Openshift Data Foundation Installation and Deployment Guide

To install and deploy OpenShift Data Foundation, you'll first need to create a cluster. This can be done using the OpenShift Cluster Manager or by manually creating a cluster using the OpenShift API.

The cluster creation process involves specifying the desired cluster configuration, including the number of nodes, storage options, and networking settings. This will determine the overall performance and scalability of your OpenShift Data Foundation deployment.

You'll need to decide on a storage class, which will define the characteristics of the storage resources available to your cluster. This includes options like Persistent Volumes (PVs) and StatefulSets.

OpenShift Data Foundation supports multiple storage classes, including local storage, network-attached storage (NAS), and object storage.

See what others are reading: Openshift Storage

OpenShift is a powerful platform that helps teams develop and deploy applications quickly and efficiently across clouds.

It's a software-defined storage solution that's specifically designed for containers, and it's included with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation is the software-defined storage solution that's part of the OpenShift platform, making it easy to manage and secure your applications.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation helps teams develop and deploy applications quickly and efficiently across clouds.

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Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation is a cloud-native, distributed storage and data services platform that integrates with OpenShift Container Platform.

You can deploy OpenShift Data Foundation on-premises or in the cloud, including on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

To get started, you'll need to have an OpenShift Container Platform cluster up and running, as well as a storage class provisioned.

Consider reading: Cloud Foundry Foundation

To get started with Red Hat OpenShift, you'll want to know that it's available exclusively through Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus.

This platform provides a complete set of powerful, optimized tools to secure, protect, and manage your apps.

Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus includes Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation, which is a key component of the platform.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation is designed to help you manage and store your data in a scalable and reliable way.

To get Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation, you'll need to have a subscription to Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus.

For your interest: Red Hat Openshift Data Science

To add worker nodes to your OCP cluster, you'll first need to validate that you have 2 or 3 worker nodes before increasing the cluster size. This will ensure a smooth scaling process.

You can check the current number of worker nodes by running a command, which will show you the existing machinesets used to create the worker nodes in your cluster. In the case of only 2 workers, one of the machinesets will not have any machines created.

To scale up your cluster, you'll need to create new MachineSets that will run storage-specific nodes for your OCP cluster. These machines will be in Provisioning for some time and eventually move to a Running phase.

You can see that the workerocs machines are using the AWS EC2 instance type m5.4xlarge, which has 16 CPUs and 64 GB memory.

Here's a step-by-step guide to scaling up your cluster:

1. Create new MachineSets for storage-specific nodes

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2. Wait for the machines to move to a Running phase

3. Check that all new workerocs machinesets have an integer (1) filled out for READY and AVAILABLE columns

4. Verify that you have 3 new OCP worker nodes

5. Check that the new OCP nodes have the ODF label applied

Remember to be patient, as this process can take around 5-10 minutes to complete.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation offers a range of features that make it a powerful tool for managing data in a distributed environment. With its ability to support thin provisioning, snapshots, and backups, it's perfect for edge locations with limited infrastructure.

OpenShift Data Foundation supports regional disaster recovery (DR) for datacenter failures, extending protection across regions or continents via a wide area network (WAN). This provides a high level of protection against regional disasters.

The platform also offers metropolitan DR for cluster failures, providing synchronous protection against system failures and no-loss recovery within a campus or metropolitan setting. This is ideal for environments where low-latency networks are available.

One of the key features of OpenShift Data Foundation is its ability to support 3-node compact clusters, which are perfect for Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Data Foundation on three production nodes. This allows for a highly available and scalable data storage solution.

For edge locations, OpenShift Data Foundation offers a single-node configuration that supports thin-provisioning, snapshots, and backups within a small infrastructure footprint. This makes it an ideal solution for environments with limited resources.

Here are some of the key benefits of OpenShift Data Foundation:

With its robust set of features and benefits, OpenShift Data Foundation is a powerful tool for managing data in a distributed environment. Its ability to support disaster recovery, compact clusters, and edge locations makes it an ideal solution for a wide range of use cases.

Enterprise Management with OpenShift Data Foundation is all about scalability. It's designed to handle massive amounts of data and scale up or down as needed.

With OpenShift Data Foundation, you can manage multiple storage classes and provision them to different applications. This allows for more efficient use of resources and better performance.

OpenShift Data Foundation also provides a unified management interface for all storage resources, making it easier to monitor and troubleshoot issues. This reduces the complexity of managing multiple storage systems and saves time.

Enterprise Cluster Management is all about ensuring the stability and reliability of your data. OpenShift Container Platform supports features like all basic storage classes.

Having a robust data management system is crucial for any enterprise. Red Hat provides support for the container host, development environment, and data management.

Data replication and disaster recovery capabilities are also essential for enterprise cluster management. This allows application data to be placed across different availability zones.

By using these features, you can ensure that your data is always available and can be recovered quickly in case of an outage.

You can expand a PVC through the OpenShift Web Console.

To do this, first select the project to which the PVC belongs.

Choose Expand PVC from the contextual menu.

In the dialog box that appears, enter the new capacity for the PVC.

Note that you cannot reduce the size of a PVC.

Once you've entered the new capacity, wait for the expansion to complete and for the new size to be reflected in the console.

The new size will be 15 GiB.

Once the expansion is complete, you can use the file uploader web application to upload new files.

After uploading files, click List uploaded files to see the list of all currently uploaded files.

This will take you to the Alerting homepage.

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In an enterprise management setup, OpenShift Operator plays a crucial role in streamlining the management of containerized applications.

The OpenShift Operator is a meta operator, meaning it facilitates the other operators in OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) by providing dependencies and performing administrative tasks outside their scope.

It's like a project manager, ensuring that all the moving parts work together seamlessly.

The OpenShift Data Foundation Operator is the primary operator for Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF), serving as a central hub for managing the foundation.

This operator is responsible for managing the dependencies and administrative tasks for the other operators in ODF, freeing them up to focus on their core functions.

By leveraging the OpenShift Operator, enterprises can simplify the management of their containerized applications and improve overall efficiency.

OpenShift Data Foundation is available in two editions: Essentials and Advanced.

The Essentials edition is included with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is part of the Essentials edition.

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes is also included in the Essentials edition.

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes is another component of the Essentials edition.

Red Hat Quay, a security-focused global container private registry platform, rounds out the Essentials edition.

The Advanced edition offers more features, but the specific components are not specified in the provided text.

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In this lab, you'll be learning how to deploy and manage OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) with OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) 4.x. This is a great primer for both system administrators and application developers.

You'll be using the ODF operator to deploy Ceph and the Multi-Cloud-Gateway (MCG) as a persistent storage solution for OCP workloads. This will give you hands-on experience with containerized Ceph and MCG.

You'll learn how to configure and deploy containerized Ceph and MCG, validate their deployment, and deploy the Rook toolbox to run Ceph and RADOS commands. You'll also create applications using Read-Write-Once (RWO) and Read-Write-Many (RWX) Persistent Volumes (PVCs) based on Ceph RBD and CephFS.

Here are the specific tasks you'll complete in this lab:

Make sure you complete all previous sections before starting the Rails + PostgreSQL Deployment, and that you have the three new StorageClasses created during the ODF 4 Install ready to use.

You can deploy applications on OpenShift Data Foundation using various storage classes, such as Ceph RBD and CephFS.

To create a new OCP application deployment using Ceph RBD volume, you'll need to specify the ocs-storagecluster-ceph-rbdStorageClass in the template file. This will provision a Ceph RBD volume in the Ceph pool ocs-storagecluster-cephblockpool.

A Ceph RBD volume is suitable for applications requiring ReadWriteOnce (RWO) persistent storage. You can test the application and the persistent storage on Ceph by creating articles and comments in a PostgreSQL database.

To create a new OCP application deployment using CephFS volume, you'll need to specify the ocs-storagecluster-cephfsStorageClass. This will create a ReadWriteMany (RWX) PVC that can be used by multiple pods at the same time.

Here are some key differences between Ceph RBD and CephFS:

Keep in mind that you should not store persistent data in a Pod that has no persistent volume associated with it, as the data will be lost when the Pod terminates.

Consider reading: Pods in Openshift

Deploying pre-built images is a straightforward process in OpenShift. You can leverage the OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) operator to deploy pre-built images, such as the Ceph RBD storage class, which enables you to create RWO persistent storage.

To deploy the Ceph RBD storage class, you'll need to create a new OCP application deployment using the Ceph RBD volume. This involves creating a template file, based on the OpenShift rails-pgsql-persistent template, that includes an extra parameter STORAGE_CLASS.

Here's a step-by-step guide to deploying the Ceph RBD storage class:

Alternatively, you can also use the ODF operator to deploy pre-built images. In this case, you'll need to create the openshift-storage namespace and add the monitoring label to it. Then, you can select the OpenShift Data Foundation Operator and install it.

Here's a table summarizing the steps to deploy the ODF operator:

Once the ODF operator is installed, you can create a new OCP application deployment using the Ceph RBD storage class or the CephFS volume.

Now that we've added capacity to our Ceph cluster, let's verify that it's working as expected.

We can use the Ceph toolbox to check the additional storage capacity. With 6 OSDs in total and all running, the available raw capacity has increased from 6 TiB to 12 TiB.

As new hosts are added to the cluster, they extend the storage in the respective zone. This helps reduce the load on the initial nodes by replicating data between zones.

The Ceph cluster's CRUSH rules take care of balancing the existing data on the original OSDs, so the old and new OSDs share the load automatically.

Managing storage in OpenShift Data Foundation is a breeze, especially with the various options available. You can create persistent volumes using Ceph RBD or CephFS, and even use Object Bucket Claims (OBCs) for dynamic bucket creation.

For Ceph RBD, you can expand an existing PVC using the `oc patch` command, as seen in Example 4. This allows you to increase the size of the PVC without disrupting your application. You can also use the OpenShift Web Console to expand PVCs, as shown in Example 3.

To expand a CephFS-based PVC, you can use the `oc patch` command again, as demonstrated in Example 4. This process is almost instantaneous, unlike RBD-based PVCs, and does not involve resizing a filesystem.

For another approach, see: Openshift 4

Here's a quick rundown of the storage options available in OpenShift Data Foundation:

These storage options provide a flexible and scalable way to manage storage in OpenShift Data Foundation, making it easier to deploy and manage applications.

Expand PVCs is a crucial step in managing storage in OpenShift.

You can expand PVCs using the OpenShift Web Console, CLI, or through the User Interface.

To expand a PVC via the User Interface, first select the project to which the PVC belongs. Then, choose Expand PVC from the contextual menu.

The new capacity for the PVC can be entered in the dialog box that appears. Note that you cannot reduce the size of a PVC.

In OpenShift 4.5 and later versions, you can also expand an existing PVC based on the ocs-storagecluster-ceph-rbdStorageClass using the CLI.

For example, you can increase the size of a PVC from 1Gi to 5Gi using the oc patch command.

CephFS based RWX PVC resizing is almost instantaneous, unlike RBD based PVCs, which involves resizing a filesystem.

Here's a comparison of expanding PVCs via the User Interface and CLI:

Keep in mind that expanding PVCs can trigger alerts when the PVC crosses a certain threshold, such as 75% full.

PVC Snapshot is a feature in OpenShift that allows you to create a snapshot of a Persistent Volume Claim (PVC). This snapshot can be used to provision a new volume, which can be used for application recovery.

Creating a PVC snapshot is similar to creating a clone, but it only saves the delta between the initial snapshot and the current contents of the PVC. This makes it more capacity efficient than creating full clones each time period.

To create a PVC snapshot, you can use the OpenShift Web Console or create a YAML file. Once you've created the snapshot, you can use it to provision a new volume by creating a PVC clone.

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Here's a step-by-step guide to creating a PVC snapshot:

1. Create a PVC snapshot using the OpenShift Web Console or a YAML file.

2. Specify the PVC you want to snapshot and the StorageClass to use.

3. The snapshot will be created and stored in the cluster.

4. You can then use the snapshot to provision a new volume by creating a PVC clone.

Here are the benefits of using PVC snapshots:

Here's an example of how to create a PVC snapshot using the OpenShift Web Console:

1. Navigate to Storage → Persistent Volume Claim

2. Choose Create Snapshot

3. Specify the PVC you want to snapshot and the StorageClass to use

4. The snapshot will be created and stored in the cluster

Note that you can also create a PVC snapshot using a YAML file. To do this, you'll need to create a YAML file that defines the snapshot and then apply it to the cluster using the `oc apply` command.

Adding capacity to your OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) storage is a straightforward process. You can do this through the OpenShift Web Console or by using the CLI.

To add capacity through the OpenShift Web Console, navigate to the ODF storage cluster overview. This can be done by clicking on Operators, then Installed Operators, and selecting the openshift-storage project. Next, click on OpenShift Data Foundation Operator, and in the top navigation bar, scroll right to find the item Storage System and click on it. From there, select Add Capacity from the options menu.

The storage class should be set to gp3-csi. ODF uses a replica count of 3, so the added provisioned capacity will be three times as much as you see in the Raw Capacity field.

It may take more than 5 minutes for new OSD pods to be in a Running state. Be patient and wait for the process to complete. Once you've added capacity, you can verify that the new OSD pods are running by using the command `oc get pods` and looking for the new OSD pods in the list.

Here's a summary of the steps to add capacity:

To check the status of your MCG, you'll need to use the NooBaa CLI, which can be downloaded from the NooBaa Operator releases page.

Make sure you're in the openshift-storage project when you run the command, as this is where the NooBaa CLI will look for the necessary information.

The NooBaa status command will first check the environment and then print out all the details about it, including the status of the MCG and available S3 addresses.

These S3 addresses can be used to connect to your MCG buckets, and you have the option to use either the external DNS, which incurs DNS traffic costs, or route internally within your Openshift cluster.

Additional reading: Data Lake S3

Monitoring and metrics are crucial components of OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF). You can access monitoring tools through the OpenShift Web Console's Observe menu.

The Observe menu offers three selections: Alerting, Metrics, and Dashboards. Clicking on the Metrics item takes you to the Metrics homepage, where you can use the query field to search for metrics by name or enter a formula of your choice.

For more insights, see: Openshift Monitoring

To query metrics, you can use the Prometheus query syntax and its available functions. For example, entering "ceph_osd_op" in the query field allows you to view metrics related to Ceph OSD operations.

You can also use more complex queries, such as "rate(ceph_osd_op[5m])" or "irate(ceph_osd_op[5m])", to view metrics over a specific time period. This can be useful for analyzing performance and identifying issues.

ODF provides a pre-configured monitoring stack based on Prometheus, which includes alerts to notify cluster administrators of problems. However, this stack uses ephemeral storage by default, which can cause data loss if pods are restarted or recreated.

To persist metrics and alerting data, you can migrate Prometheus and AlertManager storage to Ceph RBD volumes for persistence. This requires creating Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) and updating the Prometheus and AlertManager resources to use these PVCs.

Here is an example of how to use the query field to search for metrics:

Note that all OCP metrics are also available through the integrated Metrics window, and you can try using different metrics such as "irate(process_cpu_seconds_total[5m])".

To install and deploy OpenShift Data Foundation, you'll need to deploy your storage backend using the ODF operator. This can be done by typing "openShift data foundation" in the Filter by keyword box.

The ODF operator installation process involves creating the openshift-storage namespace and adding a monitoring label to it. This can be done using the command "oc label namespace openshift-storage monitoring=true" or by using the Openshift Web Console.

You'll also need to install the ODF operator using the OperatorHub, which will install an ODF OperatorGroup, an ODF Subscription, and all other ODF resources.

Once the installation is complete, you can create a StorageSystem by selecting "Create StorageSystem" in the Openshift Web Console. From there, you can configure the storage system by selecting the storage class and capacity.

Here are the steps to create a StorageSystem:

After creating the StorageSystem, you can verify its status by checking the CustomResource using the following commands:

Note that the size chosen for ODF Service Capacity during the initial deployment of ODF is greyed out and cannot be changed.

Scaling your OpenShift cluster and adding new worker nodes is a crucial step in preparing for OpenShift Data Foundation. You'll first want to validate that your cluster has 2 or 3 worker nodes before increasing the cluster size by adding 3 more worker nodes for ODF resources.

You'll use MachineSets to add new compute nodes to your cluster, which will show you the existing machinesets used to create the 2 or 3 worker nodes in the cluster already. Your machinesets name will be different than shown below, and in the case of only 2 workers, one of the machinesets will not have any machines created.

Create new MachineSets that will run storage-specific nodes for your OCP cluster, which will be in Provisioning for some time and eventually in a Running PHASE. The m5.4xlarge instance type has 16 CPUs and 64 GB memory, just like the workerocs machines.

After adding new machines, you'll need to wait for them to be added to the OCP cluster, which could take more than 5 minutes. The result of this command should look like the example below, with all new workerocs machinesets having an integer, in this case 1, filled out for all rows and under columns READY and AVAILABLE.

Once the new machines are added, you'll want to check that you have 3 new OCP worker nodes, and their name will be different than shown below. You'll also want to check that the new OCP nodes have the ODF label, which was added in the workerocsmachinesets.

Ceph and Rook are a powerful combination in OpenShift Data Foundation. To use the Rook-Ceph toolbox, you need to deploy it manually since it's not shipped with ODF.

You can patch the OCSInitialization ocsinit using a specific command line. This will allow you to access the toolbox once the rook-ceph-toolsPod is running.

Inside the toolbox, you can try out various Ceph commands to manage your storage. You can exit the toolbox by pressing Ctrl+D or executing the exit command.

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To create an OCP app deployment with Ceph RBD, you'll need to use the ocs-storagecluster-ceph-rbdStorageClass. This StorageClass will provision a Ceph RBD volume in the Ceph pool ocs-storagecluster-cephblockpool.

Start by creating a new project and then use the rails-pgsql-persistent template to create the new application. This template includes an extra parameter STORAGE_CLASS that enables you to specify the StorageClass the PVC should use.

You can download the template from https://github.com/red-hat-storage/ocs-training/blob/master/training/modules/ocs4/attachments/configurable-rails-app.yaml to check on the format of this template. Search for STORAGE_CLASS in the downloaded content.

A different take: Openshift Training

After the deployment is started, you can monitor the PVC creation with the following commands:

Once the deployment is complete, you can test the application and the persistent storage on Ceph. The articles and comments are saved in a PostgreSQL database which stores its table spaces on the Ceph RBD volume provisioned using the ocs-storagecluster-ceph-rbdStorageClass during the application deployment.

You can also use the oc set volume command to create a PersistentVolumeClaim and attach it into an application. This command will:

For more information on what oc set volume is capable of, look at its help output with oc set volume -h.

Note that the ACCESSMODE being set to RWX (short for ReadWriteMany) allows multiple Pods to use the same RWX volume.

The Rook-Ceph Health Checker is a valuable tool for monitoring your Ceph cluster's health. You can deploy it manually by patching the OCSInitialization ocsinit using a command line.

To access the toolbox, wait for the rook-ceph-toolsPod to be Running. Once inside, you can run various Ceph commands to check on your cluster's status.

To exit the toolbox, simply press Ctrl+D or execute the exit command.