Chapter 3. Supported infrastructure and platforms
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage supports deployment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform deployed with Installer Provisioned Infrastructure (Full Stack Automation) and User Provisioned Infrastructure (Pre Existing Infrastructure).
Installer Provisioned Infrastructure (IPI)
With full stack automation, the installer controls all areas of the installation including infrastructure provisioning with an opinionated best practices deployment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
User Provisioned Infrastructure (UPI)
With pre-existing infrastructure deployments, administrators are responsible for creating and managing their own infrastructure allowing greater customization and operational flexibility.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage supports deployment on the following infrastructures:
| Infrastructure | Deployment type | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | IPI, UPI |
|
| VMware | UPI | vSphere 6.7 Update 2 and higher with vSAN or VMFS datastore. See VMware vSphere infrastructure requirements for details. |
| Bare Metal | UPI | Storage type must be SSD (NVMe/SATA/SAS) |
3.1. Node requirements
The requirements mentioned in the section apply to pre-existing Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform deployments only and are required for exclusive use by Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage.
A minimum of 3 starter nodes are required for deployment. The starter node minimum requirements support a base set of services, and a single storage device per node. Additional storage devices can be added later, and Kubernetes will schedule OCS pods based on resource availability. In case you plan to run any other workload on a storage node, you must add additional resources (CPU/Memory/Space).
| Components | Requirements |
|---|---|
| CPU | 10* |
| Memory | 40 GB* |
| Disk |
|
| MON | 10 GiB storage per MON on all the storage nodes.
Note: At a time only 3 nodes require the storage space. |
*For AWS EC2, the closest fit instance size provides 16 CPU and 64 GB memory (M5.4xlarge). When the M5.4xlarge instance type is used for starter nodes, they will support up to 4 storage devices each. Use of the i3en.2xlarge instance type (8 CPUs, 64GB memory) is currently under technology preview support.
| Components | Requirements |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2 |
| Memory | 8 GB |
| Note: Storage devices must be provisioned in sets of three | |
CPU units
In this section, 1 CPU Unit maps to the Kubernetes concept of 1 CPU unit. For more information, see CPU units.
- 1 unit of CPU is equivalent to 1 core for non-hyperthreaded CPUs.
- 2 units of CPU are equivalent to 1 core for hyperthreaded CPUs.
OpenShift Container Storage core-based subscriptions always come in pairs (2 cores).
Example: For a 3 node cluster, a minimum of 3 x 10 = 30 units of CPU are required. 30 units of CPU are equivalent to 15 cores which is equivalent to ~8 quantities of Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage (2 core) subscriptions.
3.2. Platform requirements
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage is compatible only with the latest Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform versions.
For Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.4, it is recommended to use Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.4 for flexibility in deployment.
When upgrading Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, you must upgrade Local Storage Operator version to match with the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform version in order to have the Local Storage Operator fully supported with Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage.
For more information, see Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform interoperability matrix.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform must not be installed or running with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) mode enabled.
Nodes that run only storage workloads require a subscription for Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage. Nodes that run other workloads in addition to storage workloads require both Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform subscriptions.
