Planning your deployment

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation comprises of three main operators, which codify administrative tasks and custom resources so that you can easily automate the task and resource characteristics. Administrators define the desired end state of the cluster, and the OpenShift Data Foundation operators ensure the cluster is either in that state, or approaching that state, with minimal administrator intervention.

Additionally, for internal mode clusters, it provides the ceph cluster resource, which manages the deployments and services representing the following:

Additionally, it provides the NooBaa cluster resource, which manages the deployments and services for NooBaa core, database, and endpoint.

The growing list of operating modalities is an evidence that flexibility is a core tenet of Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation. This section provides you with information that will help you to select the most appropriate approach for your environments.

You can deploy Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation either entirely within OpenShift Container Platform (Internal approach) or to make available the services from a cluster running outside of OpenShift Container Platform (External approach).

Nodes run the container runtime, as well as services, to ensure that the containers are running, and maintain network communication and separation between the pods. In OpenShift Data Foundation, there are three types of nodes.

The Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 140-2 (FIPS-140-2) is a standard that defines a set of security requirements for the use of cryptographic modules. Law mandates this standard for the US government agencies and contractors and is also referenced in other international and industry specific standards.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation now uses the FIPS validated cryptographic modules. Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS/CoreOS (RHCOS) delivers these modules.

Currently, the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) processes the cryptography modules. You can see the state of these modules at Modules in Process List. For more up-to-date information, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution RHEL core crypto components.

For more information, see Installing a cluster in FIPS mode and Support for FIPS cryptography of the Installing guide in OpenShift Container Platform documentation.

A proxy environment is a production environment that denies direct access to the internet and provides an available HTTP or HTTPS proxy instead. Red Hat Openshift Container Platform is configured to use a proxy by modifying the proxy object for existing clusters or by configuring the proxy settings in the install-config.yaml file for new clusters.

Red Hat supports deployment of OpenShift Data Foundation in proxy environments when OpenShift Container Platform has been configured according to configuring the cluster-wide proxy.

Encryption lets you encode your data to make it impossible to read without the required encryption keys. This mechanism protects the confidentiality of your data in the event of a physical security breach that results in a physical media to escape your custody. The per-PV encryption also provides access protection from other namespaces inside the same OpenShift Container Platform cluster. Data is encrypted when it is written to the disk, and decrypted when it is read from the disk. Working with encrypted data might incur a small penalty to performance.

Encryption is only supported for new clusters deployed using Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 4.6 or higher. An existing encrypted cluster that is not using an external Key Management System (KMS) cannot be migrated to use an external KMS.

Currently, HashiCorp Vault is the only supported KMS for Cluster-wide and Persistent Volume encryptions. With OpenShift Data Foundation 4.7.0 and 4.7.1, only HashiCorp Vault Key/Value (KV) secret engine API, version 1 is supported. Starting with OpenShift Data Foundation 4.7.2, HashiCorp Vault KV secret engine API, versions 1 and 2 are supported.

Red Hat works with the technology partners to provide this documentation as a service to the customers. However, Red Hat does not provide support for the Hashicorp product. For technical assistance with this product, contact Hashicorp.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation subscription is based on “core-pairs,” similar to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 2-core subscription is based on the number of logical cores on the CPUs in the system where OpenShift Container Platform runs.

As with OpenShift Container Platform:

Disaster Recovery features supported by Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation require all of the following prerequisites to successfully implement a disaster recovery solution:

Any Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation Cluster containing PVs participating in active replication either as a source or destination requires OpenShift Data Foundation Advanced entitlement. This subscription should be active on both source and destination clusters.

To know how subscriptions for OpenShift Data Foundation work, see knowledgebase article on OpenShift Data Foundation subscriptions.

Making a determination about whether or not a particular system consumes one or more cores is currently dependent on whether or not that system has hyperthreading available. Hyperthreading is only a feature of Intel CPUs. Visit the Red Hat Customer Portal to determine whether a particular system supports hyperthreading.

For systems where hyperthreading is enabled and where one hyperthread equates to one visible system core, the calculation of cores is a ratio of 2 cores to 4 vCPUs. Therefore, a 2-core subscription covers 4 vCPUs in a hyperthreaded system. A large virtual machine (VM) might have 8 vCPUs, equating to 4 subscription cores. As subscriptions come in 2-core units, you will need two 2-core subscriptions to cover these 4 cores or 8 vCPUs.

Where hyperthreading is not enabled, and where each visible system core correlates directly to an underlying physical core, the calculation of cores is a ratio of 2 cores to 2 vCPUs.

Systems that require an odd number of cores need to consume a full 2-core subscription. For example, a system that is calculated to require only 1 core will end up consuming a full 2-core subscription once it is registered and subscribed.

When a single virtual machine (VM) with 2 vCPUs uses hyperthreading resulting in 1 calculated vCPU, a full 2-core subscription is required; a single 2-core subscription may not be split across two VMs with 2 vCPUs using hyperthreading. See section Cores versus vCPUs and hyperthreading for more information.

It is recommended that virtual instances be sized so that they require an even number of cores.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation components can run on either OpenShift Container Platform worker or infrastructure nodes, for which you can use either Red Hat CoreOS (RHCOS) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.4 as the host operating system. RHEL 7 is now deprecated. OpenShift Data Foundation subscriptions are required for every OpenShift Container Platform subscribed core with a ratio of 1:1.

When using infrastructure nodes, the rule to subscribe all OpenShift worker node cores for OpenShift Data Foundation applies even though they don’t need any OpenShift Container Platform or any OpenShift Data Foundation subscriptions. You can use labels to state whether a node is a worker or an infrastructure node.

For more information, see How to use dedicated worker nodes for Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation in the Managing and Allocating Storage Resources guide.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 4.11 is supported only on OpenShift Container Platform version 4.11 and its next minor versions.

Bug fixes for previous version of Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation will be released as bug fix versions. For more details, see the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Life Cycle Policy.

For external cluster subscription requirements, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase solution Which Red Hat subscriptions do I need, to get Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage support?.

For a complete list of supported platform versions, see the Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation Supportability and Interoperability Checker.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation services consist of an initial set of base services, and can be extended with additional device sets. All of these Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation services pods are scheduled by kubernetes on OpenShift Container Platform nodes according to resource requirements. Expanding the cluster in multiples of three, one node in each failure domain, is an easy way to satisfy pod placement rules.

Example: For a 3 node cluster in an internal mode deployment with a single device set, a minimum of 3 x 10 = 30 units of CPU are required.

For more information, see Chapter 6, Subscriptions and CPU units.

For additional guidance with designing your Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation cluster, see the ODF Sizing Tool.

Example: For a 3 node cluster in an internal-attached devices mode deployment, a minimum of 3 x 16 = 48 units of CPU and 3 x 64 = 192 GB of memory is required.

Kubernetes is responsible for pod placement based on declarative placement rules. The Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation base service placement rules for Internal cluster can be summarized as follows:

This leads to the requirement that there be at least three nodes, and that nodes be in three distinct rack or zone failure domains in the case of pre-existing topology labels.

For additional device sets, there must be a storage device, and sufficient resources for the pod consuming it, in each of the three failure domains. Manual placement rules can be used to override default placement rules, but generally this approach is only suitable for bare metal deployments.

Use this section to understand the different storage capacity requirements that you can consider when planning internal mode deployments and upgrades. We generally recommend 9 devices or less per node. This recommendation ensures both that nodes stay below cloud provider dynamic storage device attachment limits, and to limit the recovery time after node failures with local storage devices. Expanding the cluster in multiples of three, one node in each failure domain, is an easy way to satisfy pod placement rules.

Storage nodes should have at least two disks, one for the operating system and the remaining disks for OpenShift Data Foundation components.

By default, Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation is configured to use the Red Hat OpenShift Software Defined Network (SDN). In this default configuration the SDN carries the following types of traffic:

However, OpenShift Data Foundation 4.8 and later supports as a Technology Preview the ability to use Multus to improve security and performance by isolating the different types of network traffic.

Regional-DR is composed of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (RHACM) and OpenShift Data Foundation components to provide application and data mobility across OpenShift Container Platform clusters. It is built on Asynchronous data replication and hence could have a potential data loss but provides the protection against a broad set of failures.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation is backed by Ceph as the storage provider, whose lifecycle is managed by Rook and it’s enhanced with the ability to:

This release of Regional-DR supports Multi-Cluster configuration that is deployed across different regions and data centers. For example, a 2-way replication across two managed clusters located in two different regions or data centers. This solution is entitled with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (RHACM) and OpenShift Data Foundation Advanced SKUs and related bundles.

Prerequisites

Disaster Recovery features supported by Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation require all of the following prerequisites in order to successfully implement a Disaster Recovery solution:

To know how subscriptions for OpenShift Data Foundation work, see knowledgebase article on OpenShift Data Foundation subscriptions.

For detailed solution requirements, see Regional-DR requirements and RHACM requirements.

Metro-DR is composed of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (RHACM), Red Hat Ceph Storage and OpenShift Data Foundation components to provide application and data mobility across OpenShift Container Platform clusters.

This release of Metro-DR solution provides volume persistent data and metadata replication across sites that are geographically dispersed. In the public cloud these would be similar to protecting from an Availability Zone failure. Metro-DR ensures business continuity during the unavailability of a data center with no data loss. This solution is entitled with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (RHACM) and OpenShift Data Foundation Advanced SKUs and related bundles.

Prerequisites

Disaster Recovery features supported by Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation require all of the following prerequisites in order to successfully implement a Disaster Recovery solution:

To know how subscriptions for OpenShift Data Foundation work, see knowledgebase article on OpenShift Data Foundation subscriptions.

For detailed solution requirements, see Metro-DR requirements, deployment requirements for Red Hat Ceph Storage stretch cluster with arbiter and RHACM requirements.

In this case, a single cluster is stretched across two zones with a third zone as the location for the arbiter. This is a Technology Preview feature that is currently intended for deployment in the OpenShift Container Platform on-premises and in the same data center. This solution is not recommended for deployments stretching over multiple data centers. Instead, consider Metro-DR as a first option for no data loss DR solution deployed over multiple data centers with low latency networks.

To use the Arbiter stretch cluster,

For more information, see Knowledgebase article on Configuring OpenShift Data Foundation for stretch cluster.

To know how subscriptions for OpenShift Data Foundation work, see knowledgebase article on OpenShift Data Foundation subscriptions.