Installing a cluster on AWS with customizations

• You reviewed details about the OKD installation and update processes.

• You read the documentation on .

• You configured an AWS account to host the cluster.

  If you have an AWS profile stored on your computer, it must not use a temporary session token that you generated while using a multi-factor authentication device. The cluster continues to use your current AWS credentials to create AWS resources for the entire life of the cluster, so you must use long-lived credentials. To generate appropriate keys, see in the AWS documentation. You can supply the keys when you run the installation program.

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

• If the cloud identity and access management (IAM) APIs are not accessible in your environment, or if you do not want to store an administrator-level credential secret in the kube-system namespace, you can .

Generating a key pair for cluster node SSH access

During an OKD installation, you can provide an SSH public key to the installation program. The key is passed to the Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) nodes through their Ignition config files and is used to authenticate SSH access to the nodes. The key is added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys list for the core user on each node, which enables password-less authentication.

After the key is passed to the nodes, you can use the key pair to SSH in to the FCOS nodes as the user core. To access the nodes through SSH, the private key identity must be managed by SSH for your local user.

If you want to SSH in to your cluster nodes to perform installation debugging or disaster recovery, you must provide the SSH public key during the installation process. The ./openshift-install gather command also requires the SSH public key to be in place on the cluster nodes.

Procedure

1. If you do not have an existing SSH key pair on your local machine to use for authentication onto your cluster nodes, create one. For example, on a computer that uses a Linux operating system, run the following command:

   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.

   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:

   $ cat <path>/<file_name>.pub

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

   $ 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:

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

      Example output

      Agent pid 31874

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

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

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

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

   Example output

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

Next steps

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

Obtaining the installation program

Before you install OKD, download the installation file on 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

   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. 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 registry, such as image streams and Operators, are not available.

You can customize the OKD cluster you install on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

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:

      $ ./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 AWS as the platform to target.

      3. If you do not have an Amazon Web Services (AWS) profile stored on your computer, enter the AWS access key ID and secret access key for the user that you configured to run the installation program.

      4. Select the AWS region to deploy the cluster to.

      5. Select the base domain for the Route 53 service that you configured for your cluster.

      6. Enter a descriptive name for your cluster.

      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.

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

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>

Optional AWS configuration parameters

Optional AWS configuration parameters are described in the following table:

Supported AWS machine types

The following Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance types are supported with OKD.

Instance types for machines

You can customize the install-config.yaml file to specify more details about your OKD cluster’s platform or modify the values of the required parameters.

apiVersion: v1
baseDomain: example.com (1)
credentialsMode: Mint (2)
controlPlane:  (3) (4)
  hyperthreading: Enabled (5)
  name: master
  platform:
    aws:
      zones:
      - us-west-2a
      - us-west-2b
      rootVolume:
        iops: 4000
        size: 500
        type: io1 (6)
      type: m5.xlarge
  replicas: 3
compute: (3)
- hyperthreading: Enabled (5)
  name: worker
  platform:
    aws:
      rootVolume:
        iops: 2000
        size: 500
        type: io1 (6)
      type: c5.4xlarge
      zones:
  replicas: 3
metadata:
  name: test-cluster (1)
networking:
  clusterNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
    hostPrefix: 23
  machineNetwork:
  - cidr: 10.0.0.0/16
  networkType: OVNKubernetes
  serviceNetwork:
  - 172.30.0.0/16
platform:
  aws:
    region: us-west-2 (1)
    userTags:
      adminContact: jdoe
      costCenter: 7536
    amiID: ami-96c6f8f7 (7)
    serviceEndpoints: (8)
      - name: ec2
        url: https://vpce-id.ec2.us-west-2.vpce.amazonaws.com
sshKey: ssh-ed25519 AAAA... (9)
pullSecret: '{"auths": ...}' (1)

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. 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.

Deploying the cluster

You can install OKD on a compatible cloud platform.

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:

   $ ./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.

2. Optional: Remove or disable the AdministratorAccess policy from the IAM account that you used to install the cluster.

   The elevated permissions provided by the AdministratorAccess policy are required only during installation.

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.

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

Procedure

1. Navigate to and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

2. Download oc.tar.gz.

3. Unpack the archive:

   $ tar xvzf <file>

4. Place the oc binary in a directory that is on your PATH.

   To check your PATH, execute the following command:

   $ echo $PATH

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

$ oc <command>

Installing the OpenShift CLI on Windows

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

Procedure

1. Navigate to 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:

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

C:\> oc <command>

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

Procedure

1. Navigate to https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/oc/latest/ and choose the folder for your operating system and architecture.

2. Download oc.tar.gz.

3. Unpack and unzip the archive.

4. Move the oc binary to a directory on your PATH.

   To check your PATH, open a terminal and execute the following command:

   $ echo $PATH

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

$ oc <command>

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

Logging in to the cluster by using the web console

The kubeadmin user exists by default after an OKD installation. You can log into your cluster as the kubeadmin user by using the OKD web console.

Prerequisites

• You have access to the installation host.

• You completed a cluster installation and all cluster Operators are available.

Procedure

1. Obtain the password for the kubeadmin user from the kubeadmin-password file on the installation host:

   $ cat <installation_directory>/auth/kubeadmin-password

   Alternatively, you can obtain the kubeadmin password from the <installation_directory>/.openshift_install.log log file on the installation host.

2. List the OKD web console route:

   $ oc get routes -n openshift-console | grep 'console-openshift'

   Example output

   console     console-openshift-console.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>            console     https   reencrypt/Redirect   None

3. Navigate to the route detailed in the output of the preceding command in a web browser and log in as the kubeadmin user.

Additional resources

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

Additional resources

• See for more information about the Telemetry service.

Next steps

• .

• Customize your cluster.

• If necessary, you can .

• If necessary, you can remove cloud provider credentials.