Chapter 2. Creating a cluster on Google Cloud with Workload Identity Federation authentication

Procedure

1. Log in to OpenShift Cluster Manager and click Create cluster on the OpenShift Dedicated card.

2. Under Billing model, configure the subscription type and infrastructure type.

   1. Select a subscription type. For information about OpenShift Dedicated subscription options, see Cluster subscriptions and registration in the OpenShift Cluster Manager documentation.
   2. Select the Customer cloud subscription infrastructure type.
   3. Click Next.
3. Select Run on Google Cloud.

4. Select Workload Identity Federation as the Authentication type.

   Note

   Workload Identity Federation (WIF), Google Cloud’s recommended method of authentication, is the default authentication type of OpenShift Dedicated installation. It greatly improves a cluster’s resilience by using short-lived, least-privilege credentials and eliminates the need for static service account keys.

   1. Read and complete all the required prerequisites.
   2. Click the checkbox indicating that you have read and completed all the required prerequisites.

5. To create a new WIF configuration, open a terminal window and run the following OCM CLI command.

   $ ocm gcp create wif-config --name <wif_name> \ 

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     --project <gcp_project_id> \ 

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     --version <osd_version> 

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     --federated-project <gcp_project_id> 

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   Replace <wif_name> with the name of your WIF configuration.

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   Replace <gcp_project_id> with the ID of the Google Cloud project where the WIF configuration will be implemented.

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   Optional: Replace <osd_version> with the desired OpenShift Dedicated version the wif-config will need to support. If you do not specify a version, the wif-config will support the latest OpenShift Dedicated y-stream version as well as the last three supported OpenShift Dedicated y-stream versions (beginning with version 4.17).

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   Optional: Replace <gcp_project_id> with the ID of the dedicated project where the workload identity pools and providers will be created and managed. If --federated-project is not specified, the workload identity pools and providers will be created and managed in the project specified by the --project flag.

6. Select a configured WIF configuration from the WIF configuration drop-down list. If you want to select the WIF configuration you created in the last step, click Refresh first.
7. Click Next.

8. On the Details page, provide a name for your cluster and specify the cluster details:

   1. In the Cluster name field, enter a name for your cluster.

   2. Optional: Cluster creation generates a domain prefix as a subdomain for your provisioned cluster on openshiftapps.com. If the cluster name is less than or equal to 15 characters, that name is used for the domain prefix. If the cluster name is longer than 15 characters, the domain prefix is randomly generated as a 15-character string.

      To customize the subdomain prefix, select the Create custom domain prefix checkbox, and enter your domain prefix name in the Domain prefix field. The domain prefix cannot be longer than 15 characters, must be unique within your organization, and cannot be changed after cluster creation.

   3. Select a cluster version from the Version drop-down menu.

      Note

      Workload Identity Federation (WIF) is only supported on OpenShift Dedicated version 4.17 and later.

   4. Select a cloud provider region from the Region drop-down menu.
   5. Select a Single zone or Multi-zone configuration.

   6. Optional: Select Enable Secure Boot support for Shielded VMs to use Shielded VMs when installing your cluster. Once you create your cluster, the Enable Secure Boot support for Shielded VMs setting cannot be changed. For more information, see Shielded VMs.

      Important

      To successfully create a cluster, you must select Enable Secure Boot support for Shielded VMs if your organization has the policy constraint constraints/compute.requireShieldedVm enabled. For more information regarding Google Cloud organizational policy constraints, see Organization policy constraints.

      Important

      Enable Secure Boot support for Shielded VMs is not supported for OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud clusters created using bare-metal instance types. For more information, see Limitations in the Google Cloud documentation.

   7. Leave Enable user workload monitoring selected to monitor your own projects in isolation from Red Hat Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) platform metrics. This option is enabled by default.

9. Optional: Expand Advanced Encryption to make changes to encryption settings.

   1. Select Use custom KMS keys to use custom KMS keys. If you prefer not to use custom KMS keys, leave the default setting Use default KMS Keys.

   2. With Use Custom KMS keys selected:

      1. Select a key ring location from the Key ring location drop-down menu.
      2. Select a key ring from the Key ring drop-down menu.
      3. Select a key name from the Key name drop-down menu.
      4. Provide the KMS Service Account.

   3. Optional: Select Enable FIPS cryptography if you require your cluster to be FIPS validated.

      Note

      If Enable FIPS cryptography is selected, Enable additional etcd encryption is enabled by default and cannot be disabled. You can select Enable additional etcd encryption without selecting Enable FIPS cryptography.

   4. Optional: Select Enable additional etcd encryption if you require etcd key value encryption. With this option, the etcd key values are encrypted, but not the keys. This option is in addition to the control plane storage encryption that encrypts the etcd volumes in OpenShift Dedicated clusters by default.

      Note

      By enabling etcd encryption for the key values in etcd, you incur a performance overhead of approximately 20%. The overhead is a result of introducing this second layer of encryption, in addition to the default control plane storage encryption that encrypts the etcd volumes. Consider enabling etcd encryption only if you specifically require it for your use case.

10. Click Next.
11. On the Machine pool page, select a Compute node instance type and a Compute node count. The number and types of nodes that are available depend on your OpenShift Dedicated subscription. If you are using multiple availability zones, the compute node count is per zone.

12. Optional: Expand Add node labels to add labels to your nodes. Click Add additional label to add more node labels.

    Important

    This step refers to labels within Kubernetes, not Google Cloud. For more information regarding Kubernetes labels, see Labels and Selectors.

13. Click Next.
14. In the Cluster privacy dialog, select Public or Private to use either public or private API endpoints and application routes for your cluster. If you select Private, Use Private Service Connect is selected by default, and cannot be disabled. Private Service Connect (PSC) is Google Cloud’s security-enhanced networking feature.

15. Optional: To install the cluster in an existing Google Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC):

    1. Select Install into an existing VPC.

       Important

       Private Service Connect is supported only with Install into an existing VPC.

    2. If you are installing into an existing VPC and you want to enable an HTTP or HTTPS proxy for your cluster, select Configure a cluster-wide proxy.

       Important

       In order to configure a cluster-wide proxy for your cluster, you must first create the Cloud network address translation (NAT) and a Cloud router. See the Additional resources section for more information.

16. Accept the default application ingress settings, or to create your own custom settings, select Custom Settings.

    1. Optional: Provide route selector.
    2. Optional: Provide excluded namespaces.
    3. Select a namespace ownership policy.

    4. Select a wildcard policy.

       For more information about custom application ingress settings, click on the information icon provided for each setting.

17. Click Next.

18. Optional: To install the cluster into a Google Cloud Shared VPC, follow these steps.

    Note

    Installing a new OpenShift Dedicated cluster into a VPC that was automatically created by the installer for a different cluster is not supported.

    Important

    The VPC owner of the host project must enable a project as a host project in their Google Cloud console and add the Computer Network Administrator, Compute Security Administrator, and DNS Administrator roles to the following service accounts before cluster installation:

    • osd-deployer
    • osd-control-plane
    • openshift-machine-api-gcp

    Failure to do so will cause the cluster go into the "Installation Waiting" state. If this occurs, you must contact the VPC owner of the host project to assign the roles to the service accounts listed above. The VPC owner of the host project has 30 days to grant the listed permissions before the cluster creation fails. For more information, see Enable a host project and Provision Shared VPC.

    1. Select Install into Google Cloud Shared VPC.
    2. Specify the Host project ID. If the specified host project ID is incorrect, cluster creation fails.

    3. If you opted to install the cluster in an existing Google Cloud VPC, provide your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) subnet settings and select Next. You must have created the Cloud network address translation (NAT) and a Cloud router. See Additional resources for information about Cloud NATs and Google VPCs.

       Note

       If you are installing a cluster into a Shared VPC, the VPC name and subnets are shared from the host project.

19. Click Next.

20. If you opted to configure a cluster-wide proxy, provide your proxy configuration details on the Cluster-wide proxy page:

    1. Enter a value in at least one of the following fields:

       • Specify a valid HTTP proxy URL.
       • Specify a valid HTTPS proxy URL.
       • In the Additional trust bundle field, provide a PEM encoded X.509 certificate bundle. The bundle is added to the trusted certificate store for the cluster nodes. An additional trust bundle file is required if you use a TLS-inspecting proxy unless the identity certificate for the proxy is signed by an authority from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) trust bundle. This requirement applies regardless of whether the proxy is transparent or requires explicit configuration using the http-proxy and https-proxy arguments.

    2. Click Next.

       For more information about configuring a proxy with OpenShift Dedicated, see Configuring a cluster-wide proxy.

21. In the CIDR ranges dialog, configure custom classless inter-domain routing (CIDR) ranges or use the defaults that are provided.

    Important

    CIDR configurations cannot be changed later. Confirm your selections with your network administrator before proceeding.

    If the cluster privacy is set to Private, you cannot access your cluster until you configure private connections in your cloud provider.

22. On the Cluster update strategy page, configure your update preferences:

    1. Choose a cluster update method:

       • Select Individual updates if you want to schedule each update individually. This is the default option.

       • Select Recurring updates to update your cluster on your preferred day and start time, when updates are available.

         Note

         You can review the end-of-life dates in the update lifecycle documentation for OpenShift Dedicated. For more information, see OpenShift Dedicated update life cycle.

    2. Provide administrator approval based on your cluster update method:

       • Individual updates: If you select an update version that requires approval, provide an administrator’s acknowledgment and click Approve and continue.
       • Recurring updates: If you selected recurring updates for your cluster, provide an administrator’s acknowledgment and click Approve and continue. OpenShift Cluster Manager does not start scheduled y-stream updates for minor versions without receiving an administrator’s acknowledgment.
    3. If you opted for recurring updates, select a preferred day of the week and upgrade start time in UTC from the drop-down menus.
    4. Optional: You can set a grace period for Node draining during cluster upgrades. A 1 hour grace period is set by default.

    5. Click Next.

       Note

       In the event of critical security concerns that significantly impact the security or stability of a cluster, Red Hat Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) might schedule automatic updates to the latest z-stream version that is not impacted. The updates are applied within 48 hours after customer notifications are provided. For a description of the critical impact security rating, see Understanding Red Hat security ratings.

23. Review the summary of your selections and click Create cluster to start the cluster installation. The installation takes approximately 30-40 minutes to complete.
24. Optional: On the Overview tab, you can enable the delete protection feature by selecting Enable, which is located directly under Delete Protection: Disabled. This will prevent your cluster from being deleted. To disable delete protection, select Disable. By default, clusters are created with the delete protection feature disabled.