Installing a cluster on GCP with customizations

In OKD version 4.8, you can install a customized cluster on infrastructure that the installation program provisions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). To customize the installation, you modify parameters in the install-config.yaml file before you install the cluster.

Prerequisites

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.

Do not skip this procedure in production environments, where disaster recovery and debugging is required.

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 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:

    1. $ ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N '' -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.

    If you plan to install an OKD cluster that uses FIPS Validated / Modules in Process cryptographic libraries on the x86_64 architecture, do not create a key that uses the ed25519 algorithm. Instead, create a key that uses the rsa or ecdsa algorithm.

  2. View the public SSH key:

    1. $ cat <path>/<file_name>.pub

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

    1. $ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.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:

      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.

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

    1. $ ssh-add <path>/<file_name> (1)
    1Specify the path and file name for your SSH private key, such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa

    Example output

    1. Identity added: /home/<you>/<path>/<file_name> (<computer_name>)
  5. Set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to the full path to your service account private key file.

    1. $ export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="<your_service_account_file>"
  6. Verify that the credentials were applied.

    1. $ gcloud auth list

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. 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 Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Prerequisites

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

  • Obtain service principal permissions at the subscription level.

Procedure

  1. Create the install-config.yaml file.

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

      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 gcp as the platform to target.

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

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

      5. Select the region to deploy the cluster to.

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

      7. Enter a descriptive name for your cluster.

      8. Paste the pull secret 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, or {}. For additional information about platform.<platform> parameters, consult the table for your specific platform that follows.

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 MachinePool 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 Google Cloud Platform (GCP) configuration parameters

Additional GCP configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Table 4. Additional GCP parameters
ParameterDescriptionValues

platform.gcp.network

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

String.

platform.gcp.region

The name of the GCP region that hosts your cluster.

Any valid region name, such as us-central1.

platform.gcp.type

The GCP machine type.

platform.gcp.zones

The availability zones where the installation program creates machines for the specified MachinePool.

A list of valid GCP availability zones, such as us-central1-a, in a YAML sequence.

platform.gcp.controlPlaneSubnet

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

The subnet name.

platform.gcp.computeSubnet

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

The subnet name.

platform.gcp.osDisk.diskSizeGB

The size of the disk in gigabytes (GB).

Any size between 16 GB and 65536 GB.

platform.gcp.osDisk.diskType

The type of disk.

Either the default pd-ssd or the pd-standard disk type. The control plane nodes must be the pd-ssd disk type. The worker nodes can be either type.

controlPlane.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.name

The name of the customer managed encryption key to be used for control plane machine disk encryption.

The encryption key name.

controlPlane.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.keyRing

For control plane machines, the name of the KMS key ring to which the KMS key belongs.

The KMS key ring name.

controlPlane.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.location

For control plane machines, the GCP location in which the key ring exists. For more information on KMS locations, see Google’s documentation on Cloud KMS locations.

The GCP location for the key ring.

controlPlane.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.projectID

For control plane machines, the ID of the project in which the KMS key ring exists. This value defaults to the VM project ID if not set.

The GCP project ID.

compute.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.name

The name of the customer managed encryption key to be used for compute machine disk encryption.

The encryption key name.

compute.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.keyRing

For compute machines, the name of the KMS key ring to which the KMS key belongs.

The KMS key ring name.

compute.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.location

For compute machines, the GCP location in which the key ring exists. For more information on KMS locations, see Google’s documentation on Cloud KMS locations.

The GCP location for the key ring.

compute.platform.gcp.osDisk.encryptionKey.kmsKey.projectID

For compute machines, the ID of the project in which the KMS key ring exists. This value defaults to the VM project ID if not set.

The GCP project ID.

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.

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) (3)
  4. hyperthreading: Enabled (4)
  5. name: master
  6. platform:
  7. gcp:
  8. type: n2-standard-4
  9. zones:
  10. - us-central1-a
  11. - us-central1-c
  12. osDisk:
  13. diskType: pd-ssd
  14. diskSizeGB: 256
  15. encryptionKey: (5)
  16. kmsKey:
  17. name: worker-key
  18. keyRing: test-machine-keys
  19. location: global
  20. projectID: project-id
  21. replicas: 3
  22. compute: (2) (3)
  23. - hyperthreading: Enabled (4)
  24. name: worker
  25. platform:
  26. gcp:
  27. type: n2-standard-4
  28. zones:
  29. - us-central1-a
  30. - us-central1-c
  31. osDisk:
  32. diskType: pd-standard
  33. diskSizeGB: 128
  34. encryptionKey: (5)
  35. kmsKey:
  36. name: worker-key
  37. keyRing: test-machine-keys
  38. location: global
  39. projectID: project-id
  40. replicas: 3
  41. metadata:
  42. name: test-cluster (1)
  43. networking:
  44. clusterNetwork:
  45. - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
  46. hostPrefix: 23
  47. machineNetwork:
  48. - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  49. networkType: OVNKubernetes
  50. serviceNetwork:
  51. - 172.30.0.0/16
  52. platform:
  53. gcp:
  54. projectID: openshift-production (1)
  55. region: us-central1 (1)
  56. pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (1)
  57. sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (6)
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 machine types, such as n1-standard-8, for your machines if you disable simultaneous multithreading.

5Optional: The custom encryption key section to encrypt both virtual machines and persistent volumes. Your default compute service account must have the permissions granted to use your KMS key and have the correct IAM role assigned. The default service account name follows the service-<project_number>@compute-system.iam.gserviceaccount.com pattern. For more information on granting the correct permissions for your service account, see “Machine management” → “Creating machine sets” → “Creating a machine set on GCP”.
6You 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.

Additional resources

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, 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.
    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 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. 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.

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. 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:

    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.

  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.

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.

If you installed an earlier version of oc, you cannot use it to complete all of the commands in OKD 4.8. 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