Tutorial

Set up IBM Power Virtual Server for installing Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Prepare your Power Virtual Server environment for installing OpenShift

By

Michael Turek,

Ashwin Hendre,

Pradipta Banerjee

Introduction

This tutorial describes the steps for setting up IBM® Power® Virtual Server for deploying Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform. Note that if you plan to use the installer-provisioned infrastructure installation method for deploying OpenShift, some of these steps are done automatically by the installer and are optional, as noted.

Prerequisites

You need to perform the following steps from a system with a web browser and public internet access.

Steps

Create an IBM Cloud® account.

If you don't already have one, you need a paid IBM Cloud account to create your Power Virtual Server instance. To create an account, go to: cloud.ibm.com

Create or obtain your IBM Cloud API key.

  1. Go to https://cloud.ibm.com/iam/apikeys. If the browser doesn’t redirect you automatically, manually navigate to Manage -> IAM -> API keys.

    1. click Create.

      Figure 1: Creating a new API key

      fig1

    2. Enter a suitable name and description.

      Figure 2: API key name and description

      fig2

    3. Copy or download the API key to a suitable location as it will not be visible again.

      Figure 3: Created API key

      fig3

Create a workspace for Power Virtual Server (Optional)

After you have an active IBM Cloud account, you can create a Power Virtual Server service. To do so, perform the following steps. Note: If you’d rather have the installer provision the service for you, you may skip this step.

  1. Log in to the IBM Cloud dashboard and search for Power in the catalog.

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  2. Click Power Virtual Server to provide the required details for the service.

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  3. Provide a meaningful name for the service in the Service name field. For example, ocp-powervs-test-1

  4. Select an appropriate resource group. You can find more details about resource groups at: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/account?topic=account-rgs

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  5. Click Create to create the service.

Create a private network.

It is mandatory to have a private network for your OpenShift Container Platform cluster. If you plan to use the installer-provisioned infrastructure method, the installer creates the private network for you so you can skip this and the following step (5) and go directly to the Deploy Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Power Virtual Server using installer-provisioned infrastructure installation. Otherwise, do the following from the IBM Cloud console:

  1. Select the service you created in the previous step.

  2. Click Subnets and provide the required input.

    Sample input values are shown in the following screen captures. Make a note of the private network details like vlan-id, location etc. You'll need this for the next step.

    Note: If you see a screen displaying CRN and GUID, then click View full details to access the Subnet creation page.

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Enable communication over the private network.

Two options are available to enable communication over the private network.

Option 1

Use the IBM Cloud CLI with the latest power-iaas plug-in to enable private network communication. This requires attaching the private network to an IBM Cloud Direct Link Connect 2.0 connection as follows:

  1. Select the service instance. You’ll need the CRN of the service instance your created earlier (for example, ocp-powervs-test-1).

    ibmcloud pi service-target crn:v1:bluemix:public:power-iaas:tok04:a/65b64c1f1c29460e8c2e4bbfbd893c2c:e4bb3d9d-a37c-4b1f-a923-4537c0c8beb3::

  2. Get the ID of the private network.

    ibmcloud pi nets | grep -w ocp-net

    ID           93cc386a-53c5-4aef-9882-4294025c5e1f
    Name         ocp-net
    Type         vlan
    VLAN         413
    CIDR Block   192.168.201.0/24
    IP Range     [192.168.201.2  192.168.201.254]
    Gateway      192.168.201.1
    DNS          127.0.0.1
    

    You'll need the ID in subsequent steps.

  3. Get the Direct Link Connect connection ID.

    ibmcloud pi cons

    ID                                     Name             Link Status   Speed
    89fcfd7c-ec74-473b-ba09-4cd95fa47e2e   ocp-powervs-dl   idle          10000
    

    Get the ID of the connection.

    If you don't have an existing Direct Link Connect 2.0 connection provisioned under your account, then you can create a new connection using the IBM Cloud CLI. A highly available Direct Link Connect 2.0 connection between the Power Virtual Server and IBM Cloud comes free of cost. Refer to: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/power-iaas?topic=power-iaas-ordering-direct-link-connect

    ibmcloud pi conc ocp-powervs-dl --speed 1000

    Note: The speed is in megabits per second (Mbps). Run ibmcloud pi conc --help to check for allowed values.

  4. Attach the private network to Direct Link Connect 2.0 (connection).

    ibmcloud pi conan 89fcfd7c-ec74-473b-ba09-4cd95fa47e2e --network e1b90247-a504-4468-8662-8f785533067d

    This can take 3 to 5 minutes to become active.

  5. Verify the status of the attachment.

    ibmcloud pi con 89fcfd7c-ec74-473b-ba09-4cd95fa47e2e

       ID               89fcfd7c-ec74-473b-ba09-4cd95fa47e2e
       Name             ocp-powervs-dl
       Link Status      idle
       Speed            10000
       Creation Date    2021-05-13T13:17:08.093Z
       Global Routing   false
       IBM IPAddress    169.254.0.1/30
       User IPAddress   169.254.0.2/30
       Metered          false
       Classic          false
       Networks         ID: e1b90247-a504-4468-8662-8f785533067d       Name: ocp-net  VlanID: 392
    

The output shows that the ocp-net private network is attached to Direct Link Connect 2.0. This enables communication between VMs on the private network as well as communication with IBM Cloud over Direct Link.

Option 2

If you don't want to use Direct Link, then you'll need to raise a service request to enable private network communication.

Perform the following steps to raise the service request.

  1. Click Support at the top of the page, scroll down to the Contact Support section, and then click Create a case.

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  2. Select the Power Systems Virtual Server tile, then provide the details by copying the following subject and description into the appropriate fields on the Create a case page

    [Subject:] Enable communication between PowerVS instances on private network
    [Description:]
    Please enable IP communication between PowerVS instances for the following private network:
    Name: <your-subnet-name-from-above>
    Type: Private
    CIDR: <your ip subnet-from-above>
    VLAN ID: <your-vlan-id> (listed in your subnet details post creation)
    Location: <your-location> (listed in your subnet details post creation)
    Service Instance: <your-service-name>
    

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  3. Click Continue to accept the agreement and then click Submit case.

    This usually takes a day to get enabled.

Summary

Now that you have Power Virtual Server setup, the next step is to install and deploy Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on it. We’ve included three installation methods in this learning path. Choose the one that best suits your specific requirements.