Chapter 4. Preparing PXE assets for OpenShift Container Platform

Procedure

1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console using your login credentials.
2. Navigate to Datacenter.
3. Click Run Agent-based Installer locally.
4. Select the operating system and architecture for the OpenShift Installer and Command line interface.
5. Click Download Installer to download and extract the install program.
6. Download or copy the pull secret by clicking on Download pull secret or Copy pull secret.
7. Click Download command-line tools and place the openshift-install binary in a directory that is on your PATH.

Procedure

1. Install nmstate dependency by running the following command:

   $ sudo dnf install /usr/bin/nmstatectl -y

2. Place the openshift-install binary in a directory that is on your PATH.

3. Create a directory to store the install configuration by running the following command:

   $ mkdir ~/<directory_name>

   Note

   This is the preferred method for the Agent-based installation. Using GitOps ZTP manifests is optional.

4. Create the install-config.yaml file by running the following command:

   $ cat << EOF > ./<directory_name>/install-config.yaml
   apiVersion: v1
   baseDomain: test.example.com
   compute:
   - architecture: amd64 1
     hyperthreading: Enabled
     name: worker
     replicas: 0
   controlPlane:
     architecture: amd64
     hyperthreading: Enabled
     name: master
     replicas: 1
   metadata:
     name: sno-cluster 2
   networking:
     clusterNetwork:
     - cidr: 10.128.0.0/14
       hostPrefix: 23
     machineNetwork:
     - cidr: 192.168.0.0/16
     networkType: OVNKubernetes 3
     serviceNetwork:
     - 172.30.0.0/16
   platform: 4
     none: {}
   pullSecret: '<pull_secret>' 5
   sshKey: '<ssh_pub_key>' 6
   EOF

   1

   Specify the system architecture. Valid values are amd64, arm64, ppc64le, and s390x.

   If you are using the release image with the multi payload, you can install the cluster on different architectures such as arm64, amd64, s390x, and ppc64le. Otherwise, you can install the cluster only on the release architecture displayed in the output of the openshift-install version command. For more information, see "Verifying the supported architecture for installing an Agent-based Installer cluster".

   2

   Required. Specify your cluster name.

   3

   The cluster network plugin to install. The default value OVNKubernetes is the only supported value.

   4

   Specify your platform.

   Note

   For bare metal platforms, host settings made in the platform section of the install-config.yaml file are used by default, unless they are overridden by configurations made in the agent-config.yaml file.

   5

   Specify your pull secret.

   6

   Specify your SSH public key.

   Note

   If you set the platform to vSphere or baremetal, you can configure IP address endpoints for cluster nodes in three ways:

   • IPv4
   • IPv6
   • IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel (dual-stack)

   IPv6 is supported only on bare metal platforms.

   Example of dual-stack networking

   networking:
     clusterNetwork:
       - cidr: 172.21.0.0/16
         hostPrefix: 23
       - cidr: fd02::/48
         hostPrefix: 64
     machineNetwork:
       - cidr: 192.168.11.0/16
       - cidr: 2001:DB8::/32
     serviceNetwork:
       - 172.22.0.0/16
       - fd03::/112
     networkType: OVNKubernetes
   platform:
     baremetal:
       apiVIPs:
       - 192.168.11.3
       - 2001:DB8::4
       ingressVIPs:
       - 192.168.11.4
       - 2001:DB8::5

   Note

   When you use a disconnected mirror registry, you must add the certificate file that you created previously for your mirror registry to the additionalTrustBundle field of the install-config.yaml file.

5. Create the agent-config.yaml file by running the following command:

   $ cat > agent-config.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: v1beta1
   kind: AgentConfig
   metadata:
     name: sno-cluster
   rendezvousIP: 192.168.111.80 1
   hosts: 2
     - hostname: master-0 3
       interfaces:
         - name: eno1
           macAddress: 00:ef:44:21:e6:a5
       rootDeviceHints: 4
         deviceName: /dev/sdb
       networkConfig: 5
         interfaces:
           - name: eno1
             type: ethernet
             state: up
             mac-address: 00:ef:44:21:e6:a5
             ipv4:
               enabled: true
               address:
                 - ip: 192.168.111.80
                   prefix-length: 23
               dhcp: false
         dns-resolver:
           config:
             server:
               - 192.168.111.1
         routes:
           config:
             - destination: 0.0.0.0/0
               next-hop-address: 192.168.111.2
               next-hop-interface: eno1
               table-id: 254
   EOF

   1

   This IP address is used to determine which node performs the bootstrapping process as well as running the assisted-service component. You must provide the rendezvous IP address when you do not specify at least one host’s IP address in the networkConfig parameter. If this address is not provided, one IP address is selected from the provided hosts' networkConfig.

   2

   Optional: Host configuration. The number of hosts defined must not exceed the total number of hosts defined in the install-config.yaml file, which is the sum of the values of the compute.replicas and controlPlane.replicas parameters.

   3

   Optional: Overrides the hostname obtained from either the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) or a reverse DNS lookup. Each host must have a unique hostname supplied by one of these methods.

   4

   Enables provisioning of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) image to a particular device. The installation program examines the devices in the order it discovers them, and compares the discovered values with the hint values. It uses the first discovered device that matches the hint value.

   5

   Optional: Configures the network interface of a host in NMState format.

6. Optional: To create an iPXE script, add the bootArtifactsBaseURL to the agent-config.yaml file:

   apiVersion: v1beta1
   kind: AgentConfig
   metadata:
     name: sno-cluster
   rendezvousIP: 192.168.111.80
   bootArtifactsBaseURL: <asset_server_URL>

   Where <asset_server_URL> is the URL of the server you will upload the PXE assets to.

Procedure

1. Create the PXE assets by running the following command:

   $ openshift-install agent create pxe-files

   The generated PXE assets and optional iPXE script can be found in the boot-artifacts directory.

   Example filesystem with PXE assets and optional iPXE script

   boot-artifacts
       ├─ agent.x86_64-initrd.img
       ├─ agent.x86_64.ipxe
       ├─ agent.x86_64-rootfs.img
       └─ agent.x86_64-vmlinuz

   Important

   The contents of the boot-artifacts directory vary depending on the specified architecture.

   Note

   Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) supports multipathing on the primary disk, allowing stronger resilience to hardware failure to achieve higher host availability. Multipathing is enabled by default in the agent ISO image, with a default /etc/multipath.conf configuration.

2. Upload the PXE assets and optional script to your infrastructure where they will be accessible during the boot process.

   Note

   If you generated an iPXE script, the location of the assets must match the bootArtifactsBaseURL you added to the agent-config.yaml file.