Setting up IBM Power Systems Virtual Server for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

This tutorial is part of the Learning path: Deploying Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.x on IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers.

Introduction

This tutorial describes the steps for setting up IBM® Power Systems™ Virtual Server for deploying Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform.

Prerequisites

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

Steps

1. Create an IBM Cloud® account.

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

2. Create an IBM Cloud account API key.

   Refer to the following documentation to create an API key: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/account?topic=account-userapikey

3. Create a Power Systems Virtual Server service.

   After you have an active IBM Cloud account, you can create a Power Systems Virtual Server service. To do so, perform the following steps:

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

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

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

      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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   4. Click Create to create the service.

4. Create a private network.

   It is mandatory to have a private network for your OpenShift Container Platform cluster. To create a private network for the Power Systems Virtual Server service instance created in the previous step, select the service, click Subnets, and provide the required input. Sample input values are shown in the following screen captures. Please note down 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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5. Enable communication over the private network.

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

   Option 1

   You can use the IBM Cloud CLI with the latest power-iaas plug-in (version 0.3.4 or later) to enable a private network communication.
   https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/power-iaas?topic=power-iaas-managing-cloud-connections

   This requires attaching the private network to an IBM Cloud Direct Link Connect 2.0 connection.
   Perform the following steps to enable private network communication by attaching to the Direct Link Connect 2.0 connection.

   1. Select a specific service instance.
      You’ll need the CRN of the service instance 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
      

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      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
      

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      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: 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.

   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.

   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
   

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   The output shows that the ocp-net private network is attached to Direct Link Connect 2.0. This enables inter VM communication 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.

   After this procedure is complete, you can proceed to the next step of image preparation.

Summary

You have now set up IBM Power Systems Virtual Server for deploying Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. As the next step, you need to prepare the images required for OpenShift and upload them to the Power Systems Virtual Server service. We offer the following two tutorials as alternative ways to perform the OVA image preparation: one is a manual approach and the other is a simpler, scripted approach that automates the key OVA preparation and import tasks.

• Preparing images for OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers is a manual process to create OVA formatted images for both RHEL and RHCOS, and upload them to IBM Cloud Object Storage.
• Creating OVA images using a CentOS instance in IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers is an automated, scripted process to create and upload the RHEL and RHCOS OVA images.