4.4.9 Generating an SSH private key
It is recommended that an SSH key is generated for both the ssh-agent and the installation program. This key can be used to access the bootstrap machine in the server cluster to troubleshoot installation issues.
Start the service:
systemctl enable –now sshd
systemctl reload sshd
service sshd status
On the Linux OS, run the following command:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N ” \
-f ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Copy this key file to our administrator user, wasadm home directory:
root@OpenShift4 .ssh]# cp id_rsa.pub /home/wasadm
4.4.10 Obtaining the installation program
The following section outlines the installation of the latest on-premises OpenShift 4.9.9 version for bare metal environments, using the OpenShift Assisted Installer option.
- Start by logging into the following URL:
https://console.redhat.com/openshift/create/datacenter - This will require a Red Hat account:
https://console.redhat.com/openshift/create - The Datacenter tab is selected, to choose the Assisted Installer option for a Bare Metal system install of OpenShift.
Select the Datacenter tab, and the Bare Metal(x86_64) link. The sub-type of Assisted Bare Metal Installer can be selected to install the OpenShift 4.9.9 version (as of January, 2022). - The Base domain is entered (for this, the company domain, asbsoftware.com was used as an example).
- Then Install a single node OpenShift (SNO) using only one host, option can be selected. After clicking Next, the following screen is shown in Figure 4.6:
Figure 4.6: The next screen displays the version of OpenShift (4.9.9) to be installed
- On scroll down, the Next button is selected after filling in the Cluster detail fields. The Next button allows the prepared Cluster servers with the loaded SSH keys to be searched for.
- The Add hosts command prompts for the location of the SSH key we generated earlier. (See section 4.4.11 Generating an SSH private key).
If you select Install the OpenShift Virtualization tick box option, then you need to be aware of the following additional Requirements:
• Enable CPU virtualization support in the VMware BIOS (Intel-VT / AMD-V) on all nodes.
• Each supervisor node requires an additional 150 MiB of memory and 4 CPUs.
• OpenShift Data Foundation is recommended for full functionality or provide another persistent storage service. - Browse to the SSH public key file (id_rsa.pub) we created earlier, in section 4.4.9,Generating an SSH private key, in /home/wasadm. On selecting the public key encryption file, the details of the key are displayed.
Note: The SSH public key should have already been copied to the other cluster node servers as a prerequisite to running the above steps. - The Generate Discovery ISO button is clicked to provide the ignition system disk images we need. The Linux wget command is copied to download the Discovery ISO image file.
The adding hosts’ instructions are also displayed:
• Download the Discovery ISO and save it on a bootable device (local disk, USB drive, and so on).
• Set each host to boot only one time from this device.
• Discovered hosts will appear in the table. - The following is run from the Linux command window:
wget -O discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso
‘
https://api.openshift.com/api/assisted-images/images/21f80a31-6564-417c-834d-45aa5607587a?arch=x86_64&image_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJleHAiOjE2NDMwODA2MTksInN1YiI6IjIxZjgwYTMxLTY1NjQtNDE3Yy04MzRkLTQ1YWE1NjA3NTg3YSJ9.zxssYXidjoKD4DAO5NgjYYk9ju3sO5DKGp1cDtwzFu0&type=minimal-iso&version=4.9
‘
The output, as follows, should be seen from the above wget command:
Resolving api.openshift.com (api.openshift.com)…
54.157.249.238, 52.204.165.161
Connecting to api.openshift.com (api.openshift.com)|54.157.249.238|:443…
connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response…
200 OK
Length: 108984320 (104M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to:
‘discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso’
discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.is 100%[=====================================================>] 103.94M 6.03MB/s in 23s
2022-01-24 15:45:58 (4.51 MB/s) –
‘discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso’
saved [108984320/108984320]
- The resulting discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso image file is set as the CDROM image for booting. First copy the downloaded discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso file to the VMware host server path (the install folder) required.
cp /root/discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso /mnt/hgfs/OpenShift_iso/ - The discovery_image_bpb-demo2022.iso disk image is then selected for use as a boot CDROM.
From VMware settings the Power | Power On to Firmware option is selected for each server in the OpenShift Cluster of servers, illustrated in Figure 4.7:
Figure 4.7: The VMware menu option is selected for a CD-ROM BIOS boot option
- The following screen in Figure 4.8, allows the VMware BIOS emulation to be set to boot from CDROM as an option:
Figure 4.8: The CD-ROM Drive is selected as the Boot device
The installation boot set-up is covered, step-by-step, in the BPB book, Installation and Configuration of IBM Watson Analytics and StoredIQ in Chapter 7: Red Hat OpenShift 4.x Installations. (BPB Publications, ISBN 9390684498, 9789390684496).