Installing a private cluster on GCP

In OKD version 4.14, you can install a private cluster into an existing VPC on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The installation program provisions the rest of the required infrastructure, which you can further customize. To customize the installation, you modify parameters in the install-config.yaml file before you install the cluster.

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 configured a GCP project to host the cluster.

• If you use a firewall, you configured it to allow the sites that your cluster requires access to.

Private clusters

You can deploy a private OKD 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, OKD 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.

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 GCP

To create a private cluster on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), you must provide an existing private VPC 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.

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

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

• Public subnets

• Public network load balancers, which support public ingress

• A public DNS zone that matches the baseDomain for the cluster

The installation program does use the baseDomain that you specify to create a private DNS zone and the required records for the cluster. 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.

Because it is not possible to limit access to external load balancers based on source tags, the private cluster uses only internal load balancers to allow access to internal instances.

The internal load balancer relies on instance groups rather than the target pools that the network load balancers use. The installation program creates instance groups for each zone, even if there is no instance in that group.

• The cluster IP address is internal only.

• One forwarding rule manages both the Kubernetes API and machine config server ports.

• The backend service is comprised of each zone’s instance group and, while it exists, the bootstrap instance group.

• The firewall uses a single rule that is based on only internal source ranges.

Limitations

No health check for the Machine config server, /healthz, runs because of a difference in load balancer functionality. Two internal load balancers cannot share a single IP address, but two network load balancers can share a single external IP address. Instead, the health of an instance is determined entirely by the /readyz check on port 6443.

About using a custom VPC

In OKD 4.14, you can deploy a cluster into an existing VPC in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). If you do, you must also use existing subnets within the VPC and routing rules.

By deploying OKD into an existing GCP VPC, you might be able to avoid 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 VPC yourself.

Requirements for using your VPC

The installation program will no longer create the following components:

• VPC

• Subnets

• Cloud router

• Cloud NAT

• NAT IP addresses

If you use a custom VPC, 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 VPC options like DHCP, so you must do so before you install the cluster.

Your VPC and subnets must meet the following characteristics:

• The VPC must be in the same GCP project that you deploy the OKD cluster to.

• To allow access to the internet from the control plane and compute machines, you must configure cloud NAT on the subnets to allow egress to it. These machines do not have a public address. Even if you do not require access to the internet, you must allow egress to the VPC network to obtain the installation program and images. Because multiple cloud NATs cannot be configured on the shared subnets, the installation program cannot configure it.

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

• All the subnets that you specify exist and belong to the VPC that you specified.

• The subnet CIDRs belong to the machine CIDR.

• You must provide a subnet to deploy the cluster control plane and compute machines to. You can use the same subnet for both machine types.

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

Division of permissions

Starting with OKD 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, buckets, and load balancers, but not networking-related components such as VPCs, subnets, or Ingress rules.

The GCP credentials that you use when you create your cluster do not need the networking permissions that are required to make VPCs and core networking components within the VPC, 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, and nodes.

Isolation between clusters

If you deploy OKD to an existing network, the isolation of cluster services is preserved by firewall rules that reference the machines in your cluster by the cluster’s infrastructure ID. Only traffic within the cluster is allowed.

If you deploy multiple clusters to the same VPC, the following components might share access between clusters:

• The API, which is globally available with an external publishing strategy or available throughout the network in an internal publishing strategy

• Debugging tools, such as ports on VM instances that are open to the machine CIDR for SSH and ICMP access

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 the Fedora cryptographic libraries that have been submitted to NIST for FIPS 140-2/140-3 Validation on only the x86_64, ppc64le, and s390x architectures, do not create a key that uses the ed25519 algorithm. Instead, create a key that uses the rsa or ecdsa algorithm.

2. View the public SSH key:

   $ cat <path>/<file_name>.pub

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

   $ cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

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

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

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

      $ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

      Example output

      Agent pid 31874

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

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

   $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)

   1	Specify the path and file name for your SSH private key, such as ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

   Example output

   Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)

Next steps

• When you install OKD, provide the SSH public key to the installation program.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OKD, download the installation file on the host you are using for installation.

Prerequisites

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

Procedure

1. Download installer from https://github.com/openshift/okd/releases

   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 OKD uninstallation procedures for your specific cloud provider.

2. 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

3. 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 OKD components.

   Using a pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager is not required. You can use a pull secret for another private registry. Or, if you do not need the cluster to pull images from a private registry, you can use {"auths":{"fake":{"auth":"aWQ6cGFzcwo="}}} as the pull secret when prompted during the installation.

   If you do not use the pull secret from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager:

   • Red Hat Operators are not available.

   • The Telemetry and Insights operators do not send data to Red Hat.

   • Content from the Red Hat Container Catalog registry, such as image streams and Operators, are not available.

Manually creating the installation configuration file

When installing a private OKD cluster, you must manually generate the installation configuration file.

Prerequisites

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

• You have obtained the OKD 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 OKD 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.

   The ImageContentSourcePolicy file is generated as an output of oc mirror after the mirroring process is finished. The oc mirror command generates an ImageContentSourcePolicy file which contains the YAML needed to define ImageContentSourcePolicy. Copy the text from this file and paste it into your install-config.yaml file. You must run the ‘oc mirror’ command twice. The first time you run the oc mirror command, you get a full ImageContentSourcePolicy file. The second time you run the oc mirror command, you only get the difference between the first and second run. Because of this behavior, you must always keep a backup of these files in case you need to merge them into one complete ImageContentSourcePolicy file. Keeping a backup of these two output files ensures that you have a complete ImageContentSourcePolicy file.

   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.

Additional resources

• Installation configuration parameters for GCP

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.

Additional resources

• Optimizing storage

Tested instance types for GCP

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

Machine series

• C2

• C2D

• C3

• E2

• M1

• N1

• N2

• N2D

• Tau T2D

Tested instance types for GCP on 64-bit ARM infrastructures

The following Google Cloud Platform (GCP) 64-bit ARM instance types have been tested with OKD.

Machine series for 64-bit ARM machines

• Tau T2A

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

Enabling Shielded VMs

You can use Shielded VMs when installing your cluster. Shielded VMs have extra security features including secure boot, firmware and integrity monitoring, and rootkit detection. For more information, see Google’s documentation on Shielded VMs.

Prerequisites

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

Procedure

• Use a text editor to edit the install-config.yaml file prior to deploying your cluster and add one of the following stanzas:

  1. To use shielded VMs for only control plane machines:

     controlPlane:
       platform:
         gcp:
            secureBoot: Enabled

  2. To use shielded VMs for only compute machines:

     compute:
     - platform:
         gcp:
            secureBoot: Enabled

  3. To use shielded VMs for all machines:

     platform:
       gcp:
         defaultMachinePlatform:
            secureBoot: Enabled

Enabling Confidential VMs

You can use Confidential VMs when installing your cluster. Confidential VMs encrypt data while it is being processed. For more information, see Google’s documentation on Confidential Computing. You can enable Confidential VMs and Shielded VMs at the same time, although they are not dependent on each other.

Prerequisites

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

Procedure

• Use a text editor to edit the install-config.yaml file prior to deploying your cluster and add one of the following stanzas:

  1. To use confidential VMs for only control plane machines:

     controlPlane:
       platform:
         gcp:
            confidentialCompute: Enabled (1)
            type: n2d-standard-8 (2)
            onHostMaintenance: Terminate (3)

     1	Enable confidential VMs.
     2	Specify a machine type that supports Confidential VMs. Confidential VMs require the N2D or C2D series of machine types. For more information on supported machine types, see Supported operating systems and machine types.
     3	Specify the behavior of the VM during a host maintenance event, such as a hardware or software update. For a machine that uses Confidential VM, this value must be set to Terminate, which stops the VM. Confidential VMs do not support live VM migration.

  2. To use confidential VMs for only compute machines:

     compute:
     - platform:
         gcp:
            confidentialCompute: Enabled
            type: n2d-standard-8
            onHostMaintenance: Terminate

  3. To use confidential VMs for all machines:

     platform:
       gcp:
         defaultMachinePlatform:
            confidentialCompute: Enabled
            type: n2d-standard-8
            onHostMaintenance: Terminate

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)
credentialsMode: Mint (2)
controlPlane:  (3) (4)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (5)
  name: master
  platform:
    gcp:
      type: n2-standard-4
      zones:
      - us-central1-a
      - us-central1-c
      osDisk:
        diskType: pd-ssd
        diskSizeGB: 1024
        encryptionKey: (6)
          kmsKey:
            name: worker-key
            keyRing: test-machine-keys
            location: global
            projectID: project-id
      tags: (7)
      - control-plane-tag1
      - control-plane-tag2
      osImage: (8)
        project: example-project-name
        name: example-image-name
  replicas: 3
compute:  (3) (4)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (5)
  name: worker
  platform:
    gcp:
      type: n2-standard-4
      zones:
      - us-central1-a
      - us-central1-c
      osDisk:
        diskType: pd-standard
        diskSizeGB: 128
        encryptionKey: (6)
          kmsKey:
            name: worker-key
            keyRing: test-machine-keys
            location: global
            projectID: project-id
        tags: (7)
        - compute-tag1
        - compute-tag2
        osImage: (8)
          project: example-project-name
          name: example-image-name
  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 (9)
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  gcp:
    projectID: openshift-production (1)
    region: us-central1 (1)
    defaultMachinePlatform:
      tags: (7)
      - global-tag1
      - global-tag2
      osImage: (8)
        project: example-project-name
        name: example-image-name
    network: existing_vpc (10)
    controlPlaneSubnet: control_plane_subnet (11)
    computeSubnet: compute_subnet (12)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (1)
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (13)
publish: Internal (14)

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.

2. Create a file that is named cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

   $ touch <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-ingress-default-ingresscontroller.yaml (1)

   1	For <installation_directory>, specify the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory 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

3. 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

     apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
     kind: IngressController
     metadata:
       name: default
       namespace: openshift-ingress-operator
     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.

Additional resources

• Enabling customer-managed encryption keys for a compute machine set

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.

   If the installer times out, restart and then complete the deployment by using the wait-for command of the installer. For example: $ ./openshift-install wait-for install-complete —log-level debug

2. Save the file and reference it when installing 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.

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 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 xvf <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 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 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>

Alternatives to storing administrator-level secrets in the kube-system project

By default, administrator secrets are stored in the kube-system project. If you configured the credentialsMode parameter in the install-config.yaml file to Manual, you must use one of the following alternatives:

• To manage long-term cloud credentials manually, follow the procedure in Manually creating long-term credentials.

• To implement short-term credentials that are managed outside the cluster for individual components, follow the procedures in Configuring a GCP cluster to use short-term credentials.

Manually creating long-term credentials

The Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) can be put into manual mode prior to installation in environments where the cloud identity and access management (IAM) APIs are not reachable, or the administrator prefers not to store an administrator-level credential secret in the cluster kube-system namespace.

Procedure

1. If you did not set the credentialsMode parameter in the install-config.yaml configuration file to Manual, modify the value as shown:

   Sample configuration file snippet

   apiVersion: v1
   baseDomain: example.com
   credentialsMode: Manual
   # ...

2. If you have not previously created installation manifest files, do so by running the following command:

   $ openshift-install create manifests

3. Set a $RELEASE_IMAGE variable with the release image from your installation file by running the following command:

   $ RELEASE_IMAGE=$(./openshift-install version | awk '/release image/ {print $3}')

4. Extract the list of CredentialsRequest custom resources (CRs) from the OKD release image by running the following command:

   $ oc adm release extract \
     --from=$RELEASE_IMAGE \
     --credentials-requests \
     --included \(1)
     --install-config=<path_to_directory_with_installation_configuration>/install-config.yaml \(2)
     --to=<path_to_directory_for_credentials_requests> (3)

   1	The —included parameter includes only the manifests that your specific cluster configuration requires.
   2	Specify the location of the install-config.yaml file.
   3	Specify the path to the directory where you want to store the CredentialsRequest objects. If the specified directory does not exist, this command creates it.

   This command creates a YAML file for each CredentialsRequest object.

   Sample CredentialsRequest object

   apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
   kind: CredentialsRequest
   metadata:
     name: <component_credentials_request>
     namespace: openshift-cloud-credential-operator
     ...
   spec:
     providerSpec:
       apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
       kind: GCPProviderSpec
       predefinedRoles:
       - roles/storage.admin
       - roles/iam.serviceAccountUser
       skipServiceCheck: true
     ...

5. Create YAML files for secrets in the openshift-install manifests directory that you generated previously. The secrets must be stored using the namespace and secret name defined in the spec.secretRef for each CredentialsRequest object.

   Sample CredentialsRequest object with secrets

   apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
   kind: CredentialsRequest
   metadata:
     name: <component_credentials_request>
     namespace: openshift-cloud-credential-operator
     ...
   spec:
     providerSpec:
       apiVersion: cloudcredential.openshift.io/v1
         ...
     secretRef:
       name: <component_secret>
       namespace: <component_namespace>
     ...

   Sample Secret object

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Secret
   metadata:
     name: <component_secret>
     namespace: <component_namespace>
   data:
     service_account.json: <base64_encoded_gcp_service_account_file>

Configuring a GCP cluster to use short-term credentials

To install a cluster that is configured to use GCP Workload Identity, you must configure the CCO utility and create the required GCP resources for your cluster.

Configuring the Cloud Credential Operator utility

To create and manage cloud credentials from outside of the cluster when the Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) is operating in manual mode, extract and prepare the CCO utility (ccoctl) binary.

Prerequisites

• You have access to an OKD account with cluster administrator access.

• You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Procedure

1. Obtain the OKD release image by running the following command:

   $ RELEASE_IMAGE=$(./openshift-install version | awk '/release image/ {print $3}')

2. Obtain the CCO container image from the OKD release image by running the following command:

   $ CCO_IMAGE=$(oc adm release info --image-for='cloud-credential-operator' $RELEASE_IMAGE -a ~/.pull-secret)

   Ensure that the architecture of the $RELEASE_IMAGE matches the architecture of the environment in which you will use the ccoctl tool.

3. Extract the ccoctl binary from the CCO container image within the OKD release image by running the following command:

   $ oc image extract $CCO_IMAGE --file="/usr/bin/ccoctl" -a ~/.pull-secret

4. Change the permissions to make ccoctl executable by running the following command:

   $ chmod 775 ccoctl

Verification

• To verify that ccoctl is ready to use, display the help file by running the following command:

  $ ccoctl --help

  Output of ccoctl --help

  OpenShift credentials provisioning tool
  Usage:
    ccoctl [command]
  Available Commands:
    alibabacloud Manage credentials objects for alibaba cloud
    aws          Manage credentials objects for AWS cloud
    azure        Manage credentials objects for Azure
    gcp          Manage credentials objects for Google cloud
    help         Help about any command
    ibmcloud     Manage credentials objects for IBM Cloud
    nutanix      Manage credentials objects for Nutanix
  Flags:
    -h, --help   help for ccoctl
  Use "ccoctl [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Creating GCP resources with the Cloud Credential Operator utility

You can use the ccoctl gcp create-all command to automate the creation of GCP resources.

Prerequisites

You must have:

• Extracted and prepared the ccoctl binary.

Procedure

1. Set a $RELEASE_IMAGE variable with the release image from your installation file by running the following command:

   $ RELEASE_IMAGE=$(./openshift-install version | awk '/release image/ {print $3}')

2. Extract the list of CredentialsRequest objects from the OKD release image by running the following command:

   $ oc adm release extract \
     --from=$RELEASE_IMAGE \
     --credentials-requests \
     --included \(1)
     --install-config=<path_to_directory_with_installation_configuration>/install-config.yaml \(2)
     --to=<path_to_directory_for_credentials_requests> (3)

   1	The —included parameter includes only the manifests that your specific cluster configuration requires.
   2	Specify the location of the install-config.yaml file.
   3	Specify the path to the directory where you want to store the CredentialsRequest objects. If the specified directory does not exist, this command creates it.

   This command might take a few moments to run.

3. Use the ccoctl tool to process all CredentialsRequest objects by running the following command:

   $ ccoctl gcp create-all \
     --name=<name> \(1)
     --region=<gcp_region> \(2)
     --project=<gcp_project_id> \(3)
     --credentials-requests-dir=<path_to_credentials_requests_directory> (4)

   1	Specify the user-defined name for all created GCP resources used for tracking.
   2	Specify the GCP region in which cloud resources will be created.
   3	Specify the GCP project ID in which cloud resources will be created.
   4	Specify the directory containing the files of CredentialsRequest manifests to create GCP service accounts.

   If your cluster uses Technology Preview features that are enabled by the TechPreviewNoUpgrade feature set, you must include the —enable-tech-preview parameter.

Verification

• To verify that the OKD secrets are created, list the files in the <path_to_ccoctl_output_dir>/manifests directory:

  $ ls <path_to_ccoctl_output_dir>/manifests

  Example output

  cluster-authentication-02-config.yaml
  openshift-cloud-controller-manager-gcp-ccm-cloud-credentials-credentials.yaml
  openshift-cloud-credential-operator-cloud-credential-operator-gcp-ro-creds-credentials.yaml
  openshift-cloud-network-config-controller-cloud-credentials-credentials.yaml
  openshift-cluster-csi-drivers-gcp-pd-cloud-credentials-credentials.yaml
  openshift-image-registry-installer-cloud-credentials-credentials.yaml
  openshift-ingress-operator-cloud-credentials-credentials.yaml
  openshift-machine-api-gcp-cloud-credentials-credentials.yaml

  You can verify that the IAM service accounts are created by querying GCP. For more information, refer to GCP documentation on listing IAM service accounts.

Incorporating the Cloud Credential Operator utility manifests

To implement short-term security credentials managed outside the cluster for individual components, you must move the manifest files that the Cloud Credential Operator utility (ccoctl) created to the correct directories for the installation program.

Prerequisites

• You have configured an account with the cloud platform that hosts your cluster.

• You have configured the Cloud Credential Operator utility (ccoctl).

• You have created the cloud provider resources that are required for your cluster with the ccoctl utility.

Procedure

1. If you did not set the credentialsMode parameter in the install-config.yaml configuration file to Manual, modify the value as shown:

   Sample configuration file snippet

   apiVersion: v1
   baseDomain: example.com
   credentialsMode: Manual
   # ...

2. If you have not previously created installation manifest files, do so by running the following command:

   $ openshift-install create manifests

3. Copy the manifests that the ccoctl utility generated to the manifests directory that the installation program created by running the following command:

   $ cp /<path_to_ccoctl_output_dir>/manifests/* ./manifests/

4. Copy the private key that the ccoctl utility generated in the tls directory to the installation directory by running the following command:

   $ cp -a /<path_to_ccoctl_output_dir>/tls .

Deploying the cluster

You can install OKD on a compatible cloud platform.

Prerequisites

• You have configured an account with the cloud platform that hosts your cluster.

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

• You have verified that the cloud provider account on your host has the correct permissions to deploy the cluster. An account with incorrect permissions causes the installation process to fail with an error message that displays the missing permissions.

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.

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: "password"
INFO Time elapsed: 36m22s

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

Additional resources

• See Accessing the web console for more details about accessing and understanding the OKD web console.

Additional resources

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

Next steps

• Customize your cluster.

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