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Installing a cluster on Azure into a government region - Installing on Azure | Installing | OpenShift Container Platform 4.9
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Installing a cluster on Azure into a government region

Prerequisites

Azure government regions

OpenShift Container Platform supports deploying a cluster to Microsoft Azure Government (MAG) regions. MAG is specifically designed for US government agencies at the federal, state, and local level, as well as contractors, educational institutions, and other US customers that must run sensitive workloads on Azure. MAG is composed of government-only data center regions, all granted an Impact Level 5 Provisional Authorization.

Installing to a MAG region requires manually configuring the Azure Government dedicated cloud instance and region in the install-config.yaml file. You must also update your service principal to reference the appropriate government environment.

The Azure government region cannot be selected using the guided terminal prompts from the installation program. You must define the region manually in the install-config.yaml file. Remember to also set the dedicated cloud instance, like AzureUSGovernmentCloud, based on the region specified.

Private clusters

You can deploy a private OpenShift Container Platform cluster that does not expose external endpoints. Private clusters are accessible from only an internal network and are not visible to the internet.

By default, OpenShift Container Platform is provisioned to use publicly-accessible DNS and endpoints. A private cluster sets the DNS, Ingress Controller, and API server to private when you deploy your cluster. This means that the cluster resources are only accessible from your internal network and are not visible to the internet.

If the cluster has any public subnets, load balancer services created by administrators might be publicly accessible. To ensure cluster security, verify that these services are explicitly annotated as private.

To deploy a private cluster, you must:

  • Use existing networking that meets your requirements. Your cluster resources might be shared between other clusters on the network.

  • Deploy from a machine that has access to:

    • The API services for the cloud to which you provision.

    • The hosts on the network that you provision.

    • The internet to obtain installation media.

You can use any machine that meets these access requirements and follows your company’s guidelines. For example, this machine can be a bastion host on your cloud network or a machine that has access to the network through a VPN.

Private clusters in Azure

To create a private cluster on Microsoft Azure, you must provide an existing private VNet and subnets to host the cluster. The installation program must also be able to resolve the DNS records that the cluster requires. The installation program configures the Ingress Operator and API server for only internal traffic.

Depending how your network connects to the private VNET, you might need to use a DNS forwarder to resolve the cluster’s private DNS records. The cluster’s machines use 168.63.129.16 internally for DNS resolution. For more information, see What is Azure Private DNS? and What is IP address 168.63.129.16? in the Azure documentation.

The cluster still requires access to internet to access the Azure APIs.

The following items are not required or created when you install a private cluster:

  • A BaseDomainResourceGroup, since the cluster does not create public records

  • Public IP addresses

  • Public DNS records

  • Public endpoints

    The cluster is configured so that the Operators do not create public records for the cluster and all cluster machines are placed in the private subnets that you specify.

Limitations

Private clusters on Azure are subject to only the limitations that are associated with the use of an existing VNet.

User-defined outbound routing

In OpenShift Container Platform, you can choose your own outbound routing for a cluster to connect to the internet. This allows you to skip the creation of public IP addresses and the public load balancer.

You can configure user-defined routing by modifying parameters in the install-config.yaml file before installing your cluster. A pre-existing VNet is required to use outbound routing when installing a cluster; the installation program is not responsible for configuring this.

When configuring a cluster to use user-defined routing, the installation program does not create the following resources:

  • Outbound rules for access to the internet.

  • Public IPs for the public load balancer.

  • Kubernetes Service object to add the cluster machines to the public load balancer for outbound requests.

You must ensure the following items are available before setting user-defined routing:

  • Egress to the internet is possible to pull container images, unless using an internal registry mirror.

  • The cluster can access Azure APIs.

  • Various allowlist endpoints are configured. You can reference these endpoints in the Configuring your firewall section.

There are several pre-existing networking setups that are supported for internet access using user-defined routing.

Private cluster with network address translation

You can use Azure VNET network address translation (NAT) to provide outbound internet access for the subnets in your cluster. You can reference Create a NAT gateway using Azure CLI in the Azure documentation for configuration instructions.

When using a VNet setup with Azure NAT and user-defined routing configured, you can create a private cluster with no public endpoints.

Private cluster with Azure Firewall

You can use Azure Firewall to provide outbound routing for the VNet used to install the cluster. You can learn more about providing user-defined routing with Azure Firewall in the Azure documentation.

When using a VNet setup with Azure Firewall and user-defined routing configured, you can create a private cluster with no public endpoints.

Private cluster with a proxy configuration

You can use a proxy with user-defined routing to allow egress to the internet. You must ensure that cluster Operators do not access Azure APIs using a proxy; Operators must have access to Azure APIs outside of the proxy.

When using the default route table for subnets, with 0.0.0.0/0 populated automatically by Azure, all Azure API requests are routed over Azure’s internal network even though the IP addresses are public. As long as the Network Security Group rules allow egress to Azure API endpoints, proxies with user-defined routing configured allow you to create private clusters with no public endpoints.

Private cluster with no internet access

You can install a private network that restricts all access to the internet, except the Azure API. This is accomplished by mirroring the release image registry locally. Your cluster must have access to the following:

  • An internal registry mirror that allows for pulling container images

  • Access to Azure APIs

With these requirements available, you can use user-defined routing to create private clusters with no public endpoints.

About reusing a VNet for your OpenShift Container Platform cluster

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.9, you can deploy a cluster into an existing Azure Virtual Network (VNet) in Microsoft Azure. If you do, you must also use existing subnets within the VNet and routing rules.

By deploying OpenShift Container Platform into an existing Azure VNet, you might be able to avoid service limit constraints in new accounts or more easily abide by the operational constraints that your company’s guidelines set. This is a good option to use if you cannot obtain the infrastructure creation permissions that are required to create the VNet.

Requirements for using your VNet

When you deploy a cluster by using an existing VNet, you must perform additional network configuration before you install the cluster. In installer-provisioned infrastructure clusters, the installer usually creates the following components, but it does not create them when you install into an existing VNet:

  • Subnets

  • Route tables

  • VNets

  • Network Security Groups

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

If you use a custom VNet, you must correctly configure it and its subnets for the installation program and the cluster to use. The installation program cannot subdivide network ranges for the cluster to use, set route tables for the subnets, or set VNet options like DHCP, so you must do so before you install the cluster.

The cluster must be able to access the resource group that contains the existing VNet and subnets. While all of the resources that the cluster creates are placed in a separate resource group that it creates, some network resources are used from a separate group. Some cluster Operators must be able to access resources in both resource groups. For example, the Machine API controller attaches NICS for the virtual machines that it creates to subnets from the networking resource group.

Your VNet must meet the following characteristics:

  • The VNet’s CIDR block must contain the Networking.MachineCIDR range, which is the IP address pool for cluster machines.

  • The VNet and its subnets must belong to the same resource group, and the subnets must be configured to use Azure-assigned DHCP IP addresses instead of static IP addresses.

You must provide two subnets within your VNet, one for the control plane machines and one for the compute machines. Because Azure distributes machines in different availability zones within the region that you specify, your cluster will have high availability by default.

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

  • All the specified subnets exist.

  • There are two private subnets, one for the control plane machines and one for the compute machines.

  • The subnet CIDRs belong to the machine CIDR that you specified. Machines are not provisioned in availability zones that you do not provide private subnets for. If required, the installation program creates public load balancers that manage the control plane and worker nodes, and Azure allocates a public IP address to them.

If you destroy a cluster that uses an existing VNet, the VNet is not deleted.

Network security group requirements

The network security groups for the subnets that host the compute and control plane machines require specific access to ensure that the cluster communication is correct. You must create rules to allow access to the required cluster communication ports.

The network security group rules must be in place before you install the cluster. If you attempt to install a cluster without the required access, the installation program cannot reach the Azure APIs, and installation fails.
Table 1. Required ports
Port Description Control plane Compute

80

Allows HTTP traffic

x

443

Allows HTTPS traffic

x

6443

Allows communication to the control plane machines

x

22623

Allows internal communication to the machine config server for provisioning machines

x

Currently, there is no supported way to block or restrict the machine config server endpoint. The machine config server must be exposed to the network so that newly-provisioned machines, which have no existing configuration or state, are able to fetch their configuration. In this model, the root of trust is the certificate signing requests (CSR) endpoint, which is where the kubelet sends its certificate signing request for approval to join the cluster. Because of this, machine configs should not be used to distribute sensitive information, such as secrets and certificates.

To ensure that the machine config server endpoints, ports 22623 and 22624, are secured in bare metal scenarios, customers must configure proper network policies.

Because cluster components do not modify the user-provided network security groups, which the Kubernetes controllers update, a pseudo-network security group is created for the Kubernetes controller to modify without impacting the rest of the environment.

Additional resources

Division of permissions

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

The Azure credentials that you use when you create your cluster do not need the networking permissions that are required to make VNets and core networking components within the VNet, such as subnets, routing tables, internet gateways, NAT, and VPN. You still need permission to make the application resources that the machines within the cluster require, such as load balancers, security groups, storage accounts, and nodes.

Isolation between clusters

Because the cluster is unable to modify network security groups in an existing subnet, there is no way to isolate clusters from each other on the VNet.

Internet access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.9, 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.

Generating a key pair for cluster node SSH access

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

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

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

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

You must use a local key, not one that you configured with platform-specific approaches such as AWS key pairs.
Procedure

  1. If you do not have an existing SSH key pair on your local machine to use for authentication onto your cluster nodes, create one. For example, on a computer that uses a Linux operating system, run the following command:

    $ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N '' -f <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name, such as ~/.ssh/id_ed25519, of the new SSH key. If you have an existing key pair, ensure your public key is in the your ~/.ssh directory.

    If you plan to install an OpenShift Container Platform cluster that uses FIPS Validated / Modules in Process cryptographic libraries on the x86_64 architecture, do not create a key that uses the ed25519 algorithm. Instead, create a key that uses the rsa or ecdsa algorithm.

  2. View the public SSH key:

    $ cat <path>/<file_name>.pub

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

    $ cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

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

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

    1. If the ssh-agent process is not already running for your local user, start it as a background task:

      $ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
      Example output
      Agent pid 31874

      If your cluster is in FIPS mode, only use FIPS-compliant algorithms to generate the SSH key. The key must be either RSA or ECDSA.

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

    $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1 Specify the path and file name for your SSH private key, such as ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
    Example output
    Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)
Next steps

  • When you install OpenShift Container Platform, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OpenShift Container Platform, download the installation file on a local computer.

Prerequisites

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

Procedure

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

  2. Select your infrastructure provider.

  3. Navigate to the page for your installation type, download the installation program for your operating system, and place the file in the directory where you will store the installation configuration files.

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

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

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

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

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

Manually creating the installation configuration file

When installing OpenShift Container Platform on Microsoft Azure into a government region, you must manually generate your 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.

    For some platform types, you can alternatively run ./openshift-install create install-config --dir <installation_directory> to generate an install-config.yaml file. You can provide details about your cluster configuration at the prompts.

  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.

Installation configuration parameters

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

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

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

Required configuration parameters

Required installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 2. Required parameters
Parameter Description Values

apiVersion

The API version for the install-config.yaml content. The current version is v1. The installer may also support older API versions.

String

baseDomain

The base domain of your cloud provider. The base domain is used to create routes to your OpenShift Container Platform cluster components. The full DNS name for your cluster is a combination of the baseDomain and metadata.name parameter values that uses the <metadata.name>.<baseDomain> format.

A fully-qualified domain or subdomain name, such as example.com.

metadata

Kubernetes resource ObjectMeta, from which only the name parameter is consumed.

Object

metadata.name

The name of the cluster. DNS records for the cluster are all subdomains of {{.metadata.name}}.{{.baseDomain}}.

String of lowercase letters, hyphens (-), and periods (.), such as dev.

platform

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

Object

pullSecret

Get a pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager to authenticate downloading container images for OpenShift Container Platform components from services such as Quay.io.

 
{
   "auths":{
      "cloud.openshift.com":{
         "auth":"b3Blb=",
         "email":"you@example.com"
      },
      "quay.io":{
         "auth":"b3Blb=",
         "email":"you@example.com"
      }
   }
}

Network configuration parameters

You can customize your installation configuration based on the requirements of your existing network infrastructure. For example, you can expand the IP address block for the cluster network or provide different IP address blocks than the defaults.

Only IPv4 addresses are supported.

Table 3. Network parameters
Parameter Description Values

networking

The configuration for the cluster network.

Object

You cannot modify parameters specified by the networking object after installation.

networking.networkType

The cluster network provider Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin to install.

Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. OpenShiftSDN is a CNI provider for all-Linux networks. OVNKubernetes is a CNI provider for Linux networks and hybrid networks that contain both Linux and Windows servers. The default value is OpenShiftSDN.

networking.clusterNetwork

The IP address blocks for pods.

The default value is 10.128.0.0/14 with a host prefix of /23.

If you specify multiple IP address blocks, the blocks must not overlap.

An array of objects. For example:

networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23

networking.clusterNetwork.cidr

Required if you use networking.clusterNetwork. An IP address block.

An IPv4 network.

An IP address block in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation. The prefix length for an IPv4 block is between 0 and 32.

networking.clusterNetwork.hostPrefix

The subnet prefix length to assign to each individual node. For example, if hostPrefix is set to 23 then each node is assigned a /23 subnet out of the given cidr. A hostPrefix value of 23 provides 510 (2^(32 - 23) - 2) pod IP addresses.

A subnet prefix.

The default value is 23.

networking.serviceNetwork

The IP address block for services. The default value is 172.30.0.0/16.

The OpenShift SDN and OVN-Kubernetes network providers support only a single IP address block for the service network.

An array with an IP address block in CIDR format. For example:

networking:
  serviceNetwork:
   - 172.30.0.0/16

networking.machineNetwork

The IP address blocks for machines.

If you specify multiple IP address blocks, the blocks must not overlap.

An array of objects. For example:

networking:
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16

networking.machineNetwork.cidr

Required if you use networking.machineNetwork. An IP address block. The default value is 10.0.0.0/16 for all platforms other than libvirt. For libvirt, the default value is 192.168.126.0/24.

An IP network block in CIDR notation.

For example, 10.0.0.0/16.

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

Optional configuration parameters

Optional installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 4. Optional parameters
Parameter Description Values

additionalTrustBundle

A PEM-encoded X.509 certificate bundle that is added to the nodes' trusted certificate store. This trust bundle may also be used when a proxy has been configured.

String

compute

The configuration for the machines that comprise the compute nodes.

Array of MachinePool objects.

compute.architecture

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

String

compute.hyperthreading

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

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

Enabled or Disabled

compute.name

Required if you use compute. The name of the machine pool.

worker

compute.platform

Required if you use compute. Use this parameter to specify the cloud provider to host the worker machines. This parameter value must match the controlPlane.platform parameter value.

aws, azure, gcp, openstack, ovirt, vsphere, or {}

compute.replicas

The number of compute machines, which are also known as worker machines, to provision.

A positive integer greater than or equal to 2. The default value is 3.

controlPlane

The configuration for the machines that comprise the control plane.

Array of MachinePool objects.

controlPlane.architecture

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

String

controlPlane.hyperthreading

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

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

Enabled or Disabled

controlPlane.name

Required if you use controlPlane. The name of the machine pool.

master

controlPlane.platform

Required if you use controlPlane. Use this parameter to specify the cloud provider that hosts the control plane machines. This parameter value must match the compute.platform parameter value.

aws, azure, gcp, openstack, ovirt, vsphere, or {}

controlPlane.replicas

The number of control plane machines to provision.

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

credentialsMode

The Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) mode. If no mode is specified, the CCO dynamically tries to determine the capabilities of the provided credentials, with a preference for mint mode on the platforms where multiple modes are supported.

Not all CCO modes are supported for all cloud providers. For more information on CCO modes, see the Cloud Credential Operator entry in the Cluster Operators reference content.

If your AWS account has service control policies (SCP) enabled, you must configure the credentialsMode parameter to Mint, Passthrough or Manual.

Mint, Passthrough, Manual or an empty string ("").

fips

Enable or disable FIPS mode. The default is false (disabled). If FIPS mode is enabled, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines that OpenShift Container Platform runs on bypass the default Kubernetes cryptography suite and use the cryptography modules that are provided with RHCOS instead.

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

If you are using Azure File storage, you cannot enable FIPS mode.

false or true

imageContentSources

Sources and repositories for the release-image content.

Array of objects. Includes a source and, optionally, mirrors, as described in the following rows of this table.

imageContentSources.source

Required if you use imageContentSources. Specify the repository that users refer to, for example, in image pull specifications.

String

imageContentSources.mirrors

Specify one or more repositories that may also contain the same images.

Array of strings

publish

How to publish or expose the user-facing endpoints of your cluster, such as the Kubernetes API, OpenShift routes.

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

sshKey

The SSH key or keys to authenticate access your cluster machines.

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

One or more keys. For example:

sshKey:
  <key1>
  <key2>
  <key3>

Additional Azure configuration parameters

Additional Azure configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 5. Additional Azure parameters
Parameter Description Values

compute.platform.azure.osDisk.diskSizeGB

The Azure disk size for the VM.

Integer that represents the size of the disk in GB. The default is 128.

compute.platform.azure.osDisk.diskType

Defines the type of disk.

standard_LRS, premium_LRS, or standardSSD_LRS. The default is premium_LRS.

controlPlane.platform.azure.osDisk.diskSizeGB

The Azure disk size for the VM.

Integer that represents the size of the disk in GB. The default is 1024.

controlPlane.platform.azure.osDisk.diskType

Defines the type of disk.

premium_LRS or standardSSD_LRS. The default is premium_LRS.

platform.azure.baseDomainResourceGroupName

The name of the resource group that contains the DNS zone for your base domain.

String, for example production_cluster.

platform.azure.resourceGroupName

The name of an already existing resource group to install your cluster to. This resource group must be empty and only used for this specific cluster; the cluster components assume ownership of all resources in the resource group. If you limit the service principal scope of the installation program to this resource group, you must ensure all other resources used by the installation program in your environment have the necessary permissions, such as the public DNS zone and virtual network. Destroying the cluster using the installation program deletes this resource group.

String, for example existing_resource_group.

platform.azure.outboundType

The outbound routing strategy used to connect your cluster to the internet. If you are using user-defined routing, you must have pre-existing networking available where the outbound routing has already been configured prior to installing a cluster. The installation program is not responsible for configuring user-defined routing.

LoadBalancer or UserDefinedRouting. The default is LoadBalancer.

platform.azure.region

The name of the Azure region that hosts your cluster.

Any valid region name, such as centralus.

platform.azure.zone

List of availability zones to place machines in. For high availability, specify at least two zones.

List of zones, for example ["1", "2", "3"].

platform.azure.networkResourceGroupName

The name of the resource group that contains the existing VNet that you want to deploy your cluster to. This name cannot be the same as the platform.azure.baseDomainResourceGroupName.

String.

platform.azure.virtualNetwork

The name of the existing VNet that you want to deploy your cluster to.

String.

platform.azure.controlPlaneSubnet

The name of the existing subnet in your VNet that you want to deploy your control plane machines to.

Valid CIDR, for example 10.0.0.0/16.

platform.azure.computeSubnet

The name of the existing subnet in your VNet that you want to deploy your compute machines to.

Valid CIDR, for example 10.0.0.0/16.

platform.azure.cloudName

The name of the Azure cloud environment that is used to configure the Azure SDK with the appropriate Azure API endpoints. If empty, the default value AzurePublicCloud is used.

Any valid cloud environment, such as AzurePublicCloud or AzureUSGovernmentCloud.

You cannot customize Azure Availability Zones or Use tags to organize your Azure resources with an Azure cluster.

Minimum resource requirements for cluster installation

Each cluster machine must meet the following minimum requirements:

Table 6. Minimum resource requirements
Machine Operating System vCPU [1] Virtual RAM Storage IOPS [2]

Bootstrap

RHCOS

4

16 GB

100 GB

300

Control plane

RHCOS

4

16 GB

100 GB

300

Compute

RHCOS, RHEL 7.9, or RHEL 8.4 [3]

2

8 GB

100 GB

300

  1. One vCPU is equivalent to one physical core when simultaneous multithreading (SMT), or hyperthreading, is not enabled. When enabled, use the following formula to calculate the corresponding ratio: (threads per core × cores) × sockets = vCPUs.

  2. OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes are sensitive to disk performance, and faster storage is recommended, particularly for etcd on the control plane nodes which require a 10 ms p99 fsync duration. Note that on many cloud platforms, storage size and IOPS scale together, so you might need to over-allocate storage volume to obtain sufficient performance.

  3. As with all user-provisioned installations, if you choose to use RHEL compute machines in your cluster, you take responsibility for all operating system life cycle management and maintenance, including performing system updates, applying patches, and completing all other required tasks. Use of RHEL 7 compute machines is deprecated and planned for removal in a future release of OpenShift Container Platform 4.

You are required to use Azure virtual machines with premiumIO set to true. The machines must also have the hyperVGeneration property contain V1.

Sample customized install-config.yaml file for Azure

You can customize the install-config.yaml file to specify more details about your OpenShift Container Platform cluster’s platform or modify the values of the required parameters.

This sample YAML file is provided for reference only. You must obtain your install-config.yaml file by using the installation program and modify it.

 
apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
controlPlane: (2)
  hyperthreading: Enabled  (3) (4)
  name: master
  platform:
    azure:
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 1024 (5)
        diskType: Premium_LRS
      type: Standard_D8s_v3
  replicas: 3
compute: (2)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  name: worker
  platform:
    azure:
      type: Standard_D2s_v3
      osDisk:
        diskSizeGB: 512 (5)
        diskType: Standard_LRS
      zones: (6)
      - "1"
      - "2"
      - "3"
  replicas: 5
metadata:
  name: test-cluster (1)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OpenShiftSDN
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  azure:
    baseDomainResourceGroupName: resource_group (7)
    region: usgovvirginia
    resourceGroupName: existing_resource_group (8)
    networkResourceGroupName: vnet_resource_group (9)
    virtualNetwork: vnet (10)
    controlPlaneSubnet: control_plane_subnet (11)
    computeSubnet: compute_subnet (12)
    outboundType: UserDefinedRouting (13)
    cloudName: AzureUSGovernmentCloud (14)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (1)
fips: false (15)
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (16)
publish: Internal (17)
1 Required.
2 If you do not provide these parameters and values, the installation program provides the default value.
3 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.
4 Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines' cores. You can disable it by setting the parameter value to Disabled. If you disable simultaneous multithreading in some cluster machines, you must disable it in all cluster machines.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance. Use larger virtual machine types, such as Standard_D8s_v3, for your machines if you disable simultaneous multithreading.
5 You can specify the size of the disk to use in GB. Minimum recommendation for control plane nodes is 1024 GB.
6 Specify a list of zones to deploy your machines to. For high availability, specify at least two zones.
7 Specify the name of the resource group that contains the DNS zone for your base domain.
8 Specify the name of an already existing resource group to install your cluster to. If undefined, a new resource group is created for the cluster.
9 If you use an existing VNet, specify the name of the resource group that contains it.
10 If you use an existing VNet, specify its name.
11 If you use an existing VNet, specify the name of the subnet to host the control plane machines.
12 If you use an existing VNet, specify the name of the subnet to host the compute machines.
13 You can customize your own outbound routing. Configuring user-defined routing prevents exposing external endpoints in your cluster. User-defined routing for egress requires deploying your cluster to an existing VNet.
14 Specify the name of the Azure cloud environment to deploy your cluster to. Set AzureUSGovernmentCloud to deploy to a Microsoft Azure Government (MAG) region. The default value is AzurePublicCloud.
15 Whether to enable or disable FIPS mode. By default, FIPS mode is not enabled. If FIPS mode is enabled, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines that OpenShift Container Platform runs on bypass the default Kubernetes cryptography suite and use the cryptography modules that are provided with RHCOS instead.

The use of FIPS Validated / Modules in Process cryptographic libraries is only supported on OpenShift Container Platform deployments on the x86_64 architecture.
16 You can optionally provide the sshKey value that you use to access the machines in your cluster.

For production OpenShift Container Platform clusters on which you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, specify an SSH key that your ssh-agent process uses.
17 How to publish the user-facing endpoints of your cluster. Set publish to Internal to deploy a private cluster, which cannot be accessed from the internet. The default value is External.

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

    The installation program does not support the proxy readinessEndpoints field.

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

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

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

Deploying the cluster

You can install OpenShift Container Platform on a compatible cloud platform.

You can run the create cluster command of the installation program only once, during initial installation.
Prerequisites

  • Configure an account with the cloud platform that hosts your cluster.

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

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and initialize the cluster deployment:

    $ ./openshift-install create cluster --dir <installation_directory> \ (1)
    --log-level=info (2)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the location of your customized ./install-config.yaml file.
    2 To view different installation details, specify warn, debug, or error instead of info.

    If the cloud provider account that you configured on your host does not have sufficient permissions to deploy the cluster, the installation process stops, and the missing permissions are displayed.

    When the cluster deployment completes, directions for accessing your cluster, including a link to its web console and credentials for the kubeadmin user, display in your terminal.

    Example output
    ...
INFO Install complete!
INFO To access the cluster as the system:admin user when using 'oc', run 'export KUBECONFIG=/home/myuser/install_dir/auth/kubeconfig'
INFO Access the OpenShift web-console here: https://console-openshift-console.apps.mycluster.example.com
INFO Login to the console with user: "kubeadmin", and password: "4vYBz-Ee6gm-ymBZj-Wt5AL"
INFO Time elapsed: 36m22s

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

    • The Ignition config files that the installation program generates contain certificates that expire after 24 hours, which are then renewed at that time. If the cluster is shut down before renewing the certificates and the cluster is later restarted after the 24 hours have elapsed, the cluster automatically recovers the expired certificates. The exception is that you must manually approve the pending node-bootstrapper certificate signing requests (CSRs) to recover kubelet certificates. See the documentation for Recovering from expired control plane certificates for more information.

    • It is recommended that you use Ignition config files within 12 hours after they are generated because the 24-hour certificate rotates from 16 to 22 hours after the cluster is installed. By using the Ignition config files within 12 hours, you can avoid installation failure if the certificate update runs during installation.

    You must not delete the installation program or the files that the installation program creates. Both are required to delete the cluster.

Installing the OpenShift CLI by downloading the binary

You can install the OpenShift CLI (oc) to interact with OpenShift Container Platform from a command-line interface. You can install oc on Linux, Windows, or macOS.

If you installed an earlier version of oc, you cannot use it to complete all of the commands in OpenShift Container Platform 4.9. Download and install the new version of oc.

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Linux

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

Procedure

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

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

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.9 Linux Client entry and save the file.

  4. Unpack the archive:

    $ tar xvf <file>

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

    To check your PATH, execute the following command:

    $ echo $PATH

After you install the OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Windows

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

Procedure

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

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

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.9 Windows Client entry and save the file.

  4. Unzip the archive with a ZIP program.

  5. Move the oc binary to a directory that is on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, open the command prompt and execute the following command:

    C:\> path

After you install the OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

C:\> oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on macOS

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

Procedure

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

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

  3. Click Download Now next to the OpenShift v4.9 MacOSX Client entry and save the file.

  4. Unpack and unzip the archive.

  5. Move the oc binary to a directory on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, open a terminal and execute the following command:

    $ echo $PATH

After you install the OpenShift CLI, it is available using the oc command:

$ oc <command>

Logging in to the cluster by using the CLI

You can log in to your cluster as a default system user by exporting the cluster kubeconfig file. The kubeconfig file contains information about the cluster that is used by the CLI to connect a client to the correct cluster and API server. The file is specific to a cluster and is created during OpenShift Container Platform installation.

Prerequisites

  • You deployed an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

  • You installed the oc CLI.

Procedure

  1. Export the kubeadmin credentials:

    $ export KUBECONFIG=<installation_directory>/auth/kubeconfig (1)
    1 For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation files in.

  2. Verify you can run oc commands successfully using the exported configuration:

    $ oc whoami
    Example output
    system:admin
Additional resources

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

Telemetry access for OpenShift Container Platform

In OpenShift Container Platform 4.9, 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