Chapter 12. Updating managed clusters in a disconnected environment with the Topology Aware Lifecycle Manager

Procedure

1. Create a PolicyGenTemplate CR for the platform update:

   1. Save the following contents of the PolicyGenTemplate CR in the du-upgrade.yaml file.

      Example of PolicyGenTemplate for platform update

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1
      kind: PolicyGenTemplate
      metadata:
        name: "du-upgrade"
        namespace: "ztp-group-du-sno"
      spec:
        bindingRules:
          group-du-sno: ""
        mcp: "master"
        remediationAction: inform
        sourceFiles:
          - fileName: ImageSignature.yaml 

      1

      
            policyName: "platform-upgrade-prep"
            binaryData:
              ${DIGEST_ALGO}-${DIGEST_ENCODED}: ${SIGNATURE_BASE64} 

      2

      
          - fileName: DisconnectedICSP.yaml
            policyName: "platform-upgrade-prep"
            metadata:
              name: disconnected-internal-icsp-for-ocp
            spec:
              repositoryDigestMirrors: 

      3

      
                - mirrors:
                  - quay-intern.example.com/ocp4/openshift-release-dev
                  source: quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release
                - mirrors:
                  - quay-intern.example.com/ocp4/openshift-release-dev
                  source: quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev
          - fileName: ClusterVersion.yaml 

      4

      
            policyName: "platform-upgrade"
            metadata:
              name: version
            spec:
              channel: "stable-4.15"
              upstream: http://upgrade.example.com/images/upgrade-graph_stable-4.15
              desiredUpdate:
                version: 4.15.4
            status:
              history:
                - version: 4.15.4
                  state: "Completed"

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      1

      The ConfigMap CR contains the signature of the desired release image to update to.

      2

      Shows the image signature of the desired OpenShift Container Platform release. Get the signature from the checksum-${OCP_RELEASE_NUMBER}.yaml file you saved when following the procedures in the "Setting up the environment" section.

      3

      Shows the mirror repository that contains the desired OpenShift Container Platform image. Get the mirrors from the imageContentSources.yaml file that you saved when following the procedures in the "Setting up the environment" section.

      4

      Shows the ClusterVersion CR to trigger the update. The channel, upstream, and desiredVersion fields are all required for image pre-caching.

      The PolicyGenTemplate CR generates two policies:

      • The du-upgrade-platform-upgrade-prep policy does the preparation work for the platform update. It creates the ConfigMap CR for the desired release image signature, creates the image content source of the mirrored release image repository, and updates the cluster version with the desired update channel and the update graph reachable by the managed cluster in the disconnected environment.
      • The du-upgrade-platform-upgrade policy is used to perform platform upgrade.

   2. Add the du-upgrade.yaml file contents to the kustomization.yaml file located in the GitOps ZTP Git repository for the PolicyGenTemplate CRs and push the changes to the Git repository.

      ArgoCD pulls the changes from the Git repository and generates the policies on the hub cluster.

   3. Check the created policies by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies -A | grep platform-upgrade

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2. Create the ClusterGroupUpdate CR for the platform update with the spec.enable field set to false.

   1. Save the content of the platform update ClusterGroupUpdate CR with the du-upgrade-platform-upgrade-prep and the du-upgrade-platform-upgrade policies and the target clusters to the cgu-platform-upgrade.yml file, as shown in the following example:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1alpha1
      kind: ClusterGroupUpgrade
      metadata:
        name: cgu-platform-upgrade
        namespace: default
      spec:
        managedPolicies:
        - du-upgrade-platform-upgrade-prep
        - du-upgrade-platform-upgrade
        preCaching: false
        clusters:
        - spoke1
        remediationStrategy:
          maxConcurrency: 1
        enable: false

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   2. Apply the ClusterGroupUpdate CR to the hub cluster by running the following command:

      $ oc apply -f cgu-platform-upgrade.yml

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3. Optional: Pre-cache the images for the platform update.

   1. Enable pre-caching in the ClusterGroupUpdate CR by running the following command:

      $ oc --namespace=default patch clustergroupupgrade.ran.openshift.io/cgu-platform-upgrade \
      --patch '{"spec":{"preCaching": true}}' --type=merge

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   2. Monitor the update process and wait for the pre-caching to complete. Check the status of pre-caching by running the following command on the hub cluster:

      $ oc get cgu cgu-platform-upgrade -o jsonpath='{.status.precaching.status}'

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4. Start the platform update:

   1. Enable the cgu-platform-upgrade policy and disable pre-caching by running the following command:

      $ oc --namespace=default patch clustergroupupgrade.ran.openshift.io/cgu-platform-upgrade \
      --patch '{"spec":{"enable":true, "preCaching": false}}' --type=merge

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   2. Monitor the process. Upon completion, ensure that the policy is compliant by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies --all-namespaces

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Procedure

1. Update the PolicyGenTemplate CR for the Operator update.

   1. Update the du-upgrade PolicyGenTemplate CR with the following additional contents in the du-upgrade.yaml file:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1
      kind: PolicyGenTemplate
      metadata:
        name: "du-upgrade"
        namespace: "ztp-group-du-sno"
      spec:
        bindingRules:
          group-du-sno: ""
        mcp: "master"
        remediationAction: inform
        sourceFiles:
          - fileName: DefaultCatsrc.yaml
            remediationAction: inform
            policyName: "operator-catsrc-policy"
            metadata:
              name: redhat-operators-disconnected
            spec:
              displayName: Red Hat Operators Catalog
              image: registry.example.com:5000/olm/redhat-operators-disconnected:v4.15 

      1

      
              updateStrategy: 

      2

      
                registryPoll:
                  interval: 1h
            status:
              connectionState:
                  lastObservedState: READY 

      3

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      1

      The index image URL contains the desired Operator images. If the index images are always pushed to the same image name and tag, this change is not needed.

      2

      Set how frequently the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) polls the index image for new Operator versions with the registryPoll.interval field. This change is not needed if a new index image tag is always pushed for y-stream and z-stream Operator updates. The registryPoll.interval field can be set to a shorter interval to expedite the update, however shorter intervals increase computational load. To counteract this, you can restore registryPoll.interval to the default value once the update is complete.

      3

      Last observed state of the catalog connection. The READY value ensures that the CatalogSource policy is ready, indicating that the index pod is pulled and is running. This way, TALM upgrades the Operators based on up-to-date policy compliance states.

   2. This update generates one policy, du-upgrade-operator-catsrc-policy, to update the redhat-operators-disconnected catalog source with the new index images that contain the desired Operators images.

      Note

      If you want to use the image pre-caching for Operators and there are Operators from a different catalog source other than redhat-operators-disconnected, you must perform the following tasks:

      • Prepare a separate catalog source policy with the new index image or registry poll interval update for the different catalog source.
      • Prepare a separate subscription policy for the desired Operators that are from the different catalog source.

      For example, the desired SRIOV-FEC Operator is available in the certified-operators catalog source. To update the catalog source and the Operator subscription, add the following contents to generate two policies, du-upgrade-fec-catsrc-policy and du-upgrade-subscriptions-fec-policy:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1
      kind: PolicyGenTemplate
      metadata:
        name: "du-upgrade"
        namespace: "ztp-group-du-sno"
      spec:
        bindingRules:
          group-du-sno: ""
        mcp: "master"
        remediationAction: inform
        sourceFiles:
             …
          - fileName: DefaultCatsrc.yaml
            remediationAction: inform
            policyName: "fec-catsrc-policy"
            metadata:
              name: certified-operators
            spec:
              displayName: Intel SRIOV-FEC Operator
              image: registry.example.com:5000/olm/far-edge-sriov-fec:v4.10
              updateStrategy:
                registryPoll:
                  interval: 10m
          - fileName: AcceleratorsSubscription.yaml
            policyName: "subscriptions-fec-policy"
            spec:
              channel: "stable"
              source: certified-operators

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   3. Remove the specified subscriptions channels in the common PolicyGenTemplate CR, if they exist. The default subscriptions channels from the GitOps ZTP image are used for the update.

      Note

      The default channel for the Operators applied through GitOps ZTP 4.15 is stable, except for the performance-addon-operator. As of OpenShift Container Platform 4.11, the performance-addon-operator functionality was moved to the node-tuning-operator. For the 4.10 release, the default channel for PAO is v4.10. You can also specify the default channels in the common PolicyGenTemplate CR.

   4. Push the PolicyGenTemplate CRs updates to the GitOps ZTP Git repository.

      ArgoCD pulls the changes from the Git repository and generates the policies on the hub cluster.

   5. Check the created policies by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies -A | grep -E "catsrc-policy|subscription"

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2. Apply the required catalog source updates before starting the Operator update.

   1. Save the content of the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR named operator-upgrade-prep with the catalog source policies and the target managed clusters to the cgu-operator-upgrade-prep.yml file:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1alpha1
      kind: ClusterGroupUpgrade
      metadata:
        name: cgu-operator-upgrade-prep
        namespace: default
      spec:
        clusters:
        - spoke1
        enable: true
        managedPolicies:
        - du-upgrade-operator-catsrc-policy
        remediationStrategy:
          maxConcurrency: 1

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   2. Apply the policy to the hub cluster by running the following command:

      $ oc apply -f cgu-operator-upgrade-prep.yml

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   3. Monitor the update process. Upon completion, ensure that the policy is compliant by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies -A | grep -E "catsrc-policy"

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3. Create the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR for the Operator update with the spec.enable field set to false.

   1. Save the content of the Operator update ClusterGroupUpgrade CR with the du-upgrade-operator-catsrc-policy policy and the subscription policies created from the common PolicyGenTemplate and the target clusters to the cgu-operator-upgrade.yml file, as shown in the following example:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1alpha1
      kind: ClusterGroupUpgrade
      metadata:
        name: cgu-operator-upgrade
        namespace: default
      spec:
        managedPolicies:
        - du-upgrade-operator-catsrc-policy 

      1

      
        - common-subscriptions-policy 

      2

      
        preCaching: false
        clusters:
        - spoke1
        remediationStrategy:
          maxConcurrency: 1
        enable: false

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      1

      The policy is needed by the image pre-caching feature to retrieve the operator images from the catalog source.

      2

      The policy contains Operator subscriptions. If you have followed the structure and content of the reference PolicyGenTemplates, all Operator subscriptions are grouped into the common-subscriptions-policy policy.

      Note

      One ClusterGroupUpgrade CR can only pre-cache the images of the desired Operators defined in the subscription policy from one catalog source included in the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR. If the desired Operators are from different catalog sources, such as in the example of the SRIOV-FEC Operator, another ClusterGroupUpgrade CR must be created with du-upgrade-fec-catsrc-policy and du-upgrade-subscriptions-fec-policy policies for the SRIOV-FEC Operator images pre-caching and update.

   2. Apply the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR to the hub cluster by running the following command:

      $ oc apply -f cgu-operator-upgrade.yml

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4. Optional: Pre-cache the images for the Operator update.

   1. Before starting image pre-caching, verify the subscription policy is NonCompliant at this point by running the following command:

      $ oc get policy common-subscriptions-policy -n <policy_namespace>

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      Example output

      NAME                          REMEDIATION ACTION   COMPLIANCE STATE     AGE
      common-subscriptions-policy   inform               NonCompliant         27d

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   2. Enable pre-caching in the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR by running the following command:

      $ oc --namespace=default patch clustergroupupgrade.ran.openshift.io/cgu-operator-upgrade \
      --patch '{"spec":{"preCaching": true}}' --type=merge

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   3. Monitor the process and wait for the pre-caching to complete. Check the status of pre-caching by running the following command on the managed cluster:

      $ oc get cgu cgu-operator-upgrade -o jsonpath='{.status.precaching.status}'

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   4. Check if the pre-caching is completed before starting the update by running the following command:

      $ oc get cgu -n default cgu-operator-upgrade -ojsonpath='{.status.conditions}' | jq

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      Example output

      [
          {
            "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-08T20:49:08.000Z",
            "message": "The ClusterGroupUpgrade CR is not enabled",
            "reason": "UpgradeNotStarted",
            "status": "False",
            "type": "Ready"
          },
          {
            "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-08T20:55:30.000Z",
            "message": "Precaching is completed",
            "reason": "PrecachingCompleted",
            "status": "True",
            "type": "PrecachingDone"
          }
      ]

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5. Start the Operator update.

   1. Enable the cgu-operator-upgrade ClusterGroupUpgrade CR and disable pre-caching to start the Operator update by running the following command:

      $ oc --namespace=default patch clustergroupupgrade.ran.openshift.io/cgu-operator-upgrade \
      --patch '{"spec":{"enable":true, "preCaching": false}}' --type=merge

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   2. Monitor the process. Upon completion, ensure that the policy is compliant by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies --all-namespaces

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Procedure

1. Create the PolicyGenTemplate CR for the updates by following the steps described in the "Performing a platform update" and "Performing an Operator update" sections.

2. Apply the prep work for the platform and the Operator update.

   1. Save the content of the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR with the policies for platform update preparation work, catalog source updates, and target clusters to the cgu-platform-operator-upgrade-prep.yml file, for example:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1alpha1
      kind: ClusterGroupUpgrade
      metadata:
        name: cgu-platform-operator-upgrade-prep
        namespace: default
      spec:
        managedPolicies:
        - du-upgrade-platform-upgrade-prep
        - du-upgrade-operator-catsrc-policy
        clusterSelector:
        - group-du-sno
        remediationStrategy:
          maxConcurrency: 10
        enable: true

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   2. Apply the cgu-platform-operator-upgrade-prep.yml file to the hub cluster by running the following command:

      $ oc apply -f cgu-platform-operator-upgrade-prep.yml

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   3. Monitor the process. Upon completion, ensure that the policy is compliant by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies --all-namespaces

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3. Create the ClusterGroupUpdate CR for the platform and the Operator update with the spec.enable field set to false.

   1. Save the contents of the platform and Operator update ClusterGroupUpdate CR with the policies and the target clusters to the cgu-platform-operator-upgrade.yml file, as shown in the following example:

      apiVersion: ran.openshift.io/v1alpha1
      kind: ClusterGroupUpgrade
      metadata:
        name: cgu-du-upgrade
        namespace: default
      spec:
        managedPolicies:
        - du-upgrade-platform-upgrade 

      1

      
        - du-upgrade-operator-catsrc-policy 

      2

      
        - common-subscriptions-policy 

      3

      
        preCaching: true
        clusterSelector:
        - group-du-sno
        remediationStrategy:
          maxConcurrency: 1
        enable: false

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      1

      This is the platform update policy.

      2

      This is the policy containing the catalog source information for the Operators to be updated. It is needed for the pre-caching feature to determine which Operator images to download to the managed cluster.

      3

      This is the policy to update the Operators.

   2. Apply the cgu-platform-operator-upgrade.yml file to the hub cluster by running the following command:

      $ oc apply -f cgu-platform-operator-upgrade.yml

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4. Optional: Pre-cache the images for the platform and the Operator update.

   1. Enable pre-caching in the ClusterGroupUpgrade CR by running the following command:

      $ oc --namespace=default patch clustergroupupgrade.ran.openshift.io/cgu-du-upgrade \
      --patch '{"spec":{"preCaching": true}}' --type=merge

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   2. Monitor the update process and wait for the pre-caching to complete. Check the status of pre-caching by running the following command on the managed cluster:

      $ oc get jobs,pods -n openshift-talm-pre-cache

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   3. Check if the pre-caching is completed before starting the update by running the following command:

      $ oc get cgu cgu-du-upgrade -ojsonpath='{.status.conditions}'

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5. Start the platform and Operator update.

   1. Enable the cgu-du-upgrade ClusterGroupUpgrade CR to start the platform and the Operator update by running the following command:

      $ oc --namespace=default patch clustergroupupgrade.ran.openshift.io/cgu-du-upgrade \
      --patch '{"spec":{"enable":true, "preCaching": false}}' --type=merge

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   2. Monitor the process. Upon completion, ensure that the policy is compliant by running the following command:

      $ oc get policies --all-namespaces

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      Note

      The CRs for the platform and Operator updates can be created from the beginning by configuring the setting to spec.enable: true. In this case, the update starts immediately after pre-caching completes and there is no need to manually enable the CR.

      Both pre-caching and the update create extra resources, such as policies, placement bindings, placement rules, managed cluster actions, and managed cluster view, to help complete the procedures. Setting the afterCompletion.deleteObjects field to true deletes all these resources after the updates complete.

Procedure

1. Change the complianceType to mustnothave for the Performance Addon Operator namespace, Operator group, and subscription in the common-ranGen.yaml file.

    -  fileName: PaoSubscriptionNS.yaml
       policyName: "subscriptions-policy"
       complianceType: mustnothave
    -  fileName: PaoSubscriptionOperGroup.yaml
       policyName: "subscriptions-policy"
       complianceType: mustnothave
    -  fileName: PaoSubscription.yaml
       policyName: "subscriptions-policy"
       complianceType: mustnothave

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2. Merge the changes with your custom site repository and wait for the ArgoCD application to synchronize the change to the hub cluster. The status of the common-subscriptions-policy policy changes to Non-Compliant.
3. Apply the change to your target clusters by using the Topology Aware Lifecycle Manager. For more information about rolling out configuration changes, see the "Additional resources" section.

4. Monitor the process. When the status of the common-subscriptions-policy policy for a target cluster is Compliant, the Performance Addon Operator has been removed from the cluster. Get the status of the common-subscriptions-policy by running the following command:

   $ oc get policy -n ztp-common common-subscriptions-policy

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5. Delete the Performance Addon Operator namespace, Operator group and subscription CRs from .spec.sourceFiles in the common-ranGen.yaml file.
6. Merge the changes with your custom site repository and wait for the ArgoCD application to synchronize the change to the hub cluster. The policy remains compliant.