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Installing a Cluster with Red Hat's Assisted Installer

Learn how to install an OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using the Assisted Installer.

Ensure you have completed all the required perquisites before starting the cluster installation. See the Prerequisites topic for more information.

Part 1: Generating the Discovery ISO File Using the Assisted Installer (Red Hat Console)

The compute nodes provisioned for the cluster require a preconfigured "discovery ISO" image for hardware and network validations during cluster deployment. To generate and download the discovery ISO using the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, follow the steps in Using the Assisted Installer to generate an OCI-compatible discovery ISO image in the Red hat documentation, then return to this documentation for Part 2: Provisioning Cloud Infrastructure (OCI Console).

Part 2: Provisioning Cloud Infrastructure (OCI Console)

Learn about the OpenShift Container Platform for OCI provisioning steps that take place in the OCI Console.

In the tasks in this section, you work in the OCI Console to upload the discovery ISO image and provision the cluster infrastructure resources as discussed in Configuration Files. See Terraform Defined Resources for OpenShift for a list of the resources created by the Terraform script used for this installation method. Note that you specify an existing compartment and Object Storage bucket for the cluster. See Creating a Compartment and Creating an Object Storage Bucket if you need instructions for creating these resources.

Uploading the Red Hat ISO Image to Object Storage

  1. In the OCI Console, create an Object Storage bucket and upload the discovery ISO image to the bucket.
  2. Create a Pre-Authenticated Request for the ISO image in Object Storage. This URL is used as the "openshift_image_source_uri", discussed in the steps that follow. See Pre-Authenticated Requests for Object Storage for more information."
    What's Next? Navigate to the Resource Manager service and perform the steps in Creating OpenShift Container Platform Infrastructure Using Resource Manager.

Creating OpenShift Container Platform Infrastructure Using Resource Manager

Use the Resource Manager to automatically provision the OpenShift Container Platform cluster infrastructure.
Important

  • Ensure to run the create-resource-attribution-tags stack before running the create-cluster stack to avoid cluster installation failure. See the Prerequisites topic for more information.
  • The create-resource-attribution-tags stack only needs to be run once. If the tag namespace and defined-tags are already created, you can directly proceed with cluster installation.
  • To run OpenShift, the application requires manage permissions to perform CRUD operations on Instances, Volumes, and Networking resources. We recommend that customers deploy OpenShift in a dedicated compartment to avoid potential conflicts with other applications that might be running in the same compartment.

To provision the infrastructure, first create a stack, which is a configuration based on the Terraform script contained in the create-cluster-vX.X.X.zip file available in the Assets section of OpenShift on OCI Releases page on GitHub. Then, to provision the resources, you create an Apply job, which processes the stack and creates the infrastructure resources.

See the following topics for more information:

See the Terraform Defined Resources for OpenShift page on GitHub for a list of the resources created by the create-cluster-vX.X.X.zip file used by Resource Manager.

  1. Open the navigation menu  and select Developer Services. Under Resource Manager, select Stacks.
  2. Select Create stack.
  3. In the Stack configuration section, select the Terraform configuration source. Select .Zip file and upload the create-cluster-vX.X.X.zip file. After specifying the configuration source, select Next.
  4. In the Configure variables page, complete the following fields:
    Section Field Value
    OpenShift Cluster Configuration Compartment Select Compartment from the dropdown menu.
    Cluster Name Enter the cluster_name value. Use the same cluster name that you entered during the creation of the ISO image in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.
    OpenShift Image Source URI Enter the Pre-Authenticated Request URL created in the previous task, Uploading the Red Hat ISO Image to Object Storage.
    Control Plane Node Configuration Control Plane Shape

    Enter the instance shape of the control plane nodes. For more information, see Compute Shapes.
    Compute Node Configuration Compute Shape

    Enter the instance shape of the compute nodes. For more information, see Compute Shapes.
    Networking Configuration Zone DNS Specify the DNS name server that stores DNS records for a zone, such as openshift-demo.devcluster.openshift.com This is the same value as the Base domain entered in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console during the creation of the ISO image.
    Enable Private DNS Set the DNS zone to public or private. Specifying a value of true, creates a private DNS zone. Specifying a value of false creates a public DNS zone. For a private DNS zone, you must configure your local /etc/hosts file to reach the cluster.
  5. (Optional) Edit the default values for the other fields as needed. By default, the cluster has 3 control plane nodes and 3 compute nodes.
  6. Select Next and review the Stack information and Variables.
  7. Select Create to create the stack. The Console redirects to the stack details page for the new stack.
  8. On the stack details page, select Apply to create an apply job and provision the infrastructure for the cluster. After running an apply job, get the job's details to check its status. Succeeded (SUCCEEDED) indicates that the job has completed.
    What's Next? After running the apply job for the stack, stay in the Resource Manager section of the OCI Console and perform the steps in Get the Custom Manifests for Installation.

Get the Custom Manifests for Installation

After provisioning the infrastructure in the Resource Manager service, from the "Outputs" of the stack job, get the dynamic_custom_manifest file. This output contains all the required manifests, concatenated and preformatted with the configuration values for CCM and CSI.

  1. On the Stacks page in the Resource Manager service, select the name of the stack to see the stack details. If the list view of jobs isn't displayed, select Jobs under the Resources section to see the list of jobs.
  2. Select the job for the stack creation. The Job details page is displayed in the Console.
  3. Select Outputs under the Resources section to see the list of outputs for the job.
  4. For the output dynamic_custom_manifest select show to view the contents of the output.
  5. Select copy to copy the contents of the output to your machine's clipboard. Note: We recommend that you do not manually select and copy the text, as this can cause problems with indentation when you paste this output in the following step.
  6. Using a text editor or code editor, save the copied output to a new manifest.yaml file. Upload this file in the Custom Manifest step of the installation process described in Part 3: Cluster Installation (Red Hat Console).
    What's Next? After obtaining the custom manifest output, you're ready to complete the cluster installation in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. See Part 3: Cluster Installation (Red Hat Console) in this documentation for more information.

Part 3: Cluster Installation (Red Hat Console)

Return to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to complete the cluster creation using the Assisted Installer. See Completing the remaining Assisted Installer steps in the Red Hat documentation for step-by-step instructions.

In the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, you do the following:

  • Assign roles to the control plane and compute instances running in OCI
  • Upload the manifest.yaml file you created in Part 2: Provisioning Cloud Infrastructure (OCI Console) in the Custom Manifest setup.
  • Review the settings for cluster storage and networking
  • Start the cluster installation. Expect the installation to take 30 to 45 minutes to complete.

Accessing The Cluster Console

After installation is complete, select Launch OpenShift Console in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. This opens the management console for the new cluster. The Web Console URL for the cluster console is displayed on the Installation progress page, and can be bookmarked in a browser. In the cluster management console, download the kubeconfig file which you use to access the cluster with the OpenShift CLI (oc) or the Kubernetes CLI (kubectl).

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