jetlag

Tooling to install clusters for testing via an on-prem Assisted Installer in the Red Hat Scale/Alias Lab and bare metal servers in IBMcloud.

Three separate layouts of clusters can be deployed:

• BM - Bare Metal - 3 control-plane nodes, X number of worker nodes
• RWN - Remote Worker Node - 3 control-plane/worker nodes, X number of remote worker nodes
• SNO - Single Node OpenShift - 1 OpenShift Master/Worker Node "cluster" per available hardware resource

Each cluster layout requires a bastion machine which is the first machine out of your lab "cloud" allocation. The bastion machine will host the assisted-installer service and serve as a router for clusters with a private machine network. BM and RWN layouts produce a single cluster consisting of 3 control-plane nodes and X number of worker or remote worker nodes. The worker node count can also be 0 such that your bare metal cluster is a compact 3 node cluster with schedulable control-plane nodes. SNO layout creates an SNO cluster per available machine after fulfilling the bastion machine requirement. Lastly, BM/RWN cluster types will allocate any unused machines under the hv ansible group which stands for hypervisor nodes. The hv nodes can host vms for additional clusters that can be deployed from the hub cluster. (For ACM/MCE testing)

Table of Contents

• Tested Labs/Hardware
• Prerequisites
• Cluster Deployment Usage
• Quickstart guides
• Tips and Troubleshooting
• Disconnected API/Console Access
• Jetlag Hypervisors

Tested Labs/Hardware

The listed hardware has been used for cluster deployments successfully. Potentially other hardware has been tested but not documented here.

Alias Lab

Hardware	BM	RWN	SNO
740xd	Yes	No	Yes
Dell r750	Yes	No	Yes

Scale Lab

Hardware	BM	RWN	SNO
Dell r650	Yes	No	Yes
Dell r640	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dell fc640	Yes	No	Yes
Supermicro 1029p	Yes	Yes	No
Supermicro 1029U	Yes	No	Yes
Supermicro 5039ms	Yes	No	Yes

IBMcloud

Hardware	BM	SNO
Supermicro E5-2620	Yes	Yes
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630	Yes	Yes

For guidance on how to order hardware on IBMcloud, see order-hardware-ibmcloud.md in docs directory.

Prerequisites

Versions:

• Ansible 4.10+ (core >= 2.11.12) (on machine running jetlag playbooks)
• ibmcloud cli => 2.0.1 (IBMcloud environments)
• ibmcloud plugin install sl (IBMcloud environments)
• RHEL >= 8.6 (Bastion)
• podman 3 / 4 (Bastion)

Update to RHEL 8.9

[root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.2 (Ootpa)

[root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 ~]# ./update-latest-rhel-release.sh 8.9
...
[root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 ~]# dnf update -y
...
[root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 ~]# reboot
...
[root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.9 (Ootpa)

Installing Ansible via bootstrap (requires python3-pip)

[root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# source bootstrap.sh
...
(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]#

Pre-reqs for Supermicro hardware:

• SMCIPMITool downloaded to jetlag repo, renamed to smcipmitool.tar.gz, and placed under ansible/

Cluster Deployment Usage

There are three main files to configure. The inventory file is generated but might have to be edited for specific scenario/hardware usage:

• ansible/vars/all.yml - An ansible vars file (Sample provided ansible/vars/all.sample.yml)
• pull_secret.txt - Your OCP pull secret, download from console.redhat.com/openshift/downloads
• ansible/inventory/$CLOUDNAME.local - The generated inventory file (Samples provided in ansible/inventory)

Start by editing the vars

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# cp ansible/vars/all.sample.yml ansible/vars/all.yml
(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# vi ansible/vars/all.yml

Make sure to set/review the following vars:

• lab - either alias or scalelab
• lab_cloud - the cloud within the lab environment (Example: cloud42)
• cluster_type - either bm, rwn, or sno for the respective cluster layout
• worker_node_count - applies to bm and rwn cluster types for the desired worker count, ideal for leaving left over inventory hosts for other purposes
• sno_node_count - applies to sno cluster type for the desired sno count, ideal for leaving left over inventory hosts for other purposes
• bastion_lab_interface - set to the bastion machine's lab accessible interface
• bastion_controlplane_interface - set to the interface in which the bastion will be networked to the deployed ocp cluster
• controlplane_lab_interface - applies to bm and rwn cluster types and should map to the nodes interface in which the lab provides dhcp to and also required for public routable vlan based sno deployment(to disable this interface)
• More customization such as cluster_network and service_network can be supported as extra vars, check each ansible roles default vars file for variable names and options

Set your pull-secret in pull_secret.txt in repo base directory. Example:

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# cat pull_secret.txt
{
  "auths": {
...

Run create-inventory playbook

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# ansible-playbook ansible/create-inventory.yml

Run setup-bastion playbook

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# ansible-playbook -i ansible/inventory/cloud99.local ansible/setup-bastion.yml

Run deploy for either bm/rwn/sno playbook with inventory created by create-inventory playbook

Bare Metal Cluster:

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# ansible-playbook -i ansible/inventory/cloud99.local ansible/bm-deploy.yml

See troubleshooting.md in docs directory for BM install related issues

Remote Worker Node Cluster:

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# ansible-playbook -i ansible/inventory/cloud99.local ansible/rwn-deploy.yml

Single Node OpenShift:

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# ansible-playbook -i ansible/inventory/cloud99.local ansible/sno-deploy.yml

Interact with your cluster from your bastion machine:

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# export KUBECONFIG=/root/bm/kubeconfig
(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# oc get no
NAME               STATUS   ROLES                         AGE    VERSION
xxx-h02-000-r650   Ready    control-plane,master,worker   73m    v1.25.7+eab9cc9
xxx-h03-000-r650   Ready    control-plane,master,worker   103m   v1.25.7+eab9cc9
xxx-h05-000-r650   Ready    control-plane,master,worker   105m   v1.25.7+eab9cc9
(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# cat /root/bm/kubeadmin-password
xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

And for SNO

(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# export KUBECONFIG=/root/sno/xxx-h02-000-r650/kubeconfig
(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# oc get no
NAME      STATUS   ROLES                         AGE   VERSION
xxx-h02-000-r650   Ready    control-plane,master,worker   30h   v1.28.6+0fb4726
(.ansible) [root@xxx-xxx-xxx-r640 jetlag]# cat /root/sno/xxx-h02-000-r650/kubeadmin-password
xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

Quickstart guides

• Deploy a Bare Metal cluster via jetlag from a Scale Lab Bastion Machine quickstart
• Deploy a Bare Metal cluster on IBMcloud via jetlag quickstart
• Deploy Single Node OpenShift (SNO) clusters via jetlag quickstart guide
• Deploy Single Node OpenShift (SNO) clusters on IBMcloud via jetlag quickstart

Tips and Troubleshooting

See tips-and-vars.md in docs directory.

See troubleshooting.md in docs directory.

Disconnected API/Console Access

See disconnected-ipv6-cluster-access.md in docs directory.

Jetlag Hypervisors

See hypervisors.md in docs directory.