Adding compute machines to bare metal

Adding compute machines to bare metal

You can add more compute machines to your OKD cluster on bare metal.

Prerequisites

You installed a cluster on bare metal.
You have installation media and Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) images that you used to create your cluster. If you do not have these files, you must obtain them by following the instructions in the installation procedure.
If a DHCP server is available for your user-provisioned infrastructure, you have added the details for the additional compute machines to your DHCP server configuration. This includes a persistent IP address, DNS server information, and a hostname for each machine.
You have updated your DNS configuration to include the record name and IP address of each compute machine that you are adding. You have validated that DNS lookup and reverse DNS lookup resolve correctly.

If you do not have access to the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) images that were used to create your cluster, you can add more compute machines to your OKD cluster with newer versions of Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) images. For instructions, see Adding new nodes to UPI cluster fails after upgrading to OpenShift 4.6+.

Creating Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) machines

Before you add more compute machines to a cluster that you installed on bare metal infrastructure, you must create FCOS machines for it to use. You can either use an ISO image or network PXE booting to create the machines.

You must use the same ISO image that you used to install a cluster to deploy all new nodes in a cluster. It is recommended to use the same Ignition config file. The nodes automatically upgrade themselves on the first boot before running the workloads. You can add the nodes before or after the upgrade.

Creating FCOS machines using an ISO image

You can create more Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) compute machines for your bare metal cluster by using an ISO image to create the machines.

Prerequisites

Obtain the URL of the Ignition config file for the compute machines for your cluster. You uploaded this file to your HTTP server during installation.
You must have the OpenShift CLI (oc) installed.

Procedure

Extract the Ignition config file from the cluster by running the following command:

$ oc extract -n openshift-machine-api secret/worker-user-data-managed --keys=userData --to=- > worker.ign

Upload the worker.ign Ignition config file you exported from your cluster to your HTTP server. Note the URLs of these files.
You can validate that the ignition files are available on the URLs. The following example gets the Ignition config files for the compute node:
```
$ curl -k http://<HTTP_server>/worker.ign
```

You can access the ISO image for booting your new machine by running to following command:

RHCOS_VHD_ORIGIN_URL=$(oc -n openshift-machine-config-operator get configmap/coreos-bootimages -o jsonpath='{.data.stream}' | jq -r '.architectures.<architecture>.artifacts.metal.formats.iso.disk.location')

Use the ISO file to install FCOS on more compute machines. Use the same method that you used when you created machines before you installed the cluster:
- Burn the ISO image to a disk and boot it directly.
- Use ISO redirection with a LOM interface.

Boot the FCOS ISO image without specifying any options, or interrupting the live boot sequence. Wait for the installer to boot into a shell prompt in the FCOS live environment.

You can interrupt the FCOS installation boot process to add kernel arguments. However, for this ISO procedure you must use the coreos-installer command as outlined in the following steps, instead of adding kernel arguments.

Run the coreos-installer command and specify the options that meet your installation requirements. At a minimum, you must specify the URL that points to the Ignition config file for the node type, and the device that you are installing to:

$ sudo coreos-installer install --ignition-url=http://<HTTP_server>/<node_type>.ign <device> --ignition-hash=sha512-<digest> (1) (2)

1	You must run the `coreos-installer` command by using `sudo`, because the `core` user does not have the required root privileges to perform the installation.
2	The `—ignition-hash` option is required when the Ignition config file is obtained through an HTTP URL to validate the authenticity of the Ignition config file on the cluster node. `<digest>` is the Ignition config file SHA512 digest obtained in a preceding step.

If you want to provide your Ignition config files through an HTTPS server that uses TLS, you can add the internal certificate authority (CA) to the system trust store before running coreos-installer.

The following example initializes a bootstrap node installation to the /dev/sda device. The Ignition config file for the bootstrap node is obtained from an HTTP web server with the IP address 192.168.1.2:

$ sudo coreos-installer install --ignition-url=http://192.168.1.2:80/installation_directory/bootstrap.ign /dev/sda --ignition-hash=sha512-a5a2d43879223273c9b60af66b44202a1d1248fc01cf156c46d4a79f552b6bad47bc8cc78ddf0116e80c59d2ea9e32ba53bc807afbca581aa059311def2c3e3b

Monitor the progress of the FCOS installation on the console of the machine.

Ensure that the installation is successful on each node before commencing with the OKD installation. Observing the installation process can also help to determine the cause of FCOS installation issues that might arise.

Continue to create more compute machines for your cluster.

Creating FCOS machines by PXE or iPXE booting

You can create more Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) compute machines for your bare metal cluster by using PXE or iPXE booting.

Prerequisites

Obtain the URL of the Ignition config file for the compute machines for your cluster. You uploaded this file to your HTTP server during installation.
Obtain the URLs of the FCOS ISO image, compressed metal BIOS, kernel, and initramfs files that you uploaded to your HTTP server during cluster installation.
You have access to the PXE booting infrastructure that you used to create the machines for your OKD cluster during installation. The machines must boot from their local disks after FCOS is installed on them.
If you use UEFI, you have access to the grub.conf file that you modified during OKD installation.

Procedure

Confirm that your PXE or iPXE installation for the FCOS images is correct.

For PXE:

DEFAULT pxeboot
TIMEOUT 20
PROMPT 0
LABEL pxeboot
    KERNEL http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture> (1)
    APPEND initrd=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img coreos.inst.install_dev=/dev/sda coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<HTTP_server>/worker.ign coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img (2)

1 Specify the location of the live kernel file that you uploaded to your HTTP server.

2 Specify locations of the FCOS files that you uploaded to your HTTP server. The initrd parameter value is the location of the live initramfs file, the coreos.inst.ignition_url parameter value is the location of the worker Ignition config file, and the coreos.live.rootfs_url parameter value is the location of the live rootfs file. The coreos.inst.ignition_url and coreos.live.rootfs_url parameters only support HTTP and HTTPS.

This configuration does not enable serial console access on machines with a graphical console. To configure a different console, add one or more console= arguments to the APPEND line. For example, add console=tty0 console=ttyS0 to set the first PC serial port as the primary console and the graphical console as a secondary console. For more information, see How does one set up a serial terminal and/or console in Red Hat Enterprise Linux?.

For iPXE (x86_64 + aarch64):

kernel http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture> initrd=main coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img coreos.inst.install_dev=/dev/sda coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<HTTP_server>/worker.ign (1) (2)
initrd --name main http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img (3)
boot

1	Specify the locations of the FCOS files that you uploaded to your HTTP server. The `kernel` parameter value is the location of the `kernel` file, the `initrd=main` argument is needed for booting on UEFI systems, the `coreos.live.rootfs_url` parameter value is the location of the `rootfs` file, and the `coreos.inst.ignition_url` parameter value is the location of the worker Ignition config file.
2	If you use multiple NICs, specify a single interface in the `ip` option. For example, to use DHCP on a NIC that is named `eno1`, set `ip=eno1:dhcp`.
3	Specify the location of the `initramfs` file that you uploaded to your HTTP server.

This configuration does not enable serial console access on machines with a graphical console To configure a different console, add one or more console= arguments to the kernel line. For example, add console=tty0 console=ttyS0 to set the first PC serial port as the primary console and the graphical console as a secondary console. For more information, see How does one set up a serial terminal and/or console in Red Hat Enterprise Linux? and “Enabling the serial console for PXE and ISO installation” in the “Advanced FCOS installation configuration” section.

To network boot the CoreOS kernel on aarch64 architecture, you need to use a version of iPXE build with the IMAGE_GZIP option enabled. See IMAGE_GZIP option in iPXE.

For PXE (with UEFI and GRUB as second stage) on aarch64:

menuentry 'Install CoreOS' {
    linux rhcos-<version>-live-kernel-<architecture>  coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://<HTTP_server>/rhcos-<version>-live-rootfs.<architecture>.img coreos.inst.install_dev=/dev/sda coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://<HTTP_server>/worker.ign (1) (2)
    initrd rhcos-<version>-live-initramfs.<architecture>.img (3)
}

1	Specify the locations of the FCOS files that you uploaded to your HTTP/TFTP server. The `kernel` parameter value is the location of the `kernel` file on your TFTP server. The `coreos.live.rootfs_url` parameter value is the location of the `rootfs` file, and the `coreos.inst.ignition_url` parameter value is the location of the worker Ignition config file on your HTTP Server.
2	If you use multiple NICs, specify a single interface in the `ip` option. For example, to use DHCP on a NIC that is named `eno1`, set `ip=eno1:dhcp`.
3	Specify the location of the `initramfs` file that you uploaded to your TFTP server.

Use the PXE or iPXE infrastructure to create the required compute machines for your cluster.

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

Confirm that the cluster recognizes the machines:
```
$ oc get nodes
```
Example output
```
NAME      STATUS    ROLES   AGE  VERSION
master-0  Ready     master  63m  v1.26.0
master-1  Ready     master  63m  v1.26.0
master-2  Ready     master  64m  v1.26.0
```
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.

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-8b2br   15m     system:serviceaccount:openshift-machine-config-operator:node-bootstrapper   Pending
csr-8vnps   15m     system:serviceaccount:openshift-machine-config-operator:node-bootstrapper   Pending
...

In this example, two machines are joining the cluster. You might see more approved CSRs in the list.

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.

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
...

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
```

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  v1.26.0
master-1  Ready     master  73m  v1.26.0
master-2  Ready     master  74m  v1.26.0
worker-0  Ready     worker  11m  v1.26.0
worker-1  Ready     worker  11m  v1.26.0

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

Additional information

For more information on CSRs, see Certificate Signing Requests.