ignition-setup-user.service - CoreOS Ignition User Config Setup...

[    2.803959] coreos-secex-ignition-decrypt[731]: gpg: key <key_name>: public key "Secure Execution (secex) 38.20230323.dev.0" imported
[    2.808874] coreos-secex-ignition-decrypt[740]: gpg: encrypted with rsa4096 key, ID <key_name>, created <yyyy-mm-dd>
[  OK  ] Finished coreos-secex-igni…S Secex Ignition Config Decryptor.

  • If the decryption fails, you can expect an output similar to the following example:

    Example output
    Starting coreos-ignition-s…reOS Ignition User Config Setup...
[    2.863675] coreos-secex-ignition-decrypt[729]: gpg: key <key_name>: public key "Secure Execution (secex) 38.20230323.dev.0" imported
[    2.869178] coreos-secex-ignition-decrypt[738]: gpg: encrypted with RSA key, ID <key_name>
[    2.870347] coreos-secex-ignition-decrypt[738]: gpg: public key decryption failed: No secret key
[    2.870371] coreos-secex-ignition-decrypt[738]: gpg: decryption failed: No secret key
Additional resources

Configuring NBDE with static IP in an IBM Z or IBM LinuxONE environment

Enabling NBDE disk encryption in an IBM Z® or IBM® LinuxONE environment requires additional steps, which are described in detail in this section.

Prerequisites

  • You have set up the External Tang Server. See Network-bound disk encryption for instructions.

  • You have installed the butane utility.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to create machine configs with Butane.

Procedure

  1. Create Butane configuration files for the control plane and compute nodes.

    The following example of a Butane configuration for a control plane node creates a file named master-storage.bu for disk encryption:

    variant: openshift
version: 4.17.0
metadata:
  name: master-storage
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: master
storage:
  luks:
    - clevis:
        tang:
          - thumbprint: QcPr_NHFJammnRCA3fFMVdNBwjs
            url: http://clevis.example.com:7500
        options: (1)
           - --cipher
           - aes-cbc-essiv:sha256
      device: /dev/disk/by-partlabel/root
      label: luks-root
      name: root
      wipe_volume: true
  filesystems:
    - device: /dev/mapper/root
      format: xfs
      label: root
      wipe_filesystem: true
openshift:
  fips: true (2)
    1 The cipher option is only required if FIPS mode is enabled. Omit the entry if FIPS is disabled.
    2 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.

  2. Create a customized initramfs file to boot the machine, by running the following command:

    $ coreos-installer pxe customize \
    /root/rhcos-bootfiles/rhcos-<release>-live-initramfs.s390x.img \
    --dest-device /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-<serial_number> --dest-karg-append \
    ip=<ip_address>::<gateway_ip>:<subnet_mask>::<network_device>:none \
    --dest-karg-append nameserver=<nameserver_ip> \
    --dest-karg-append rd.neednet=1 -o \
    /root/rhcos-bootfiles/<node_name>-initramfs.s390x.img

    Before first boot, you must customize the initramfs for each node in the cluster, and add PXE kernel parameters.

  3. Create a parameter file that includes ignition.platform.id=metal and ignition.firstboot.

    Example kernel parameter file for the control plane machine
    cio_ignore=all,!condev rd.neednet=1 \
console=ttysclp0 \
ignition.firstboot ignition.platform.id=metal \
coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<http_server>/master.ign \(1)
coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<http_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img \(2)
ip=<ip>::<gateway>:<netmask>:<hostname>::none nameserver=<dns> \
rd.znet=qeth,0.0.bdd0,0.0.bdd1,0.0.bdd2,layer2=1 \
rd.zfcp=0.0.5677,0x600606680g7f0056,0x034F000000000000 \
zfcp.allow_lun_scan=0
    1 Specify the location of the Ignition config file. Use master.ign or worker.ign. Only HTTP and HTTPS protocols are supported.
    2 Specify the location of the rootfs artifact for the kernel and initramfs you are booting. Only HTTP and HTTPS protocols are supported.

    Write all options in the parameter file as a single line and make sure you have no newline characters.
Additional resources

Fast-track installation by using a prepackaged QCOW2 disk image

Complete the following steps to create the machines in a fast-track installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS), importing a prepackaged Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) QEMU copy-on-write (QCOW2) disk image.

Prerequisites

  • At least one LPAR running on RHEL 8.6 or later with KVM, referred to as RHEL KVM host in this procedure.

  • The KVM/QEMU hypervisor is installed on the RHEL KVM host.

  • A domain name server (DNS) that can perform hostname and reverse lookup for the nodes.

  • A DHCP server that provides IP addresses.

Procedure

  1. Obtain the RHEL QEMU copy-on-write (QCOW2) disk image file from the Product Downloads page on the Red Hat Customer Portal or from the RHCOS image mirror page.

    The RHCOS images might not change with every release of OpenShift Container Platform. You must download images with the highest version that is less than or equal to the OpenShift Container Platform version that you install. Only use the appropriate RHCOS QCOW2 image described in the following procedure.

  2. Download the QCOW2 disk image and Ignition files to a common directory on the RHEL KVM host.

    For example: /var/lib/libvirt/images

    The Ignition files are generated by the OpenShift Container Platform installer.

  3. Create a new disk image with the QCOW2 disk image backing file for each KVM guest node.

    $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -F qcow2 -b /var/lib/libvirt/images/{source_rhcos_qemu} /var/lib/libvirt/images/{vmname}.qcow2 {size}

  4. Create the new KVM guest nodes using the Ignition file and the new disk image.

    $ virt-install --noautoconsole \
   --connect qemu:///system \
   --name <vm_name> \
   --memory <memory_mb> \
   --vcpus <vcpus> \
   --disk <disk> \
   --launchSecurity type="s390-pv" \ (1)
   --import \
   --network network=<virt_network_parm>,mac=<mac_address> \
   --disk path=<ign_file>,format=raw,readonly=on,serial=ignition,startup_policy=optional (2)
    1 If IBM® Secure Execution is enabled, add the launchSecurity type="s390-pv" parameter.
    2 If IBM® Secure Execution is enabled, replace serial=ignition with serial=ignition_crypted.

Full installation on a new QCOW2 disk image

Complete the following steps to create the machines in a full installation on a new QEMU copy-on-write (QCOW2) disk image.

Prerequisites

  • At least one LPAR running on RHEL 8.6 or later with KVM, referred to as RHEL KVM host in this procedure.

  • The KVM/QEMU hypervisor is installed on the RHEL KVM host.

  • A domain name server (DNS) that can perform hostname and reverse lookup for the nodes.

  • An HTTP or HTTPS server is set up.

Procedure

  1. Obtain the RHEL kernel, initramfs, and rootfs files from the Product Downloads page on the Red Hat Customer Portal or from the RHCOS image mirror page.

    The RHCOS images might not change with every release of OpenShift Container Platform. You must download images with the highest version that is less than or equal to the OpenShift Container Platform version that you install. Only use the appropriate RHCOS QCOW2 image described in the following procedure.

    The file names contain the OpenShift Container Platform version number. They resemble the following examples:

    • kernel: rhcos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture>

    • initramfs: rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img

    • rootfs: rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img

  2. Move the downloaded RHEL live kernel, initramfs, and rootfs as well as the Ignition files to an HTTP or HTTPS server before you launch virt-install.

    The Ignition files are generated by the OpenShift Container Platform installer.

  3. Create the new KVM guest nodes using the RHEL kernel, initramfs, and Ignition files, the new disk image, and adjusted parm line arguments.

    $ virt-install \
   --connect qemu:///system \
   --name <vm_name> \
   --memory <memory_mb> \
   --vcpus <vcpus> \
   --location <media_location>,kernel=<rhcos_kernel>,initrd=<rhcos_initrd> \ / (1)
   --disk <vm_name>.qcow2,size=<image_size>,cache=none,io=native \
   --network network=<virt_network_parm> \
   --boot hd \
   --extra-args "rd.neednet=1" \
   --extra-args "coreos.inst.install_dev=/dev/<block_device>" \
   --extra-args "coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<http_server>/bootstrap.ign" \(2)
   --extra-args "coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<http_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img" \(3)
   --extra-args "ip=<ip>::<gateway>:<netmask>:<hostname>::none nameserver=<dns>" \
   --noautoconsole \
   --wait
    1 For the --location parameter, specify the location of the kernel/initrd on the HTTP or HTTPS server.
    2 Specify the location of the Ignition config file. Use bootstrap.ign, master.ign, or worker.ign. Only HTTP and HTTPS protocols are supported.
    3 Specify the location of the rootfs artifact for the kernel and initramfs you are booting. Only HTTP and HTTPS protocols are supported.

Advanced RHCOS installation reference

This section illustrates the networking configuration and other advanced options that allow you to modify the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) manual installation process. The following tables describe the kernel arguments and command-line options you can use with the RHCOS live installer and the coreos-installer command.

Networking options for ISO installations

If you install RHCOS from an ISO image, you can add kernel arguments manually when you boot the image to configure networking for a node. If no networking arguments are specified, DHCP is activated in the initramfs when RHCOS detects that networking is required to fetch the Ignition config file.

When adding networking arguments manually, you must also add the rd.neednet=1 kernel argument to bring the network up in the initramfs.

The following information provides examples for configuring networking on your RHCOS nodes for ISO installations. The examples describe how to use the ip= and nameserver= kernel arguments.

Ordering is important when adding the kernel arguments: ip= and nameserver=.

The networking options are passed to the dracut tool during system boot. For more information about the networking options supported by dracut, see the dracut.cmdline manual page.

The following examples are the networking options for ISO installation.

Configuring DHCP or static IP addresses

To configure an IP address, either use DHCP (ip=dhcp) or set an individual static IP address (ip=<host_ip>). If setting a static IP, you must then identify the DNS server IP address (nameserver=<dns_ip>) on each node. The following example sets:

  • The node’s IP address to 10.10.10.2

  • The gateway address to 10.10.10.254

  • The netmask to 255.255.255.0

  • The hostname to core0.example.com

  • The DNS server address to 4.4.4.41

  • The auto-configuration value to none. No auto-configuration is required when IP networking is configured statically.

ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:core0.example.com:enp1s0:none
nameserver=4.4.4.41

When you use DHCP to configure IP addressing for the RHCOS machines, the machines also obtain the DNS server information through DHCP. For DHCP-based deployments, you can define the DNS server address that is used by the RHCOS nodes through your DHCP server configuration.
Configuring an IP address without a static hostname

You can configure an IP address without assigning a static hostname. If a static hostname is not set by the user, it will be picked up and automatically set by a reverse DNS lookup. To configure an IP address without a static hostname refer to the following example:

  • The node’s IP address to 10.10.10.2

  • The gateway address to 10.10.10.254

  • The netmask to 255.255.255.0

  • The DNS server address to 4.4.4.41

  • The auto-configuration value to none. No auto-configuration is required when IP networking is configured statically.

ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0::enp1s0:none
nameserver=4.4.4.41
Specifying multiple network interfaces

You can specify multiple network interfaces by setting multiple ip= entries.

ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:core0.example.com:enp1s0:none
ip=10.10.10.3::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:core0.example.com:enp2s0:none
Configuring default gateway and route

Optional: You can configure routes to additional networks by setting an rd.route= value.

When you configure one or multiple networks, one default gateway is required. If the additional network gateway is different from the primary network gateway, the default gateway must be the primary network gateway.

  • Run the following command to configure the default gateway:

    ip=::10.10.10.254::::

  • Enter the following command to configure the route for the additional network:

    rd.route=20.20.20.0/24:20.20.20.254:enp2s0
Disabling DHCP on a single interface

You can disable DHCP on a single interface, such as when there are two or more network interfaces and only one interface is being used. In the example, the enp1s0 interface has a static networking configuration and DHCP is disabled for enp2s0, which is not used:

ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:core0.example.com:enp1s0:none
ip=::::core0.example.com:enp2s0:none
Combining DHCP and static IP configurations

You can combine DHCP and static IP configurations on systems with multiple network interfaces, for example:

ip=enp1s0:dhcp
ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:core0.example.com:enp2s0:none
Configuring VLANs on individual interfaces

Optional: You can configure VLANs on individual interfaces by using the vlan= parameter.

  • To configure a VLAN on a network interface and use a static IP address, run the following command:

    ip=10.10.10.2::10.10.10.254:255.255.255.0:core0.example.com:enp2s0.100:none
vlan=enp2s0.100:enp2s0

  • To configure a VLAN on a network interface and to use DHCP, run the following command:

    ip=enp2s0.100:dhcp
vlan=enp2s0.100:enp2s0
Providing multiple DNS servers

You can provide multiple DNS servers by adding a nameserver= entry for each server, for example:

nameserver=1.1.1.1
nameserver=8.8.8.8

Waiting for the bootstrap process to complete

The OpenShift Container Platform bootstrap process begins after the cluster nodes first boot into the persistent RHCOS environment that has been installed to disk. The configuration information provided through the Ignition config files is used to initialize the bootstrap process and install OpenShift Container Platform on the machines. You must wait for the bootstrap process to complete.

Prerequisites

  • You have created the Ignition config files for your cluster.

  • You have configured suitable network, DNS and load balancing infrastructure.

  • You have obtained the installation program and generated the Ignition config files for your cluster.

  • You installed RHCOS on your cluster machines and provided the Ignition config files that the OpenShift Container Platform installation program generated.

  • Your machines have direct internet access or have an HTTP or HTTPS proxy available.

Procedure

  1. Monitor the bootstrap process:

    $ ./openshift-install --dir <installation_directory> wait-for bootstrap-complete \ (1)
    --log-level=info (2)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation files in.
    2 To view different installation details, specify warn, debug, or error instead of info.
    Example output
    INFO Waiting up to 30m0s for the Kubernetes API at https://api.test.example.com:6443...
INFO API v1.30.3 up
INFO Waiting up to 30m0s for bootstrapping to complete...
INFO It is now safe to remove the bootstrap resources

    The command succeeds when the Kubernetes API server signals that it has been bootstrapped on the control plane machines.

  2. After the bootstrap process is complete, remove the bootstrap machine from the load balancer.

    You must remove the bootstrap machine from the load balancer at this point. You can also remove or reformat the bootstrap machine itself.

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

Approving the certificate signing requests for your machines

When you add machines to a cluster, two pending certificate signing requests (CSRs) are generated for each machine that you added. You must confirm that these CSRs are approved or, if necessary, approve them yourself. The client requests must be approved first, followed by the server requests.

Prerequisites

  • You added machines to your cluster.

Procedure

  1. Confirm that the cluster recognizes the machines:

    $ oc get nodes
    Example output
    NAME      STATUS    ROLES   AGE  VERSION
master-0  Ready     master  63m  v1.30.3
master-1  Ready     master  63m  v1.30.3
master-2  Ready     master  64m  v1.30.3

    The output lists all of the machines that you created.

    The preceding output might not include the compute nodes, also known as worker nodes, until some CSRs are approved.

  2. Review the pending CSRs and ensure that you see the client requests with the Pending or Approved status for each machine that you added to the cluster:

    $ oc get csr
    Example output
    NAME        AGE   REQUESTOR                                   CONDITION
csr-mddf5   20m   system:node:master-01.example.com   Approved,Issued
csr-z5rln   16m   system:node:worker-21.example.com   Approved,Issued

  3. If the CSRs were not approved, after all of the pending CSRs for the machines you added are in Pending status, approve the CSRs for your cluster machines:

    Because the CSRs rotate automatically, approve your CSRs within an hour of adding the machines to the cluster. If you do not approve them within an hour, the certificates will rotate, and more than two certificates will be present for each node. You must approve all of these certificates. After the client CSR is approved, the Kubelet creates a secondary CSR for the serving certificate, which requires manual approval. Then, subsequent serving certificate renewal requests are automatically approved by the machine-approver if the Kubelet requests a new certificate with identical parameters.

    For clusters running on platforms that are not machine API enabled, such as bare metal and other user-provisioned infrastructure, you must implement a method of automatically approving the kubelet serving certificate requests (CSRs). If a request is not approved, then the oc exec, oc rsh, and oc logs commands cannot succeed, because a serving certificate is required when the API server connects to the kubelet. Any operation that contacts the Kubelet endpoint requires this certificate approval to be in place. The method must watch for new CSRs, confirm that the CSR was submitted by the node-bootstrapper service account in the system:node or system:admin groups, and confirm the identity of the node.

    • To approve them individually, run the following command for each valid CSR:

      $ oc adm certificate approve <csr_name> (1)
      1 <csr_name> is the name of a CSR from the list of current CSRs.

    • To approve all pending CSRs, run the following command:

      $ oc get csr -o go-template='{{range .items}}{{if not .status}}{{.metadata.name}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}{{end}}' | xargs --no-run-if-empty oc adm certificate approve

      Some Operators might not become available until some CSRs are approved.

  4. Now that your client requests are approved, you must review the server requests for each machine that you added to the cluster:

    $ oc get csr
    Example output
    NAME        AGE     REQUESTOR                                                                   CONDITION
csr-bfd72   5m26s   system:node:ip-10-0-50-126.us-east-2.compute.internal                       Pending
csr-c57lv   5m26s   system:node:ip-10-0-95-157.us-east-2.compute.internal                       Pending
...

  5. If the remaining CSRs are not approved, and are in the Pending status, approve the CSRs for your cluster machines:

    • To approve them individually, run the following command for each valid CSR:

      $ oc adm certificate approve <csr_name> (1)
      1 <csr_name> is the name of a CSR from the list of current CSRs.

    • To approve all pending CSRs, run the following command:

      $ oc get csr -o go-template='{{range .items}}{{if not .status}}{{.metadata.name}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}{{end}}' | xargs oc adm certificate approve

  6. After all client and server CSRs have been approved, the machines have the Ready status. Verify this by running the following command:

    $ oc get nodes
    Example output
    NAME      STATUS    ROLES   AGE  VERSION
master-0  Ready     master  73m  v1.30.3
master-1  Ready     master  73m  v1.30.3
master-2  Ready     master  74m  v1.30.3
worker-0  Ready     worker  11m  v1.30.3
worker-1  Ready     worker  11m  v1.30.3

    It can take a few minutes after approval of the server CSRs for the machines to transition to the Ready status.
Additional information

Initial Operator configuration

After the control plane initializes, you must immediately configure some Operators so that they all become available.

Prerequisites

  • Your control plane has initialized.

Procedure

  1. Watch the cluster components come online:

    $ watch -n5 oc get clusteroperators
    Example output
    NAME                                       VERSION   AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   DEGRADED   SINCE
authentication                             4.17.0    True        False         False      19m
baremetal                                  4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
cloud-credential                           4.17.0    True        False         False      40m
cluster-autoscaler                         4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
config-operator                            4.17.0    True        False         False      38m
console                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      26m
csi-snapshot-controller                    4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
dns                                        4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
etcd                                       4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
image-registry                             4.17.0    True        False         False      31m
ingress                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      30m
insights                                   4.17.0    True        False         False      31m
kube-apiserver                             4.17.0    True        False         False      26m
kube-controller-manager                    4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
kube-scheduler                             4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
kube-storage-version-migrator              4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
machine-api                                4.17.0    True        False         False      29m
machine-approver                           4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
machine-config                             4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
marketplace                                4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
monitoring                                 4.17.0    True        False         False      29m
network                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      38m
node-tuning                                4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
openshift-apiserver                        4.17.0    True        False         False      32m
openshift-controller-manager               4.17.0    True        False         False      30m
openshift-samples                          4.17.0    True        False         False      32m
operator-lifecycle-manager                 4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
operator-lifecycle-manager-catalog         4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
operator-lifecycle-manager-packageserver   4.17.0    True        False         False      32m
service-ca                                 4.17.0    True        False         False      38m
storage                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      37m

  2. Configure the Operators that are not available.

Image registry storage configuration

The Image Registry Operator is not initially available for platforms that do not provide default storage. After installation, you must configure your registry to use storage so that the Registry Operator is made available.

Instructions are shown for configuring a persistent volume, which is required for production clusters. Where applicable, instructions are shown for configuring an empty directory as the storage location, which is available for only non-production clusters.

Additional instructions are provided for allowing the image registry to use block storage types by using the Recreate rollout strategy during upgrades.

Configuring registry storage for IBM Z

As a cluster administrator, following installation you must configure your registry to use storage.

Prerequisites

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

  • You have a cluster on IBM Z®.

  • You have provisioned persistent storage for your cluster, such as Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation.

    OpenShift Container Platform supports ReadWriteOnce access for image registry storage when you have only one replica. ReadWriteOnce access also requires that the registry uses the Recreate rollout strategy. To deploy an image registry that supports high availability with two or more replicas, ReadWriteMany access is required.

  • Must have 100Gi capacity.

Procedure

  1. To configure your registry to use storage, change the spec.storage.pvc in the configs.imageregistry/cluster resource.

    When you use shared storage, review your security settings to prevent outside access.

  2. Verify that you do not have a registry pod:

    $ oc get pod -n openshift-image-registry -l docker-registry=default
    Example output
    No resources found in openshift-image-registry namespace

    If you do have a registry pod in your output, you do not need to continue with this procedure.

  3. Check the registry configuration:

    $ oc edit configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io
    Example output
    storage:
  pvc:
    claim:

    Leave the claim field blank to allow the automatic creation of an image-registry-storage PVC.

  4. Check the clusteroperator status:

    $ oc get clusteroperator image-registry
    Example output
    NAME             VERSION              AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   DEGRADED   SINCE   MESSAGE
image-registry   4.17                 True        False         False      6h50m

  5. Ensure that your registry is set to managed to enable building and pushing of images.

    • Run:

      $ oc edit configs.imageregistry/cluster

      Then, change the line

      managementState: Removed

      to

      managementState: Managed

Configuring storage for the image registry in non-production clusters

You must configure storage for the Image Registry Operator. For non-production clusters, you can set the image registry to an empty directory. If you do so, all images are lost if you restart the registry.

Procedure

  • To set the image registry storage to an empty directory:

    $ oc patch configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io cluster --type merge --patch '{"spec":{"storage":{"emptyDir":{}}}}'

    Configure this option for only non-production clusters.

    If you run this command before the Image Registry Operator initializes its components, the oc patch command fails with the following error:

    Error from server (NotFound): configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io "cluster" not found

    Wait a few minutes and run the command again.

Completing installation on user-provisioned infrastructure

After you complete the Operator configuration, you can finish installing the cluster on infrastructure that you provide.

Prerequisites

  • Your control plane has initialized.

  • You have completed the initial Operator configuration.

Procedure

  1. Confirm that all the cluster components are online with the following command:

    $ watch -n5 oc get clusteroperators
    Example output
    NAME                                       VERSION   AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   DEGRADED   SINCE
authentication                             4.17.0    True        False         False      19m
baremetal                                  4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
cloud-credential                           4.17.0    True        False         False      40m
cluster-autoscaler                         4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
config-operator                            4.17.0    True        False         False      38m
console                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      26m
csi-snapshot-controller                    4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
dns                                        4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
etcd                                       4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
image-registry                             4.17.0    True        False         False      31m
ingress                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      30m
insights                                   4.17.0    True        False         False      31m
kube-apiserver                             4.17.0    True        False         False      26m
kube-controller-manager                    4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
kube-scheduler                             4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
kube-storage-version-migrator              4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
machine-api                                4.17.0    True        False         False      29m
machine-approver                           4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
machine-config                             4.17.0    True        False         False      36m
marketplace                                4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
monitoring                                 4.17.0    True        False         False      29m
network                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      38m
node-tuning                                4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
openshift-apiserver                        4.17.0    True        False         False      32m
openshift-controller-manager               4.17.0    True        False         False      30m
openshift-samples                          4.17.0    True        False         False      32m
operator-lifecycle-manager                 4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
operator-lifecycle-manager-catalog         4.17.0    True        False         False      37m
operator-lifecycle-manager-packageserver   4.17.0    True        False         False      32m
service-ca                                 4.17.0    True        False         False      38m
storage                                    4.17.0    True        False         False      37m

    Alternatively, the following command notifies you when all of the clusters are available. It also retrieves and displays credentials:

    $ ./openshift-install --dir <installation_directory> wait-for install-complete (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation files in.
    Example output
    INFO Waiting up to 30m0s for the cluster to initialize...

    The command succeeds when the Cluster Version Operator finishes deploying the OpenShift Container Platform cluster from Kubernetes API server.

    • 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.

  2. Confirm that the Kubernetes API server is communicating with the pods.

    1. To view a list of all pods, use the following command:

      $ oc get pods --all-namespaces
      Example output
      NAMESPACE                         NAME                                            READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
openshift-apiserver-operator      openshift-apiserver-operator-85cb746d55-zqhs8   1/1     Running     1          9m
openshift-apiserver               apiserver-67b9g                                 1/1     Running     0          3m
openshift-apiserver               apiserver-ljcmx                                 1/1     Running     0          1m
openshift-apiserver               apiserver-z25h4                                 1/1     Running     0          2m
openshift-authentication-operator authentication-operator-69d5d8bf84-vh2n8        1/1     Running     0          5m
...

    2. View the logs for a pod that is listed in the output of the previous command by using the following command:

      $ oc logs <pod_name> -n <namespace> (1)
      1 Specify the pod name and namespace, as shown in the output of the previous command.

      If the pod logs display, the Kubernetes API server can communicate with the cluster machines.

  3. For an installation with Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), additional steps are required to enable multipathing. Do not enable multipathing during installation.

    See "Enabling multipathing with kernel arguments on RHCOS" in the Postinstallation machine configuration tasks documentation for more information.

Telemetry access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.17, 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