Installing a cluster on OpenStack with customizations

In OKD version 4.6, you can install a customized cluster on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP). To customize the installation, modify parameters in the install-config.yaml before you install the cluster.

Prerequisites

• Review details about the OKD installation and update processes.

  • Verify that OKD 4.6 is compatible with your RHOSP version in the Available platforms section. You can also compare platform support across different versions by viewing the OKD on RHOSP support matrix.

• Verify that your network configuration does not rely on a provider network. Provider networks are not supported.

• Have a storage service installed in RHOSP, like block storage (Cinder) or object storage (Swift). Object storage is the recommended storage technology for OKD registry cluster deployment. For more information, see Optimizing storage.

• Have metadata service enabled in RHOSP

Resource guidelines for installing OKD on RHOSP

To support an OKD installation, your Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) quota must meet the following requirements:

A cluster might function with fewer than recommended resources, but its performance is not guaranteed.

An OKD deployment comprises control plane machines, compute machines, and a bootstrap machine.

Control plane and compute machines

By default, the OKD installation process stands up three control plane and three compute machines.

Each machine requires:

• An instance from the RHOSP quota

• A port from the RHOSP quota

• A flavor with at least 16 GB memory, 4 vCPUs, and 25 GB storage space

Bootstrap machine

During installation, a bootstrap machine is temporarily provisioned to stand up the control plane. After the production control plane is ready, the bootstrap machine is deprovisioned.

The bootstrap machine requires:

• An instance from the RHOSP quota

• A port from the RHOSP quota

• A flavor with at least 16 GB memory, 4 vCPUs, and 25 GB storage space

Enabling Swift on RHOSP

Swift is operated by a user account with the swiftoperator role. Add the role to an account before you run the installation program.

Prerequisites

• You have a RHOSP administrator account on the target environment.

• The Swift service is installed.

• On Ceph RGW, the account in url option is enabled.

Procedure

To enable Swift on RHOSP:

1. As an administrator in the RHOSP CLI, add the swiftoperator role to the account that will access Swift:

   $ openstack role add --user <user> --project <project> swiftoperator

Your RHOSP deployment can now use Swift for the image registry.

Verifying external network access

The OKD installation process requires external network access. You must provide an external network value to it, or deployment fails. Before you begin the process, verify that a network with the external router type exists in Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP).

Prerequisites

• Configure OpenStack’s networking service to have DHCP agents forward instances’ DNS queries

Procedure

1. Using the RHOSP CLI, verify the name and ID of the ‘External’ network:

   $ openstack network list --long -c ID -c Name -c "Router Type"

   Example output

   +--------------------------------------+----------------+-------------+
   | ID                                   | Name           | Router Type |
   +--------------------------------------+----------------+-------------+
   | 148a8023-62a7-4672-b018-003462f8d7dc | public_network | External    |
   +--------------------------------------+----------------+-------------+

A network with an external router type appears in the network list. If at least one does not, see Creating a default floating IP network and Creating a default provider network.

Defining parameters for the installation program

The OKD installation program relies on a file that is called clouds.yaml. The file describes Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) configuration parameters, including the project name, log in information, and authorization service URLs.

Procedure

1. Create the clouds.yaml file:

   • If your RHOSP distribution includes the Horizon web UI, generate a clouds.yaml file in it.

     Remember to add a password to the auth field. You can also keep secrets in a separate file from clouds.yaml.

   • If your RHOSP distribution does not include the Horizon web UI, or you do not want to use Horizon, create the file yourself. For detailed information about clouds.yaml, see Config files in the RHOSP documentation.

     clouds:
       shiftstack:
         auth:
           auth_url: http://10.10.14.42:5000/v3
           project_name: shiftstack
           username: shiftstack_user
           password: XXX
           user_domain_name: Default
           project_domain_name: Default
       dev-env:
         region_name: RegionOne
         auth:
           username: 'devuser'
           password: XXX
           project_name: 'devonly'
           auth_url: 'https://10.10.14.22:5001/v2.0'

2. If your RHOSP installation uses self-signed certificate authority (CA) certificates for endpoint authentication:

   1. Copy the certificate authority file to your machine.

   2. Add the machine to the certificate authority trust bundle:

      $ sudo cp ca.crt.pem /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/

   3. Update the trust bundle:

      $ sudo update-ca-trust extract

   4. Add the cacerts key to the clouds.yaml file. The value must be an absolute, non-root-accessible path to the CA certificate:

      clouds:
        shiftstack:
          ...
          cacert: "/etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/ca.crt.pem"

      After you run the installer with a custom CA certificate, you can update the certificate by editing the value of the ca-cert.pem key in the cloud-provider-config keymap. On a command line, run: $ oc edit configmap -n openshift-config cloud-provider-config

3. Place the clouds.yaml file in one of the following locations:

   1. The value of the OS_CLIENT_CONFIG_FILE environment variable

   2. The current directory

   3. A Unix-specific user configuration directory, for example ~/.config/openstack/clouds.yaml

   4. A Unix-specific site configuration directory, for example /etc/openstack/clouds.yaml

      The installation program searches for clouds.yaml in that order.

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OKD, 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. 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. From the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site, download your installation pull secret as a .txt file. 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 site 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 site:

   • 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.

Creating the installation configuration file

You can customize the OKD cluster you install on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP).

Prerequisites

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

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.

      Specify an empty 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. 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 openstack as the platform to target.

      3. Specify the Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) external network name to use for installing the cluster.

      4. Specify the floating IP address to use for external access to the OpenShift API.

      5. Specify a RHOSP flavor with at least 16 GB RAM to use for control plane and compute nodes.

      6. Select the base domain to deploy the cluster to. All DNS records will be sub-domains of this base and will also include the cluster name.

      7. Enter a name for your cluster. The name must be 14 or fewer characters long.

      8. Paste the pull secret that you obtained from the Pull Secret page on the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager site. This field is optional.

1. Modify the install-config.yaml file. You can find more information about the available parameters in the Installation configuration parameters section.

2. 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.

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 Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP), the Proxy object status.noProxy field is also populated with the instance metadata endpoint (169.254.169.254).

• If your cluster is on AWS, you added the ec2.<region>.amazonaws.com, elasticloadbalancing.<region>.amazonaws.com, and s3.<region>.amazonaws.com endpoints to your VPC endpoint. These endpoints are required to complete requests from the nodes to the AWS EC2 API. Because the proxy works on the container level, not the node level, you must route these requests to the AWS EC2 API through the AWS private network. Adding the public IP address of the EC2 API to your allowlist in your proxy server is not sufficient.

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. If you use an MITM transparent proxy network that does not require additional proxy configuration but requires additional CAs, you must not specify an httpProxy value.
   2	A proxy URL to use for creating HTTPS connections outside the cluster. If you use an MITM transparent proxy network that does not require additional proxy configuration but requires additional CAs, you must not specify an httpsProxy value.
   3	A comma-separated list of destination domain names, domains, IP addresses, or other network CIDRs to exclude proxying. Preface a domain with . to match subdomains only. For example, .y.com matches x.y.com, but not y.com. Use * to bypass 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 Proxy object’s trustedCA field. The additionalTrustBundle field is required unless the proxy’s identity certificate is signed by an authority from the FCOS trust bundle. If you use an MITM transparent proxy network that does not require additional proxy configuration but requires additional CAs, you must provide the MITM CA certificate.

   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.

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 Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) configuration parameters

Additional RHOSP configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Optional RHOSP configuration parameters

Optional RHOSP configuration parameters are described in the following table:

{
   “type”: “ml.large”,
   “rootVolume”: {
      “size”: 30,
      “type”: “performance”
   }
}

Custom subnets in RHOSP deployments

Optionally, you can deploy a cluster on a Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) subnet of your choice. The subnet’s GUID is passed as the value of platform.openstack.machinesSubnet in the install-config.yaml file.

This subnet is used as the cluster’s primary subnet; nodes and ports are created on it.

Before you run the OKD installer with a custom subnet, verify that:

• The target network and subnet are available.

• DHCP is enabled on the target subnet.

• You can provide installer credentials that have permission to create ports on the target network.

• If your network configuration requires a router, it is created in RHOSP. Some configurations rely on routers for floating IP address translation.

• Your network configuration does not rely on a provider network. Provider networks are not supported.

Sample customized install-config.yaml file for RHOSP

This sample install-config.yaml demonstrates all of the possible Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) customization options.

apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com
clusterID: os-test
controlPlane:
  name: master
  platform: {}
  replicas: 3
compute:
- name: worker
  platform:
    openstack:
      type: ml.large
  replicas: 3
metadata:
  name: example
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
  networkType: OVNKubernetes
platform:
  openstack:
    cloud: mycloud
    externalNetwork: external
    computeFlavor: m1.xlarge
    lbFloatingIP: 128.0.0.1
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}'
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA...

Generating an SSH private key and adding it to the agent

If you want to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery on your cluster, you must provide an SSH key to both your ssh-agent and the installation program. You can use this key to access the bootstrap machine in a public cluster to troubleshoot installation issues.

You can use this key to SSH into the master nodes as the user core. When you deploy the cluster, the key is added to the core user’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys list.

Procedure

1. If you do not have an SSH key that is configured for password-less authentication on your computer, 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_rsa, of the new SSH key. If you have an existing key pair, ensure your public key is in the your ~/.ssh directory.

   Running this command generates an SSH key that does not require a password in the location that you specified.

   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. Start the ssh-agent process 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.

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

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

   Example output

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

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

Next steps

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

Enabling access to the environment

At deployment, all OKD machines are created in a Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP)-tenant network. Therefore, they are not accessible directly in most RHOSP deployments.

You can configure OKD API and application access by using floating IP addresses (FIPs) during installation. You can also complete an installation without configuring FIPs, but the installer will not configure a way to reach the API or applications externally.

Enabling access with floating IP addresses

Create floating IP (FIP) addresses for external access to the OKD API and cluster applications.

Procedure

1. Using the Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) CLI, create the API FIP:

   $ openstack floating ip create --description "API <cluster_name>.<base_domain>" <external_network>

2. Using the Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) CLI, create the apps, or Ingress, FIP:

   $ openstack floating ip create --description "Ingress <cluster_name>.<base_domain>" <external_network>

3. Add records that follow these patterns to your DNS server for the API and Ingress FIPs:

   api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.  IN  A  <API_FIP>
   *.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>. IN  A <apps_FIP>

   If you do not control the DNS server, you can add the record to your /etc/hosts file. This action makes the API accessible to only you, which is not suitable for production deployment but does allow installation for development and testing.

4. Add the FIPs to the install-config.yaml file as the values of the following parameters:

   • platform.openstack.ingressFloatingIP

   • platform.openstack.lbFloatingIP

If you use these values, you must also enter an external network as the value of the platform.openstack.externalNetwork parameter in the install-config.yaml file.

Completing installation without floating IP addresses

You can install OKD on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) without providing floating IP addresses.

In the install-config.yaml file, do not define the following parameters:

• platform.openstack.ingressFloatingIP

• platform.openstack.lbFloatingIP

If you cannot provide an external network, you can also leave platform.openstack.externalNetwork blank. If you do not provide a value for platform.openstack.externalNetwork, a router is not created for you, and, without additional action, the installer will fail to retrieve an image from Glance. You must configure external connectivity on your own.

If you run the installer from a system that cannot reach the cluster API due to a lack of floating IP addresses or name resolution, installation fails. To prevent installation failure in these cases, you can use a proxy network or run the installer from a system that is on the same network as your machines.

api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.  IN  A  <api_port_IP>
*.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>. IN  A <ingress_port_IP>

Deploying the cluster

You can install OKD on a compatible cloud platform.

Prerequisites

• Obtain the OKD 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.

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

Verifying cluster status

You can verify your OKD cluster’s status during or after installation.

Procedure

1. In the cluster environment, export the administrator’s kubeconfig file:

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

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

   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.

2. View the control plane and compute machines created after a deployment:

   $ oc get nodes

3. View your cluster’s version:

   $ oc get clusterversion

4. View your Operators’ status:

   $ oc get clusteroperator

5. View all running pods in the cluster:

   $ oc get pods -A

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.

• If you need to enable external access to node ports, configure ingress cluster traffic by using a node port.

• If you did not configure RHOSP to accept application traffic over floating IP addresses, configure RHOSP access with floating IP addresses.