Chapter 2. Configuring a private cluster
After you install an OpenShift Container Platform version 4.11 cluster, you can set some of its core components to be private.
2.1. About private clusters
By default, OpenShift Container Platform is provisioned using publicly-accessible DNS and endpoints. You can set the DNS, Ingress Controller, and API server to private after you deploy your private cluster.
If the cluster has any public subnets, load balancer services created by administrators might be publicly accessible. To ensure cluster security, verify that these services are explicitly annotated as private.
DNS
If you install OpenShift Container Platform on installer-provisioned infrastructure, the installation program creates records in a pre-existing public zone and, where possible, creates a private zone for the cluster’s own DNS resolution. In both the public zone and the private zone, the installation program or cluster creates DNS entries for *.apps
, for the Ingress
object, and api
, for the API server.
The *.apps
records in the public and private zone are identical, so when you delete the public zone, the private zone seamlessly provides all DNS resolution for the cluster.
Ingress Controller
Because the default Ingress
object is created as public, the load balancer is internet-facing and in the public subnets.
The Ingress Operator generates a default certificate for an Ingress Controller to serve as a placeholder until you configure a custom default certificate. Do not use Operator-generated default certificates in production clusters. The Ingress Operator does not rotate its own signing certificate or the default certificates that it generates. Operator-generated default certificates are intended as placeholders for custom default certificates that you configure.
API server
By default, the installation program creates appropriate network load balancers for the API server to use for both internal and external traffic.
On Amazon Web Services (AWS), separate public and private load balancers are created. The load balancers are identical except that an additional port is available on the internal one for use within the cluster. Although the installation program automatically creates or destroys the load balancer based on API server requirements, the cluster does not manage or maintain them. As long as you preserve the cluster’s access to the API server, you can manually modify or move the load balancers. For the public load balancer, port 6443 is open and the health check is configured for HTTPS against the /readyz
path.
On Google Cloud Platform, a single load balancer is created to manage both internal and external API traffic, so you do not need to modify the load balancer.
On Microsoft Azure, both public and private load balancers are created. However, because of limitations in current implementation, you just retain both load balancers in a private cluster.
2.2. Setting DNS to private
After you deploy a cluster, you can modify its DNS to use only a private zone.
Procedure
Review the
DNS
custom resource for your cluster:$ oc get dnses.config.openshift.io/cluster -o yaml
Example output
apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1 kind: DNS metadata: creationTimestamp: "2019-10-25T18:27:09Z" generation: 2 name: cluster resourceVersion: "37966" selfLink: /apis/config.openshift.io/v1/dnses/cluster uid: 0e714746-f755-11f9-9cb1-02ff55d8f976 spec: baseDomain: <base_domain> privateZone: tags: Name: <infrastructure_id>-int kubernetes.io/cluster/<infrastructure_id>: owned publicZone: id: Z2XXXXXXXXXXA4 status: {}
Note that the
spec
section contains both a private and a public zone.Patch the
DNS
custom resource to remove the public zone:$ oc patch dnses.config.openshift.io/cluster --type=merge --patch='{"spec": {"publicZone": null}}' dns.config.openshift.io/cluster patched
Because the Ingress Controller consults the
DNS
definition when it createsIngress
objects, when you create or modifyIngress
objects, only private records are created.ImportantDNS records for the existing Ingress objects are not modified when you remove the public zone.
Optional: Review the
DNS
custom resource for your cluster and confirm that the public zone was removed:$ oc get dnses.config.openshift.io/cluster -o yaml
Example output
apiVersion: config.openshift.io/v1 kind: DNS metadata: creationTimestamp: "2019-10-25T18:27:09Z" generation: 2 name: cluster resourceVersion: "37966" selfLink: /apis/config.openshift.io/v1/dnses/cluster uid: 0e714746-f755-11f9-9cb1-02ff55d8f976 spec: baseDomain: <base_domain> privateZone: tags: Name: <infrastructure_id>-int kubernetes.io/cluster/<infrastructure_id>-wfpg4: owned status: {}
2.3. Setting the Ingress Controller to private
After you deploy a cluster, you can modify its Ingress Controller to use only a private zone.
Procedure
Modify the default Ingress Controller to use only an internal endpoint:
$ oc replace --force --wait --filename - <<EOF apiVersion: operator.openshift.io/v1 kind: IngressController metadata: namespace: openshift-ingress-operator name: default spec: endpointPublishingStrategy: type: LoadBalancerService loadBalancer: scope: Internal EOF
Example output
ingresscontroller.operator.openshift.io "default" deleted ingresscontroller.operator.openshift.io/default replaced
The public DNS entry is removed, and the private zone entry is updated.
2.4. Restricting the API server to private
After you deploy a cluster to Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, you can reconfigure the API server to use only the private zone.
Prerequisites
-
Install the OpenShift CLI (
oc
). -
Have access to the web console as a user with
admin
privileges.
Procedure
In the web portal or console for AWS or Azure, take the following actions:
Locate and delete appropriate load balancer component.
- For AWS, delete the external load balancer. The API DNS entry in the private zone already points to the internal load balancer, which uses an identical configuration, so you do not need to modify the internal load balancer.
-
For Azure, delete the
api-internal
rule for the load balancer.
-
Delete the
api.$clustername.$yourdomain
DNS entry in the public zone.
Remove the external load balancers:
ImportantYou can run the following steps only for an installer-provisioned infrastructure (IPI) cluster. For a user-provisioned infrastructure (UPI) cluster, you must manually remove or disable the external load balancers.
From your terminal, list the cluster machines:
$ oc get machine -n openshift-machine-api
Example output
NAME STATE TYPE REGION ZONE AGE lk4pj-master-0 running m4.xlarge us-east-1 us-east-1a 17m lk4pj-master-1 running m4.xlarge us-east-1 us-east-1b 17m lk4pj-master-2 running m4.xlarge us-east-1 us-east-1a 17m lk4pj-worker-us-east-1a-5fzfj running m4.xlarge us-east-1 us-east-1a 15m lk4pj-worker-us-east-1a-vbghs running m4.xlarge us-east-1 us-east-1a 15m lk4pj-worker-us-east-1b-zgpzg running m4.xlarge us-east-1 us-east-1b 15m
You modify the control plane machines, which contain
master
in the name, in the following step.Remove the external load balancer from each control plane machine.
Edit a control plane
Machine
object to remove the reference to the external load balancer:$ oc edit machines -n openshift-machine-api <master_name> 1
- 1
- Specify the name of the control plane, or master,
Machine
object to modify.
Remove the lines that describe the external load balancer, which are marked in the following example, and save and exit the object specification:
... spec: providerSpec: value: ... loadBalancers: - name: lk4pj-ext 1 type: network 2 - name: lk4pj-int type: network
-
Repeat this process for each of the machines that contains
master
in the name.
2.4.1. Configuring the Ingress Controller endpoint publishing scope to Internal
When a cluster administrator installs a new cluster without specifying that the cluster is private, the default Ingress Controller is created with a scope
set to External
. Cluster administrators can change an External
scoped Ingress Controller to Internal
.
Prerequisites
-
You installed the
oc
CLI.
Procedure
To change an
External
scoped Ingress Controller toInternal
, enter the following command:$ oc -n openshift-ingress-operator patch ingresscontrollers/default --type=merge --patch='{"spec":{"endpointPublishingStrategy":{"type":"LoadBalancerService","loadBalancer":{"scope":"Internal"}}}}'
To check the status of the Ingress Controller, enter the following command:
$ oc -n openshift-ingress-operator get ingresscontrollers/default -o yaml
The
Progressing
status condition indicates whether you must take further action. For example, the status condition can indicate that you need to delete the service by entering the following command:$ oc -n openshift-ingress delete services/router-default
If you delete the service, the Ingress Operator recreates it as
Internal
.