OpenShift 4 UPI Home Lab Installation

I followed these steps to build out my OpenShift 4 UPI home lab using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) virtual machines. Refer to the official documentation for a bare metal installation.

For a restricted network setup using a mirror Docker repository, follow the additional steps denoted by [Restricted Network].

Architecture

1 helper node (RHEL7, 4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 30 GB disk)
1 bootstrap node (CoreOS, 4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM, 120 GB disk)
3 control plane nodes (each CoreOS, 4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM, 120 GB disk)
2 compute nodes (each CoreOS, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 120 GB disk)

Installation

1. Set up helper node

I followed instructions from this Git repository to build out a UPI helper node. This allowed me to satisfy load balancing, DHCP, PXE, DNS, and HTTPD requirements. I ran nmcli device show from the helper node to populate the DHCP section of vars.yaml since the helper node will function as DNS/DHCP for the cluster. At this time, don't run the helper node configuration playbook yet.

[Restricted Network] - Add mirror repository to DNS

Add the mirror repository to the DNS entries on your authoritative helper node. Using the above UPI helper node Git repository, I added DNS entries to the following files: /var/named/zonefile.db and /var/named/reverse.db

2. Bare metal installation

I continued with the bare metal installation, following the steps in the documentation

Generating an SSH private key and adding it to the agent
Obtaining the installation program
- Place openshift-install binary in this Git repository's home directory
Installing the OpenShift Command-line Interface
Manually creating the installation configuration file
- To get started, an example has been placed in the save directory and can be used with the following command: cp save/install-config-example.yaml save/install-config.yaml
- [Restricted Network] Use this example instead of the above: cp save/install-config-restricted-example.yaml save/install-config.yaml
- Replace the contents of save/install-config.yaml with your custom configuration

3. Create virtual machines

3a. [Restricted Network] - Set up restricted network

Set up networking on hypervisor - For a restricted network cluster, you will need to configure a separate network, vNIC profile, and VLAN tag on your hypervisor. This configuration is beyond the scope of this repository.
Configure the bastion, bootstrap, masters, and compute nodes to use the network interface for the restricted network configured above. You can use a 192.168.x.0/24 subnet for this.
Follow the official documentation to install a mirror repository or refer to this repository to [install Sonatype Nexus as a mirror Docker repository].
Configure your mirror repository with two network interface, one for the restricted network and one with access to Red Hat's public sites.

3b. Continue creating virtual machines

For this step, "Creating Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) machines using an ISO image", I proceeded as follows.

In RHEV, I created the VMs for the bootstrap, control plane, and compute nodes.
For disks, I used Preallocated for the masters and Thin Provisioning for the bootstrap and compute nodes. The etcd database on masters is I/O intensive and thus Preallocated is recommended.
While creating the VMs booted from CD-ROM using a downloaded version of this ISO locally hosted in RHEV:

4. Configure DHCP

While still in RHEV, I noted the MAC addresses of the network interfaces by populating the macaddr field of the bootstrap, masters, and workers sections of vars.yaml.
At this point, I have the information needed to configure DHCP so I ran the helper node configuration playbook with the following command:

ansible-playbook -e @vars.yaml tasks/main.yml

Add the api and api-int URLs to /etc/hosts on your helper node:

<your-helper-node-ip> api.<your-clusterid>.<your-cluster-domain>
<your-helper-node-ip> api-int.<your-clusterid>.<your-cluster-domain>

5. Create the manifests and ignition config files

Run the helper script to create the manifests file: create-manifests-config.sh
Run the helper script to create the ignition config file: ./create-ignition-configs.sh
- The Ignition config files should be placed in the web directory of the httpd server on the UPI helper node: chmod 644 *.ign; cp *.ign /var/www/html/ignition/; restorecon -vR /var/www/html/
- Run /usr/local/bin/helpernodecheck install-info for more info.

6. Install RHCOS

I started all of the VMs to install RHCOS. On the "Install CoreOS" screen, I pressed Tab and added the following to specify the corresponding Ignition and BIOS files:

For bootstrap node:
coreos.inst.install_dev=sda coreos.inst.image_url=http://my-helper-node:8080/install/bios.raw.gz coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://my-helper-node:8080/ignition/bootstrap.ign

For master node:
coreos.inst.install_dev=sda coreos.inst.image_url=http://my-helper-node:8080/install/bios.raw.gz coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://my-helper-node:8080/ignition/master.ign

For worker node:
coreos.inst.install_dev=sda coreos.inst.image_url=http://my-helper-node:8080/install/bios.raw.gz coreos.inst.ignition_url=http://my-helper-node:8080/ignition/worker.ign

The BIOS file was created by the helper node playbook and is a local clone of the upstream mirror:

The CoreOS wrote to disk and requested a reboot, and I reconfigured RHEV to now boot from hard drive. Upon reboot of each node, they consumed their respective Ignition files.

7. Install OpenShift

I kicked off the installation with the following command:

./openshift-install --dir=<installation_directory> wait-for bootstrap-complete --log-level info

8. Verify installation

To verify installation, I ran this helper script: ./complete-install.sh

Post Installation

Refer to this documentation for post installation procedures (day 2).

[Restricted Network] - Update Minor Version in Cluster with Mirror Repository

Refer to this documentation for updating the minor version in a restricted network.

License

GPLv3

Author

Kevin Chung

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