Installing a cluster on GCP in a restricted network

In OKD 4.12, you can install a cluster on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in a restricted network by creating an internal mirror of the installation release content on an existing Google Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Prerequisites

• You reviewed details about the OKD installation and update processes.

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

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

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

• You have an existing VPC in GCP. While installing a cluster in a restricted network that uses installer-provisioned infrastructure, you cannot use the installer-provisioned VPC. You must use a user-provisioned VPC that satisfies one of the following requirements:

  • Contains the mirror registry

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

• If you use a firewall, you configured it to allow the sites that your cluster requires access to. While you might need to grant access to more sites, you must grant access to *.googleapis.com and accounts.google.com.

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

About installations in restricted networks

In OKD 4.12, you can perform an installation that does not require an active connection to the internet to obtain software components. Restricted network installations can be completed using installer-provisioned infrastructure or user-provisioned infrastructure, depending on the cloud platform to which you are installing the cluster.

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

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

Additional limits

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

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

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

Generating a key pair for cluster node SSH access

During an OKD installation, you can provide an SSH public key to the installation program. The key is passed to the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) 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 FCOS 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.

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 OKD 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 OKD, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

Creating the installation configuration file

You can customize the OKD cluster you install on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Prerequisites

• Obtain the OKD installation program and the pull secret for your cluster. For a restricted network installation, these files are on your mirror host.

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

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

• Obtain service principal permissions at the subscription level.

Procedure

1. Create the install-config.yaml file.

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

      $ ./openshift-install create install-config --dir <installation_directory> (1)

      1	For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name to store the files that the installation program creates.

      When specifying the directory:

      • Verify that the directory has the execute permission. This permission is required to run Terraform binaries under the installation directory.

      • Use an empty directory. Some installation assets, such as bootstrap X.509 certificates, have short expiration intervals, therefore 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 OKD version.

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

      1. Optional: Select an SSH key to use to access your cluster machines.

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

      2. Select gcp as the platform to target.

      3. If you have not configured the service account key for your GCP account on your computer, you must obtain it from GCP and paste the contents of the file or enter the absolute path to the file.

      4. Select the project ID to provision the cluster in. The default value is specified by the service account that you configured.

      5. Select the region to deploy the cluster to.

      6. Select the base domain to deploy the cluster to. The base domain corresponds to the public DNS zone that you created for your cluster.

      7. Enter a descriptive name for your cluster.

      8. Paste the pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager. This field is optional.

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

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

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

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

   2. Add the additionalTrustBundle parameter and value.

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

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

   3. Define the network and subnets for the VPC to install the cluster in under the parent platform.gcp field:

      network: <existing_vpc>
      controlPlaneSubnet: <control_plane_subnet>
      computeSubnet: <compute_subnet>

      For platform.gcp.network, specify the name for the existing Google VPC. For platform.gcp.controlPlaneSubnet and platform.gcp.computeSubnet, specify the existing subnets to deploy the control plane machines and compute machines, respectively.

   4. Add the image content resources, which resemble the following YAML excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

Installation configuration parameters

Before you deploy an OKD 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.

Required configuration parameters

Required installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

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.

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

networking:
  serviceNetwork:
   - 172.30.0.0/16

networking:
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16

Optional configuration parameters

Optional installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

sshKey:
  <key1>
  <key2>
  <key3>

Additional Google Cloud Platform (GCP) configuration parameters

Additional GCP configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Minimum resource requirements for cluster installation

Each cluster machine must meet the following minimum requirements:

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. OKD 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 Fedora 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 Fedora 7 compute machines is deprecated and has been removed in OKD 4.10 and later.

If an instance type for your platform meets the minimum requirements for cluster machines, it is supported to use in OKD.

Tested instance types for GCP

The following Google Cloud Platform instance types have been tested with OKD.

Machine series

• C2

• E2

• M1

• N1

• N2

• N2D

• Tau T2D

Using custom machine types

Using a custom machine type to install a OKD cluster is supported.

Consider the following when using a custom machine type:

• Similar to predefined instance types, custom machine types must meet the minimum resource requirements for control plane and compute machines. For more information, see “Minimum resource requirements for cluster installation”.

• The name of the custom machine type must adhere to the following syntax:

  custom-<number_of_cpus>-<amount_of_memory_in_mb>

  For example, custom-6-20480.

As part of the installation process, you specify the custom machine type in the install-config.yaml file.

Sample install-config.yaml file with a custom machine type

compute:
- architecture: amd64
  hyperthreading: Enabled
  name: worker
  platform:
    gcp:
      type: custom-6-20480
  replicas: 2
controlPlane:
  architecture: amd64
  hyperthreading: Enabled
  name: master
  platform:
    gcp:
      type: custom-6-20480
  replicas: 3

Sample customized install-config.yaml file for GCP

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

apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
controlPlane:  (2) (3)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (4)
  name: master
  platform:
    gcp:
      type: n2-standard-4
      zones:
      - us-central1-a
      - us-central1-c
      osDisk:
        diskType: pd-ssd
        diskSizeGB: 1024
        encryptionKey: (5)
          kmsKey:
            name: worker-key
            keyRing: test-machine-keys
            location: global
            projectID: project-id
      tags: (6)
      - control-plane-tag1
      - control-plane-tag2
  replicas: 3
compute:  (2) (3)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (4)
  name: worker
  platform:
    gcp:
      type: n2-standard-4
      zones:
      - us-central1-a
      - us-central1-c
      osDisk:
        diskType: pd-standard
        diskSizeGB: 128
        encryptionKey: (5)
          kmsKey:
            name: worker-key
            keyRing: test-machine-keys
            location: global
            projectID: project-id
        tags: (6)
        - compute-tag1
        - compute-tag2
  replicas: 3
metadata:
  name: test-cluster (1)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OVNKubernetes (7)
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  gcp:
    projectID: openshift-production (1)
    region: us-central1 (1)
    defaultMachinePlatform:
      tags: (6)
      - global-tag1
      - global-tag2
    network: existing_vpc (8)
    controlPlaneSubnet: control_plane_subnet (9)
    computeSubnet: compute_subnet (10)
pullSecret: '{"auths":{"<local_registry>": {"auth": "<credentials>","email": "you@example.com"}}}' (11)
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (12)
additionalTrustBundle: | (13)
  -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
  <MY_TRUSTED_CA_CERT>
  -----END CERTIFICATE-----
imageContentSources: (14)
- mirrors:
  - <local_registry>/<local_repository_name>/release
  source: quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release
- mirrors:
  - <local_registry>/<local_repository_name>/release
  source: quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev

Create an Ingress Controller with global access on GCP

You can create an Ingress Controller that has global access to a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cluster. Global access is only available to Ingress Controllers using internal load balancers.

Prerequisites

• You created the install-config.yaml and complete any modifications to it.

Procedure

Create an Ingress Controller with global access on a new GCP cluster.

1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create a manifest file:

   $ ./openshift-install create manifests --dir <installation_directory> (1)

   1	For <installation_directory>, specify the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

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

   $ ls <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml

   Example output

   cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml

2. Open the cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml file in an editor and enter a custom resource (CR) that describes the Operator configuration you want:

   Sample clientAccess configuration to Global

     spec:
       endpointPublishingStrategy:
         loadBalancer:
           providerParameters:
             gcp:
               clientAccess: Global (1)
             type: GCP
           scope: Internal          (2)
         type: LoadBalancerService

   1	Set gcp.clientAccess to Global.
   2	Global access is only available to Ingress Controllers using internal load balancers.

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 OKD 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 OpenStack, 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 Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) 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 FCOS 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.

2. Save the file and reference it when installing OKD.

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.

Deploying the cluster

You can install OKD on a compatible cloud platform.

Prerequisites

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

• Obtain the OKD installation program and the pull secret for your cluster.

Procedure

1. Remove any existing GCP credentials that do not use the service account key for the GCP account that you configured for your cluster and that are stored in the following locations:

   • The GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS, GOOGLE_CLOUD_KEYFILE_JSON, or GCLOUD_KEYFILE_JSON environment variables

   • The ~/.gcp/osServiceAccount.json file

   • The gcloud cli default credentials

2. 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.

3. Optional: You can reduce the number of permissions for the service account that you used to install the cluster.

   • If you assigned the Owner role to your service account, you can remove that role and replace it with the Viewer role.

   • If you included the Service Account Key Admin role, you can remove it.

Verification

When the cluster deployment completes successfully:

• The terminal displays directions for accessing your cluster, including a link to the web console and credentials for the kubeadmin user.

• Credential information also outputs to <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log.

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

Installing the OpenShift CLI by downloading the binary

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

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 link:https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

2. Download oc.tar.gz.

3. Unpack the archive:

   $ tar xvzf <file>

4. 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 link:https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

2. Download oc.zip.

3. Unzip the archive with a ZIP program.

4. 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 link:https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

2. Download oc.tar.gz.

3. Unpack and unzip the archive.

4. 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 OKD installation.

Prerequisites

• You deployed an OKD cluster.

• You installed the oc CLI.

Procedure

1. Export the kubeadmin credentials:

   $ export KUBECONFIG=<installation_directory>/auth/kubeconfig (1)

   1	For <installation_directory>, specify the path to the directory that you stored the installation files in.

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

   $ oc whoami

   Example output

   system:admin

Disabling the default OperatorHub catalog sources

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

Procedure

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

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

Additional resources

• See About remote health monitoring for more information about the Telemetry service

Next steps

• Validate an installation.

• Customize your cluster.

• Configure image streams for the Cluster Samples Operator and the must-gather tool.

• Learn how to use Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) on restricted networks.

• If the mirror registry that you used to install your cluster has a trusted CA, add it to the cluster by configuring additional trust stores.

• If necessary, you can opt out of remote health reporting.