Installing a cluster on Azure with network customizations

In OKD version 4.6, you can install a cluster with a customized network configuration on infrastructure that the installation program provisions on Microsoft Azure. By customizing your network configuration, your cluster can coexist with existing IP address allocations in your environment and integrate with existing MTU and VXLAN configurations.

You must set most of the network configuration parameters during installation, and you can modify only kubeProxy configuration parameters in a running cluster.

Prerequisites

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.

In a production environment, you require disaster recovery and debugging.

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.

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

On clusters running Fedora CoreOS (FCOS), the SSH keys specified in the Ignition config files are written to the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys.d/core file. However, the Machine Config Operator manages SSH keys in the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys file and configures sshd to ignore the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys.d/core file. As a result, newly provisioned OKD nodes are not accessible using SSH until the Machine Config Operator reconciles the machine configs with the authorized_keys file. After you can access the nodes using SSH, you can delete the /home/core/.ssh/authorized_keys.d/core file.

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:

    1. $ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N '' \
    2. -f <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1Specify 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:

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

    Example output

    1. 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:

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

    Example output

    1. Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)
    1Specify 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.

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:

    1. $ 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 Microsoft Azure.

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:

      1. $ ./openshift-install create install-config --dir=<installation_directory> (1)
      1For <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 azure as the platform to target.

      3. If you do not have a Microsoft Azure profile stored on your computer, specify the following Azure parameter values for your subscription and service principal:

        • azure subscription id: The subscription ID to use for the cluster. Specify the id value in your account output.

        • azure tenant id: The tenant ID. Specify the tenantId value in your account output.

        • azure service principal client id: The value of the appId parameter for the service principal.

        • azure service principal client secret: The value of the password parameter for the service principal.

      4. Select the region to deploy the cluster to.

      5. Select the base domain to deploy the cluster to. The base domain corresponds to the Azure DNS Zone that you created for your cluster.

      6. Enter a descriptive name for your cluster.

        All Azure resources that are available through public endpoints are subject to resource name restrictions, and you cannot create resources that use certain terms. For a list of terms that Azure restricts, see Resolve reserved resource name errors in the Azure documentation.

      7. 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.

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.

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

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

Required configuration parameters

Required installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 1. Required parameters
ParameterDescriptionValues

apiVersion

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

String

baseDomain

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

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

metadata

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

Object

metadata.name

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

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

platform

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

Object

Network configuration parameters

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

Only IPv4 addresses are supported.

Table 2. Network parameters
ParameterDescriptionValues

networking

The configuration for the cluster network.

Object

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

networking.networkType

The cluster network provider Container Network Interface (CNI) plug-in to install.

Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. The default value is OVNKubernetes.

networking.clusterNetwork

The IP address blocks for pods.

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

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

An array of objects. For example:

  1. networking:
  2. clusterNetwork:
  3. - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
  4. hostPrefix: 23

networking.clusterNetwork.cidr

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

An IPv4 network.

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

networking.clusterNetwork.hostPrefix

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

A subnet prefix.

The default value is 23.

networking.serviceNetwork

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

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

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

  1. networking:
  2. serviceNetwork:
  3. - 172.30.0.0/16

networking.machineNetwork

The IP address blocks for machines.

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

An array of objects. For example:

  1. networking:
  2. machineNetwork:
  3. - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16

networking.machineNetwork.cidr

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

An IP network block in CIDR notation.

For example, 10.0.0.0/16.

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

Optional configuration parameters

Optional installation configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 3. Optional parameters
ParameterDescriptionValues

additionalTrustBundle

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

String

compute

The configuration for the machines that comprise the compute nodes.

Array of machine-pool objects. For details, see the following “Machine-pool” table.

compute.architecture

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

String

compute.hyperthreading

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

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

Enabled or Disabled

compute.name

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

worker

compute.platform

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

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

compute.replicas

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

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

controlPlane

The configuration for the machines that comprise the control plane.

Array of MachinePool objects. For details, see the following “Machine-pool” table.

controlPlane.architecture

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

String

controlPlane.hyperthreading

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

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

Enabled or Disabled

controlPlane.name

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

master

controlPlane.platform

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

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

controlPlane.replicas

The number of control plane machines to provision.

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

credentialsMode

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

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

Mint, Passthrough, Manual, or an empty string (“”).

imageContentSources

Sources and repositories for the release-image content.

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

imageContentSources.source

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

String

imageContentSources.mirrors

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

Array of strings

publish

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

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

sshKey

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

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

One or more keys. For example:

  1. sshKey:
  2. <key1>
  3. <key2>
  4. <key3>

Additional Azure configuration parameters

Additional Azure configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 4. Additional Azure parameters
ParameterDescriptionValues

controlPlane.platform.azure.osDisk.diskSizeGB

The Azure disk size for the VM.

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

platform.azure.baseDomainResourceGroupName

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

String, for example production_cluster.

platform.azure.outboundType

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

LoadBalancer or UserDefinedRouting. The default is LoadBalancer.

platform.azure.region

The name of the Azure region that hosts your cluster.

Any valid region name, such as centralus.

platform.azure.zone

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

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

platform.azure.networkResourceGroupName

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

String.

platform.azure.virtualNetwork

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

String.

platform.azure.controlPlaneSubnet

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

Valid CIDR, for example 10.0.0.0/16.

platform.azure.computeSubnet

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

Valid CIDR, for example 10.0.0.0/16.

platform.azure.cloudName

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

Any valid cloud environment, such as AzurePublicCloud or AzureUSGovernmentCloud.

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

Sample customized install-config.yaml file for Azure

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.

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

  1. apiVersion: v1
  2. baseDomain: example.com (1)
  3. controlPlane: (2)
  4. hyperthreading: Enabled (3) (4)
  5. name: master
  6. platform:
  7. azure:
  8. osDisk:
  9. diskSizeGB: 1024 (5)
  10. type: Standard_D8s_v3
  11. replicas: 3
  12. compute: (2)
  13. - hyperthreading: Enabled (3)
  14. name: worker
  15. platform:
  16. azure:
  17. type: Standard_D2s_v3
  18. osDisk:
  19. diskSizeGB: 512 (5)
  20. zones: (6)
  21. - "1"
  22. - "2"
  23. - "3"
  24. replicas: 5
  25. metadata:
  26. name: test-cluster (1)
  27. networking: (2)
  28. clusterNetwork:
  29. - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
  30. hostPrefix: 23
  31. machineNetwork:
  32. - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  33. networkType: OVNKubernetes
  34. serviceNetwork:
  35. - 172.30.0.0/16
  36. platform:
  37. azure:
  38. baseDomainResourceGroupName: resource_group (7)
  39. region: centralus (1)
  40. resourceGroupName: existing_resource_group (8)
  41. outboundType: Loadbalancer
  42. cloudName: AzurePublicCloud
  43. pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (1)
  44. sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (9)
1Required. The installation program prompts you for this value.
2If you do not provide these parameters and values, the installation program provides the default value.
3The controlPlane section is a single mapping, but the compute section is a sequence of mappings. To meet the requirements of the different data structures, the first line of the compute section must begin with a hyphen, -, and the first line of the controlPlane section must not. Although both sections currently define a single machine pool, it is possible that future versions of OKD will support defining multiple compute pools during installation. Only one control plane pool is used.
4Whether to enable or disable simultaneous multithreading, or hyperthreading. By default, simultaneous multithreading is enabled to increase the performance of your machines’ cores. You can disable it by setting the parameter value to Disabled. If you disable simultaneous multithreading in some cluster machines, you must disable it in all cluster machines.

If you disable simultaneous multithreading, ensure that your capacity planning accounts for the dramatically decreased machine performance. Use larger virtual machine types, such as Standard_D8s_v3, for your machines if you disable simultaneous multithreading.

5You can specify the size of the disk to use in GB. Minimum recommendation for control plane nodes (also known as the master nodes) is 1024 GB.
6Specify a list of zones to deploy your machines to. For high availability, specify at least two zones.
7Specify the name of the resource group that contains the DNS zone for your base domain.
8Specify the name of an already existing resource group to install your cluster to. If undefined, a new resource group is created for the cluster.
9You can optionally provide the sshKey value that you use to access the machines in your cluster.

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.

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:

    1. apiVersion: v1
    2. baseDomain: my.domain.com
    3. proxy:
    4. httpProxy: http://<username>:<pswd>@<ip>:<port> (1)
    5. httpsProxy: https://<username>:<pswd>@<ip>:<port> (2)
    6. noProxy: example.com (3)
    7. additionalTrustBundle: | (4)
    8. -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
    9. <MY_TRUSTED_CA_CERT>
    10. -----END CERTIFICATE-----
    11. ...
    1A 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.
    2A 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.
    3A 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.
    4If 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.

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

Network configuration phases

When specifying a cluster configuration prior to installation, there are several phases in the installation procedures when you can modify the network configuration:

Phase 1

After entering the openshift-install create install-config command. In the install-config.yaml file, you can customize the following network-related fields:

  • networking.networkType

  • networking.clusterNetwork

  • networking.serviceNetwork

  • networking.machineNetwork

    For more information on these fields, refer to “Installation configuration parameters”.

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

Phase 2

After entering the openshift-install create manifests command. If you must specify advanced network configuration, during this phase you can define a customized Cluster Network Operator manifest with only the fields you want to modify.

You cannot override the values specified in phase 1 in the install-config.yaml file during phase 2. However, you can further customize the cluster network provider during phase 2.

Specifying advanced network configuration

You can use advanced configuration customization to integrate your cluster into your existing network environment by specifying additional configuration for your cluster network provider. You can specify advanced network configuration only before you install the cluster.

Modifying the OKD manifest files created by the installation program is not supported. Applying a manifest file that you create, as in the following procedure, is supported.

Prerequisites

  • Create the install-config.yaml file and complete any modifications to it.

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

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

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

  2. Create a stub manifest file for the advanced network configuration that is named cluster-network-03-config.yml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    1. $ cat <<EOF > <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml
    2. apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    3. kind: Network
    4. metadata:
    5. name: cluster
    6. spec:
    7. EOF

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

  3. Open the cluster-network-03-config.yml file in an editor and specify the advanced network configuration for your cluster, such as in the following example:

    Specify a different VXLAN port for the OpenShift SDN network provider

    1. apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    2. kind: Network
    3. metadata:
    4. name: cluster
    5. spec:
    6. defaultNetwork:
    7. openshiftSDNConfig:
    8. vxlanPort: 4800
  4. Save the cluster-network-03-config.yml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

Cluster Network Operator configuration

The configuration for the cluster network is specified as part of the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) configuration and stored in a custom resource (CR) object that is named cluster. The CR specifies the fields for the Network API in the operator.openshift.io API group.

The CNO configuration inherits the following fields during cluster installation from the Network API in the Network.config.openshift.io API group and these fields cannot be changed:

clusterNetwork

IP address pools from which pod IP addresses are allocated.

serviceNetwork

IP address pool for services.

defaultNetwork.type

Cluster network provider, such as OpenShift SDN or OVN-Kubernetes.

You can specify the cluster network provider configuration for your cluster by setting the fields for the defaultNetwork object in the CNO object named cluster.

Cluster Network Operator configuration object

The fields for the Cluster Network Operator (CNO) are described in the following table:

Table 5. Cluster Network Operator configuration object
FieldTypeDescription

metadata.name

string

The name of the CNO object. This name is always cluster.

spec.clusterNetwork

array

A list specifying the blocks of IP addresses from which pod IP addresses are allocated and the subnet prefix length assigned to each individual node in the cluster. For example:

  1. spec:
  2. clusterNetwork:
  3. - cidr: 10.128.0.0/19
  4. hostPrefix: 23
  5. - cidr: 10.128.32.0/19
  6. hostPrefix: 23

This value is ready-only and specified in the install-config.yaml file.

spec.serviceNetwork

array

A block of IP addresses for services. The OpenShift SDN and OVN-Kubernetes Container Network Interface (CNI) network providers support only a single IP address block for the service network. For example:

  1. spec:
  2. serviceNetwork:
  3. - 172.30.0.0/14

This value is ready-only and specified in the install-config.yaml file.

spec.defaultNetwork

object

Configures the Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider for the cluster network.

spec.kubeProxyConfig

object

The fields for this object specify the kube-proxy configuration. If you are using the OVN-Kubernetes cluster network provider, the kube-proxy configuration has no effect.

defaultNetwork object configuration

The values for the defaultNetwork object are defined in the following table:

Table 6. defaultNetwork object
FieldTypeDescription

type

string

Either OpenShiftSDN or OVNKubernetes. The cluster network provider is selected during installation. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

OKD uses the OVN-Kubernetes Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider by default.

openshiftSDNConfig

object

This object is only valid for the OpenShift SDN cluster network provider.

ovnKubernetesConfig

object

This object is only valid for the OVN-Kubernetes cluster network provider.

Configuration for the OpenShift SDN CNI cluster network provider

The following table describes the configuration fields for the OpenShift SDN Container Network Interface (CNI) cluster network provider.

Table 7. openshiftSDNConfig object
FieldTypeDescription

mode

string

Configures the network isolation mode for OpenShift SDN. The default value is NetworkPolicy.

The values Multitenant and Subnet are available for backwards compatibility with OKD 3.x but are not recommended. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

mtu

integer

The maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the VXLAN overlay network. This is detected automatically based on the MTU of the primary network interface. You do not normally need to override the detected MTU.

If the auto-detected value is not what you expected it to be, confirm that the MTU on the primary network interface on your nodes is correct. You cannot use this option to change the MTU value of the primary network interface on the nodes.

If your cluster requires different MTU values for different nodes, you must set this value to 50 less than the lowest MTU value in your cluster. For example, if some nodes in your cluster have an MTU of 9001, and some have an MTU of 1500, you must set this value to 1450.

This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

vxlanPort

integer

The port to use for all VXLAN packets. The default value is 4789. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

If you are running in a virtualized environment with existing nodes that are part of another VXLAN network, then you might be required to change this. For example, when running an OpenShift SDN overlay on top of VMware NSX-T, you must select an alternate port for the VXLAN, because both SDNs use the same default VXLAN port number.

On Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can select an alternate port for the VXLAN between port 9000 and port 9999.

Example OpenShift SDN configuration

  1. defaultNetwork:
  2. type: OpenShiftSDN
  3. openshiftSDNConfig:
  4. mode: NetworkPolicy
  5. mtu: 1450
  6. vxlanPort: 4789
Configuration for the OVN-Kubernetes CNI cluster network provider

The following table describes the configuration fields for the OVN-Kubernetes CNI cluster network provider.

Table 8. ovnKubernetesConfig object
FieldTypeDescription

mtu

integer

The maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the Geneve (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation) overlay network. This is detected automatically based on the MTU of the primary network interface. You do not normally need to override the detected MTU.

If the auto-detected value is not what you expected it to be, confirm that the MTU on the primary network interface on your nodes is correct. You cannot use this option to change the MTU value of the primary network interface on the nodes.

If your cluster requires different MTU values for different nodes, you must set this value to 100 less than the lowest MTU value in your cluster. For example, if some nodes in your cluster have an MTU of 9001, and some have an MTU of 1500, you must set this value to 1400.

This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

genevePort

integer

The port to use for all Geneve packets. The default value is 6081. This value cannot be changed after cluster installation.

Example OVN-Kubernetes configuration

  1. defaultNetwork:
  2. type: OVNKubernetes
  3. ovnKubernetesConfig:
  4. mtu: 1400
  5. genevePort: 6081

kubeProxyConfig object configuration

The values for the kubeProxyConfig object are defined in the following table:

Table 9. kubeProxyConfig object
FieldTypeDescription

iptablesSyncPeriod

string

The refresh period for iptables rules. The default value is 30s. Valid suffixes include s, m, and h and are described in the Go time package documentation.

Because of performance improvements introduced in OKD 4.3 and greater, adjusting the iptablesSyncPeriod parameter is no longer necessary.

proxyArguments.iptables-min-sync-period

array

The minimum duration before refreshing iptables rules. This field ensures that the refresh does not happen too frequently. Valid suffixes include s, m, and h and are described in the Go time package. The default value is:

  1. kubeProxyConfig:
  2. proxyArguments:
  3. iptables-min-sync-period:
  4. - 0s

Configuring hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes

You can configure your cluster to use hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes. This allows a hybrid cluster that supports different node networking configurations. For example, this is necessary to run both Linux and Windows nodes in a cluster.

You must configure hybrid networking with OVN-Kubernetes during the installation of your cluster. You cannot switch to hybrid networking after the installation process.

Prerequisites

  • You defined OVNKubernetes for the networking.networkType parameter in the install-config.yaml file. See the installation documentation for configuring OKD network customizations on your chosen cloud provider for more information.

Procedure

  1. Change to the directory that contains the installation program and create the manifests:

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

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the name of the directory that contains the install-config.yaml file for your cluster.

  2. Create a stub manifest file for the advanced network configuration that is named cluster-network-03-config.yml in the <installation_directory>/manifests/ directory:

    1. $ cat <<EOF > <installation_directory>/manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml
    2. apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    3. kind: Network
    4. metadata:
    5. name: cluster
    6. spec:
    7. EOF

    where:

    <installation_directory>

    Specifies the directory name that contains the manifests/ directory for your cluster.

  3. Open the cluster-network-03-config.yml file in an editor and configure OVN-Kubernetes with hybrid networking, such as in the following example:

    Specify a hybrid networking configuration

    1. apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1
    2. kind: Network
    3. metadata:
    4. name: cluster
    5. spec:
    6. defaultNetwork:
    7. ovnKubernetesConfig:
    8. hybridOverlayConfig:
    9. hybridClusterNetwork: (1)
    10. - cidr: 10.132.0.0/14
    11. hostPrefix: 23
    12. hybridOverlayVXLANPort: 9898 (2)
    1Specify the CIDR configuration used for nodes on the additional overlay network. The hybridClusterNetwork CIDR cannot overlap with the clusterNetwork CIDR.
    2Specify a custom VXLAN port for the additional overlay network. This is required for running Windows nodes in a cluster installed on vSphere, and must not be configured for any other cloud provider. The custom port can be any open port excluding the default 4789 port. For more information on this requirement, see the Microsoft documentation on Pod-to-pod connectivity between hosts is broken.
  4. Save the cluster-network-03-config.yml file and quit the text editor.

  5. Optional: Back up the manifests/cluster-network-03-config.yml file. The installation program deletes the manifests/ directory when creating the cluster.

For more information on using Linux and Windows nodes in the same cluster, see Understanding Windows container workloads.

Deploying the cluster

You can install OKD on a compatible cloud platform.

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

Prerequisites

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

  • Obtain the 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:

    1. $ ./openshift-install create cluster --dir=<installation_directory> \ (1)
    2. --log-level=info (2)
    1For <installation_directory>, specify the location of your customized ./install-config.yaml file.
    2To 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

    1. ...
    2. INFO Install complete!
    3. INFO To access the cluster as the system:admin user when using 'oc', run 'export KUBECONFIG=/home/myuser/install_dir/auth/kubeconfig'
    4. INFO Access the OpenShift web-console here: https://console-openshift-console.apps.mycluster.example.com
    5. INFO Login to the console with user: "kubeadmin", and password: "4vYBz-Ee6gm-ymBZj-Wt5AL"
    6. 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.

Installing the OpenShift CLI by downloading the binary

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

If you installed an earlier version of oc, you cannot use it to complete all of the commands in OKD 4.6. Download and install the new version of oc.

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Linux

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

Procedure

  1. Navigate to 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:

    1. $ tar xvzf <file>
  4. Place the oc binary in a directory that is on your PATH.

    To check your PATH, execute the following command:

    1. $ echo $PATH

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

  1. $ 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:

    1. C:\> path

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

  1. 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:

    1. $ echo $PATH

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

  1. $ 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:

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

    1. $ oc whoami

    Example output

    1. system:admin

Additional resources

Additional resources

Next steps