Chapter 7. Infrastructure requirements


7.1. Platform requirements

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 4.12 is supported only on OpenShift Container Platform version 4.12 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 OpenShift Data Foundation Subscription Guide.

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

7.1.1. Amazon EC2

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters only.

An Internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class that provides, EBS storage via the aws-ebs provisioner.

OpenShift Data Foundation supports gp2-csi and gp3-csi drivers that were introduced by Amazon Web Services (AWS). These drivers offer better storage expansion capabilities and a reduced monthly price point (gp3-csi). You can now select the new drivers when selecting your storage class. In case a high throughput is required, gp3-csi is recommended to be used when deploying OpenShift Data Foundation.

7.1.2. Bare Metal

Supports internal clusters and consuming external clusters.

An internal cluster must meet both the storage device requirements and have a storage class that provide local SSD (NVMe/SATA/SAS, SAN) via the Local Storage Operator.

7.1.3. VMware vSphere

Supports internal clusters and consuming external clusters.

Recommended versions:

  • vSphere 6.7, Update 2 or later
  • vSphere 7.0 or later.

For more details, see the VMware vSphere infrastructure requirements.

Note

If VMware ESXi does not recognize its devices as flash, mark them as flash devices. Before Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation deployment, refer to Mark Storage Devices as Flash.

Additionally, an Internal cluster must meet both the, storage device requirements and have a storage class providing either,

  • vSAN or VMFS datastore via the vsphere-volume provisioner
  • VMDK, RDM, or DirectPath storage devices via the Local Storage Operator.

7.1.4. Microsoft Azure

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters only.

An internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class that provides, an zzure disk via the azure-disk provisioner.

7.1.5. Google Cloud [Technology Preview]

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters only.

An internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class that provides, a GCE Persistent Disk via the gce-pd provisioner.

7.1.6. Red Hat Virtualization Platform

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters only.

An internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class that provides local SSD (NVMe/SATA/SAS, SAN) via the Local Storage Operator.

7.1.7. Red Hat OpenStack Platform [Technology Preview]

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters and consuming external clusters.

An internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class that provides a standard disk via the Cinder provisioner.

7.1.8. IBM Power

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters and consuming external clusters.

An Internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class providing local SSD (NVMe/SATA/SAS, SAN) via the Local Storage Operator.

7.1.9. IBM Z and LinuxONE

Supports internal Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation clusters. Also, supports external mode where Ceph is running on x86.

An Internal cluster must meet both, storage device requirements and have a storage class providing local SSD (NVMe/SATA/SAS, SAN) via the Local Storage Operator.

7.2. External mode requirement

7.2.1. Red Hat Ceph Storage

To check the supportability and interoperability of Red Hat Ceph Storage (RHCS) with Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation in external mode, go to the lab Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation Supportability and Interoperability Checker.

  1. Select Service Type as ODF as Self-Managed Service.
  2. Select appropriate Version from the drop down.
  3. On Versions tab, click Supported RHCS Compatibility tab.

For instructions regarding how to install a RHCS cluster, see the Installation guide.

7.2.2. IBM FlashSystem

To use IBM FlashSystem as a pluggable external storage on other providers, you need to first deploy it before you can deploy OpenShift Data Foundation, which would use the IBM FlashSystem storage class as a backing storage.

For the latest supported FlashSystem storage systems and versions, see ODF FlashSystem driver documentation.

For instructions on how to deploy OpenShift Data Foundation, see Creating an OpenShift Data Foundation Cluster for external IBM FlashSystem storage.

7.3. Resource requirements

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. Expanding the cluster in multiples of three, one node in each failure domain, is an easy way to satisfy the pod placement rules.

Important

These requirements relate to OpenShift Data Foundation services only, and not to any other services, operators or workloads that are running on these nodes.

Table 7.1. Aggregate avaliable resource requirements for Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation only
Deployment ModeBase servicesAdditional device Set

Internal

  • 30 CPU (logical)
  • 72 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices
  • 6 CPU (logical)
  • 15 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices

External

  • 4 CPU (logical)
  • 16 GiB memory

Not applicable

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.

CPU units

In this section, 1 CPU Unit maps to the Kubernetes concept of 1 CPU unit.

  • 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.
  • Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation core-based subscriptions always come in pairs (2 cores).
Table 7.2. Aggregate minimum resource requirements for IBM Power
Deployment ModeBase services

Internal

  • 48 CPU (logical)
  • 192 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices, each with additional 500GB of disk

External

  • 24 CPU (logical)
  • 48 GiB memory

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.

7.3.1. Resource requirements for IBM Z and LinuxONE infrastructure

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 . Expanding the cluster in multiples of three, one node in each failure domain, is an easy way to satisfy the pod placement rules.

Table 7.3. Aggregate available resource requirements for Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation only (IBM Z and LinuxONE)
Deployment ModeBase servicesAdditional device SetIBM Z and LinuxONE minimum hardware requirements

Internal

  • 30 CPU (logical)

    • 3 nodes with 10 CPUs (logical) each
  • 72 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices
  • 6 CPU (logical)
  • 15 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices

1 IFL

External

  • 4 CPU (logical)
  • 16 GiB memory

Not applicable

Not applicable

CPU
Is the number of virtual cores defined in the hypervisor, IBM z/VM, Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), or both.
IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux)
Is the physical core for IBM Z and LinuxONE.

Minimum system environment

  • In order to operate a minimal cluster with 1 logical partition (LPAR), one additional IFL is required on top of the 6 IFLs. OpenShift Container Platform consumes these IFLs .

7.3.2. Minimum deployment resource requirements

An OpenShift Data Foundation cluster will be deployed with minimum configuration when the standard deployment resource requirement is not met.

Important

These requirements relate to OpenShift Data Foundation services only, and not to any other services, operators or workloads that are running on these nodes.

Table 7.4. Aggregate resource requirements for OpenShift Data Foundation only
Deployment ModeBase services

Internal

  • 24 CPU (logical)
  • 72 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices

If you want to add additional device sets, we recommend converting your minimum deployment to standard deployment.

7.3.3. Compact deployment resource requirements

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation can be installed on a three-node OpenShift compact bare metal cluster, where all the workloads run on three strong master nodes. There are no worker or storage nodes.

Important

These requirements relate to OpenShift Data Foundation services only, and not to any other services, operators or workloads that are running on these nodes.

Table 7.5. Aggregate resource requirements for OpenShift Data Foundation only
Deployment ModeBase servicesAdditional device Set

Internal

  • 24 CPU (logical)
  • 72 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices
  • 6 CPU (logical)
  • 15 GiB memory
  • 3 storage devices

To configure OpenShift Container Platform on a compact bare metal cluster, see Configuring a three-node cluster and Delivering a Three-node Architecture for Edge Deployments.

7.3.4. Resource requirements for MCG only deployment

An OpenShift Data Foundation cluster deployed only with the Multicloud Object Gateway (MCG) component provides the flexibility in deployment and helps to reduce the resource consumption.

Table 7.6. Aggregate resource requirements for MCG only deployment
Deployment ModeCoreDatabase (DB)Endpoint

Internal

  • 1 CPU
  • 4 GiB memory
  • 0.5 CPU
  • 4 GiB memory
  • 1 CPU
  • 2 GiB memory
Note

The defaut auto scale is between 1 - 2.

7.3.5. Resource requirements for using Network File system

With the release of Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation version 4.12, you can create exports using Network File System (NFS) that can then be accessed externally from the OpenShift cluster as a Technology preview. If you plan to use this feature, the NFS service consumes 3 CPUs and 8Gi of Ram. NFS is optional and is disabled by default.

The NFS volume can be accessed two ways:

  • In-cluster: by an application pod inside of the Openshift cluster.
  • Out of cluster: from outside of the Openshift cluster.

For more information about the NFS feature, see Creating exports using NFS

Important

NFS is a Technology Preview feature. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

For more information, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.

7.4. Pod placement rules

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:

  • Nodes are labeled with the cluster.ocs.openshift.io/openshift-storage key
  • Nodes are sorted into pseudo failure domains if none exist
  • Components requiring high availability are spread across failure domains
  • A storage device must be accessible in each failure domain

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.

7.5. Storage device requirements

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.

Note

You can expand the storage capacity only in the increment of the capacity selected at the time of installation.

7.5.1. Dynamic storage devices

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation permits the selection of either 0.5 TiB, 2 TiB or 4 TiB capacities as the request size for dynamic storage device sizes. The number of dynamic storage devices that can run per node is a function of the node size, underlying provisioner limits and resource requirements.

7.5.2. Local storage devices

For local storage deployment, any disk size of 4 TiB or less can be used, and all disks should be of the same size and type. The number of local storage devices that can run per node is a function of the node size and resource requirements. Expanding the cluster in multiples of three, one node in each failure domain, is an easy way to satisfy pod placement rules.

Note

Disk partitioning is not supported.

7.5.3. Capacity planning

Always ensure that available storage capacity stays ahead of consumption. Recovery is difficult if available storage capacity is completely exhausted, and requires more intervention than simply adding capacity or deleting or migrating content.

Capacity alerts are issued when cluster storage capacity reaches 75% (near-full) and 85% (full) of total capacity. Always address capacity warnings promptly, and review your storage regularly to ensure that you do not run out of storage space. When you get to 75% (near-full), either free up space or expand the cluster. When you get the 85% (full) alert, it indicates that you have run out of storage space completely and cannot free up space using standard commands. At this point, contact Red Hat Customer Support.

The following tables show example node configurations for Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation with dynamic storage devices.

Table 7.7. Example initial configurations with 3 nodes
Storage Device sizeStorage Devices per nodeTotal capacityUsable storage capacity

0.5 TiB

1

1.5 TiB

0.5 TiB

2 TiB

1

6 TiB

2 TiB

4 TiB

1

12 TiB

4 TiB

Table 7.8. Example of expanded configurations with 30 nodes (N)
Storage Device size (D)Storage Devices per node (M)Total capacity (D * M * N)Usable storage capacity (D*M*N/3)

0.5 TiB

3

45 TiB

15 TiB

2 TiB

6

360 TiB

120 TiB

4 TiB

9

1080 TiB

360 TiB

7.6. Network requirements

Use this section to understand the different network considerations when planning deployments.

7.6.1. IPv6 support

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation version 4.12 introduces the support of IPv6. IPv6 is supported in single stack only, and cannot be used simultaneously with IPv4. IPv6 is the default behavior in OpenShift Data Foundation when IPv6 is turned on in Openshift Container Platform.

7.7. Multi network plug-in (Multus) support [Technology Preview]

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:

  • Pod to pod traffic
  • Pod to OpenShift Data Foundation traffic, known as the OpenShift Data Foundation public network traffic
  • OpenShift Data Foundation replication and rebalancing, known as the OpenShift Data Foundation cluster network 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.

Important

Multus support is a Technology Preview feature that is only supported and has been tested on bare metal and VMWare deployments. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

For more information, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.

7.7.1. Understanding multiple networks

In Kubernetes, container networking is delegated to networking plug-ins that implement the Container Network Interface (CNI).

OpenShift Container Platform uses the Multus CNI plug-in to allow chaining of CNI plug-ins. During cluster installation, you configure your default pod network. The default network handles all ordinary network traffic for the cluster. You can define an additional network based on the available CNI plug-ins and attach one or more of these networks to your pods. You can define more than one additional network for your cluster, depending on your needs. This gives you flexibility when you configure pods that deliver network functionality, such as switching or routing.

7.7.1.1. Usage scenarios for an additional network

You can use an additional network in situations where network isolation is needed, including data plane and control plane separation. Isolating network traffic is useful for the following performance and security reasons:

Performance
You can send traffic on two different planes in order to manage how much traffic is along each plane.
Security
You can send sensitive traffic onto a network plane that is managed specifically for security considerations, and you can separate private data that must not be shared between tenants or customers.

All of the pods in the cluster still use the cluster-wide default network to maintain connectivity across the cluster. Every pod has an eth0 interface that is attached to the cluster-wide pod network. You can view the interfaces for a pod by using the oc exec -it <pod_name> -- ip a command. If you add additional network interfaces that use Multus CNI, they are named net1, net2, …​, netN.

To attach additional network interfaces to a pod, you must create configurations that define how the interfaces are attached. You specify each interface by using a NetworkAttachmentDefinition custom resource (CR). A CNI configuration inside each of these CRs defines how that interface is created.

7.7.2. Segregating storage traffic using Multus

In order to use Multus, before deployment of the OpenShift Data Foundation cluster you must create network attachment definitions (NADs) that later will be attached to the cluster. For more information, see:

Using Multus, the following configurations are possible depending on your hardware setup or your VMWare instance network setup:

  • Nodes with a dual network interface recommended configuration

    • Segregated storage traffic

      • Configure one interface for OpenShift SDN (pod to pod traffic)
      • Configure one interface for all OpenShift Data Foundation traffic
  • Nodes with a triple network interface recommended configuration

    • Full traffic segregation

      • Configure one interface for OpenShift SDN (pod to pod traffic)
      • Configure one interface for all pod to OpenShift Data Foundation traffic (OpenShift Data Foundation public traffic)
      • Configure one interface for all OpenShift Data Foundation replication and rebalancing traffic (OpenShift Data Foundation cluster traffic)
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