Chapter 2. Creating machine sets

2.1. Creating a machine set on AWS

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Amazon Web Services (AWS). For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Important

This process is not applicable for clusters with manually provisioned machines. You can use the advanced machine management and scaling capabilities only in clusters where the Machine API is operational.

2.1.1. Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines
A fundamental unit that describes the host for a node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.
Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

Warning

Control plane machines cannot be managed by machine sets.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler
The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.
Cluster autoscaler
This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.
Machine health check
The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

2.1.2. Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on AWS

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs in the us-east-1a Amazon Web Services (AWS) zone and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructure_id> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 1
  name: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-<zone> 2
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 3
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-<zone> 4
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 5
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 6
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 7
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-<zone> 8
    spec:
      metadata:
        labels:
          node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "" 9
      providerSpec:
        value:
          ami:
            id: ami-046fe691f52a953f9 10
          apiVersion: awsproviderconfig.openshift.io/v1beta1
          blockDevices:
            - ebs:
                iops: 0
                volumeSize: 120
                volumeType: gp2
          credentialsSecret:
            name: aws-cloud-credentials
          deviceIndex: 0
          iamInstanceProfile:
            id: <infrastructure_id>-worker-profile 11
          instanceType: m4.large
          kind: AWSMachineProviderConfig
          placement:
            availabilityZone: us-east-1a
            region: us-east-1
          securityGroups:
            - filters:
                - name: tag:Name
                  values:
                    - <infrastructure_id>-worker-sg 12
          subnet:
            filters:
              - name: tag:Name
                values:
                  - <infrastructure_id>-private-us-east-1a 13
          tags:
            - name: kubernetes.io/cluster/<infrastructure_id> 14
              value: owned
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data
1 3 5 11 12 13 14
Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command:
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster
2 4 8
Specify the infrastructure ID, node label, and zone.
6 7 9
Specify the node label to add.
10
Specify a valid Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) AMI for your AWS zone for your OpenShift Container Platform nodes.

2.1.3. Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster:

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api

      Example output

      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
           openshift-machine-api -o yaml

      Example output

      ...
      template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk 1
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker 2
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a

      1
      The cluster ID.
      2
      A default node label.
  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml
  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api

    Example output

    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
    agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.

Next steps

If you need machine sets in other availability zones, repeat this process to create more machine sets.

2.1.4. Machine sets that deploy machines as Spot Instances

You can save on costs by creating a machine set running on AWS that deploys machines as non-guaranteed Spot Instances. Spot Instances utilize unused AWS EC2 capacity and are less expensive than On-Demand Instances. You can use Spot Instances for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch or stateless, horizontally scalable workloads.

AWS EC2 can terminate a Spot Instance at any time. AWS gives a two-minute warning to the user when an interruption occurs. OpenShift Container Platform begins to remove the workloads from the affected instances when AWS issues the termination warning.

Interruptions can occur when using Spot Instances for the following reasons:

  • The instance price exceeds your maximum price
  • The demand for Spot Instances increases
  • The supply of Spot Instances decreases

When AWS terminates an instance, a termination handler running on the Spot Instance node deletes the machine resource. To satisfy the machine set replicas quantity, the machine set creates a machine that requests a Spot Instance.

2.1.5. Creating Spot Instances by using machine sets

You can launch a Spot Instance on AWS by adding spotMarketOptions to your machine set YAML file.

Procedure

  • Add the following line under the providerSpec field:

    providerSpec:
      value:
        spotMarketOptions: {}

    You can optionally set the spotMarketOptions.maxPrice field to limit the cost of the Spot Instance. For example you can set maxPrice: '2.50'.

    If the maxPrice is set, this value is used as the hourly maximum spot price. If it is not set, the maximum price defaults to charge up to the On-Demand Instance price.

    Note

    It is strongly recommended to use the default On-Demand price as the maxPrice value and to not set the maximum price for Spot Instances.

2.1.6. Machine sets that deploy machines as Dedicated Instances

You can create a machine set running on AWS that deploys machines as Dedicated Instances. Dedicated Instances run in a virtual private cloud (VPC) on hardware that is dedicated to a single customer. These Amazon EC2 instances are physically isolated at the host hardware level. The isolation of Dedicated Instances occurs even if the instances belong to different AWS accounts that are linked to a single payer account. However, other instances that are not dedicated can share hardware with Dedicated Instances if they belong to the same AWS account.

Instances with either public or dedicated tenancy are supported by the Machine API. Instances with public tenancy run on shared hardware. Public tenancy is the default tenancy. Instances with dedicated tenancy run on single-tenant hardware.

2.1.7. Creating Dedicated Instances by using machine sets

You can run a machine that is backed by a Dedicated Instance by using Machine API integration. Set the tenancy field in your machine set YAML file to launch a Dedicated Instance on AWS.

Procedure

  • Specify a dedicated tenancy under the providerSpec field:

    providerSpec:
      placement:
        tenancy: dedicated

2.2. Creating a machine set on Azure

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Microsoft Azure. For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Important

This process is not applicable for clusters with manually provisioned machines. You can use the advanced machine management and scaling capabilities only in clusters where the Machine API is operational.

2.2.1. Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines
A fundamental unit that describes the host for a node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.
Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

Warning

Control plane machines cannot be managed by machine sets.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler
The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.
Cluster autoscaler
This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.
Machine health check
The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

2.2.2. Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on Azure

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs in the 1 Microsoft Azure zone in a region and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructure_id> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 1
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 2
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 3
  name: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-<region> 4
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 5
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-<region> 6
  template:
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 7
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 8
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 9
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-<region> 10
    spec:
      metadata:
        creationTimestamp: null
        labels:
          node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "" 11
      providerSpec:
        value:
          apiVersion: azureproviderconfig.openshift.io/v1beta1
          credentialsSecret:
            name: azure-cloud-credentials
            namespace: openshift-machine-api
          image:
            offer: ""
            publisher: ""
            resourceID: /resourceGroups/<infrastructure_id>-rg/providers/Microsoft.Compute/images/<infrastructure_id> 12
            sku: ""
            version: ""
          internalLoadBalancer: ""
          kind: AzureMachineProviderSpec
          location: <region> 13
          managedIdentity: <infrastructure_id>-identity 14
          metadata:
            creationTimestamp: null
          natRule: null
          networkResourceGroup: ""
          osDisk:
            diskSizeGB: 128
            managedDisk:
              storageAccountType: Premium_LRS
            osType: Linux
          publicIP: false
          publicLoadBalancer: ""
          resourceGroup: <infrastructure_id>-rg 15
          sshPrivateKey: ""
          sshPublicKey: ""
          subnet: <infrastructure_id>-<role>-subnet 16 17
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data 18
          vmSize: Standard_DS4_v2
          vnet: <infrastructure_id>-vnet 19
          zone: "1" 20
1 5 7 12 14 15 16 19
Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command:
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster

You can obtain the subnet by running the following command:

$  oc -n openshift-machine-api \
    -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.providerSpec.value.subnet}{"\n"}' \
    get machineset/<infrastructure_id>-worker-centralus1

You can obtain the vnet by running the following command:

$  oc -n openshift-machine-api \
    -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.providerSpec.value.vnet}{"\n"}' \
    get machineset/<infrastructure_id>-worker-centralus1
2 3 8 9 11 17 18
Specify the node label to add.
4 6 10
Specify the infrastructure ID, node label, and region.
13
Specify the region to place machines on.
20
Specify the zone within your region to place machines on. Be sure that your region supports the zone that you specify.

2.2.3. Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster:

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api

      Example output

      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
           openshift-machine-api -o yaml

      Example output

      ...
      template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk 1
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker 2
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a

      1
      The cluster ID.
      2
      A default node label.
  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml
  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api

    Example output

    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
    agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.

2.2.4. Machine sets that deploy machines as Spot VMs

You can save on costs by creating a machine set running on Azure that deploys machines as non-guaranteed Spot VMs. Spot VMs utilize unused Azure capacity and are less expensive than standard VMs. You can use Spot VMs for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch or stateless, horizontally scalable workloads.

Azure can terminate a Spot VM at any time. Azure gives a 30-second warning to the user when an interruption occurs. OpenShift Container Platform begins to remove the workloads from the affected instances when Azure issues the termination warning.

Interruptions can occur when using Spot VMs for the following reasons:

  • The instance price exceeds your maximum price
  • The supply of Spot VMs decreases
  • Azure needs capacity back

When Azure terminates an instance, a termination handler running on the Spot VM node deletes the machine resource. To satisfy the machine set replicas quantity, the machine set creates a machine that requests a Spot VM.

2.2.5. Creating Spot VMs by using machine sets

You can launch a Spot VM on Azure by adding spotVMOptions to your machine set YAML file.

Procedure

  • Add the following line under the providerSpec field:

    providerSpec:
      value:
        spotVMOptions: {}

    You can optionally set the spotVMOptions.maxPrice field to limit the cost of the Spot VM. For example you can set maxPrice: '0.98765'. If the maxPrice is set, this value is used as the hourly maximum spot price. If it is not set, the maximum price defaults to -1 and charges up to the standard VM price.

    Azure caps Spot VM prices at the standard price. Azure will not evict an instance due to pricing if the instance is set with the default maxPrice. However, an instance can still be evicted due to capacity restrictions.

Note

It is strongly recommended to use the default standard VM price as the maxPrice value and to not set the maximum price for Spot VMs.

2.2.6. Enabling customer-managed encryption keys for a machine set

You can supply an encryption key to Azure to encrypt data on managed disks at rest. You can enable server-side encryption with customer-managed keys by using the Machine API.

An Azure Key Vault, a disk encryption set, and an encryption key are required to use a customer-managed key. The disk encryption set must preside in a resource group where the Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) has granted permissions. If not, an additional reader role is required to be granted on the disk encryption set.

Procedure

  • Configure the disk encryption set under the providerSpec field in your machine set YAML file. For example:

    ...
    providerSpec:
      value:
        ...
        osDisk:
          diskSizeGB: 128
          managedDisk:
            diskEncryptionSet:
              id: /subscriptions/<subscription_id>/resourceGroups/<resource_group_name>/providers/Microsoft.Compute/diskEncryptionSets/<disk_encryption_set_name>
            storageAccountType: Premium_LRS
    ...

Additional resources

2.3. Creating a machine set on GCP

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Important

This process is not applicable for clusters with manually provisioned machines. You can use the advanced machine management and scaling capabilities only in clusters where the Machine API is operational.

2.3.1. Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines
A fundamental unit that describes the host for a node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.
Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

Warning

Control plane machines cannot be managed by machine sets.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler
The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.
Cluster autoscaler
This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.
Machine health check
The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

2.3.2. Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on GCP

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructure_id> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 1
  name: <infrastructure_id>-w-a 2
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 3
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-w-a 4
  template:
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 5
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 6
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 7
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-w-a 8
    spec:
      metadata:
        labels:
          node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "" 9
      providerSpec:
        value:
          apiVersion: gcpprovider.openshift.io/v1beta1
          canIPForward: false
          credentialsSecret:
            name: gcp-cloud-credentials
          deletionProtection: false
          disks:
          - autoDelete: true
            boot: true
            image: <path_to_image> 10
            labels: null
            sizeGb: 128
            type: pd-ssd
          gcpMetadata: 11
          - key: <custom_metadata_key>
            value: <custom_metadata_value>
          kind: GCPMachineProviderSpec
          machineType: n1-standard-4
          metadata:
            creationTimestamp: null
          networkInterfaces:
          - network: <infrastructure_id>-network 12
            subnetwork: <infrastructure_id>-worker-subnet 13
          projectID: <project_name> 14
          region: us-central1
          serviceAccounts:
          - email: <infrastructure_id>-w@<project_name>.iam.gserviceaccount.com 15 16
            scopes:
            - https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform
          tags:
          - <infrastructure_id>-worker 17
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data
          zone: us-central1-a
1 2 3 4 5 8 12 13 15 17
Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command:
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster
6 7 9
Specify the node label to add.
10
Specify the path to the image that is used in current machine sets. If you have the OpenShift CLI installed, you can obtain the path to the image by running the following command:
$ oc -n openshift-machine-api \
    -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.providerSpec.value.disks[0].image}{"\n"}' \
    get machineset/<infrastructure_id>-worker-a
11
Optional: Specify custom metadata in the form of a key:value pair. For example use cases, see the GCP documentation for setting custom metadata.
14 16
Specify the name of the GCP project that you use for your cluster.

2.3.3. Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster:

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api

      Example output

      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
           openshift-machine-api -o yaml

      Example output

      ...
      template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk 1
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker 2
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a

      1
      The cluster ID.
      2
      A default node label.
  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml
  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api

    Example output

    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
    agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.

2.3.4. Machine sets that deploy machines as preemptible VM instances

You can save on costs by creating a machine set running on GCP that deploys machines as non-guaranteed preemptible VM instances. Preemptible VM instances utilize excess Compute Engine capacity and are less expensive than normal instances. You can use preemptible VM instances for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as batch or stateless, horizontally scalable workloads.

GCP Compute Engine can terminate a preemptible VM instance at any time. Compute Engine sends a preemption notice to the user indicating that an interruption will occur in 30 seconds. OpenShift Container Platform begins to remove the workloads from the affected instances when Compute Engine issues the preemption notice. An ACPI G3 Mechanical Off signal is sent to the operating system after 30 seconds if the instance is not stopped. The preemptible VM instance is then transitioned to a TERMINATED state by Compute Engine.

Interruptions can occur when using preemptible VM instances for the following reasons:

  • There is a system or maintenance event
  • The supply of preemptible VM instances decreases
  • The instance reaches the end of the allotted 24-hour period for preemptible VM instances

When GCP terminates an instance, a termination handler running on the preemptible VM instance node deletes the machine resource. To satisfy the machine set replicas quantity, the machine set creates a machine that requests a preemptible VM instance.

2.3.5. Creating preemptible VM instances by using machine sets

You can launch a preemptible VM instance on GCP by adding preemptible to your machine set YAML file.

Procedure

  • Add the following line under the providerSpec field:

    providerSpec:
      value:
        preemptible: true

    If preemptible is set to true, the machine is labelled as an interruptable-instance after the instance is launched.

2.3.6. Enabling customer-managed encryption keys for a machine set

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Compute Engine allows users to supply an encryption key to encrypt data on disks at rest. The key is used to encrypt the data encryption key, not to encrypt the customer’s data. By default, Compute Engine encrypts this data by using Compute Engine keys.

You can enable encryption with a customer-managed key by using the Machine API. You must first create a KMS key and assign the correct permissions to a service account. The KMS key name, key ring name, and location are required to allow a service account to use your key.

Note

If you do not want to use a dedicated service account for the KMS encryption, the Compute Engine default service account is used instead. You must grant the default service account permission to access the keys if you do not use a dedicated service account. The Compute Engine default service account name follows the service-<project_number>@compute-system.iam.gserviceaccount.com pattern.

Procedure

  1. Run the following command with your KMS key name, key ring name, and location to allow a specific service account to use your KMS key and to grant the service account the correct IAM role:

    gcloud kms keys add-iam-policy-binding <key_name> \
      --keyring <key_ring_name> \
      --location <key_ring_location> \
      --member "serviceAccount:service-<project_number>@compute-system.iam.gserviceaccount.com” \
      --role roles/cloudkms.cryptoKeyEncrypterDecrypter
  2. Configure the encryption key under the providerSpec field in your machine set YAML file. For example:

    providerSpec:
      value:
        # ...
        disks:
        - type:
          # ...
          encryptionKey:
            kmsKey:
              name: machine-encryption-key 1
              keyRing: openshift-encrpytion-ring 2
              location: global 3
              projectID: openshift-gcp-project 4
            kmsKeyServiceAccount: openshift-service-account@openshift-gcp-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com 5
    1
    The name of the customer-managed encryption key that is used for the disk encryption.
    2
    The name of the KMS key ring that the KMS key belongs to.
    3
    The GCP location in which the KMS key ring exists.
    4
    Optional: The ID of the project in which the KMS key ring exists. If a project ID is not set, the machine set projectID in which the machine set was created is used.
    5
    Optional: The service account that is used for the encryption request for the given KMS key. If a service account is not set, the Compute Engine default service account is used.

    After a new machine is created by using the updated providerSpec object configuration, the disk encryption key is encrypted with the KMS key.

2.4. Creating a machine set on OpenStack

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP). For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Important

This process is not applicable for clusters with manually provisioned machines. You can use the advanced machine management and scaling capabilities only in clusters where the Machine API is operational.

2.4.1. Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines
A fundamental unit that describes the host for a node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.
Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

Warning

Control plane machines cannot be managed by machine sets.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler
The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.
Cluster autoscaler
This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.
Machine health check
The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

2.4.2. Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on RHOSP

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructure_id> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 1
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 2
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 3
  name: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 4
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: <number_of_replicas>
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 5
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 6
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 7
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 8
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 9
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 10
    spec:
      providerSpec:
        value:
          apiVersion: openstackproviderconfig.openshift.io/v1alpha1
          cloudName: openstack
          cloudsSecret:
            name: openstack-cloud-credentials
            namespace: openshift-machine-api
          flavor: <nova_flavor>
          image: <glance_image_name_or_location>
          serverGroupID: <optional_UUID_of_server_group> 11
          kind: OpenstackProviderSpec
          networks: 12
          - filter: {}
            subnets:
            - filter:
                name: <subnet_name>
                tags: openshiftClusterID=<infrastructure_id> 13
          primarySubnet: <rhosp_subnet_UUID> 14
          securityGroups:
          - filter: {}
            name: <infrastructure_id>-worker 15
          serverMetadata:
            Name: <infrastructure_id>-worker 16
            openshiftClusterID: <infrastructure_id> 17
          tags:
          - openshiftClusterID=<infrastructure_id> 18
          trunk: true
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data 19
          availabilityZone: <optional_openstack_availability_zone>
1 5 7 13 15 16 17 18
Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command:
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster
2 3 8 9 19
Specify the node label to add.
4 6 10
Specify the infrastructure ID and node label.
11
To set a server group policy for the MachineSet, enter the value that is returned from creating a server group. For most deployments, anti-affinity or soft-anti-affinity policies are recommended.
12
Required for deployments to multiple networks. To specify multiple networks, add another entry in the networks array. Also, you must include the network that is used as the primarySubnet value.
14
Specify the RHOSP subnet that you want the endpoints of nodes to be published on. Usually, this is the same subnet that is used as the value of machinesSubnet in the install-config.yaml file.

2.4.3. Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster:

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api

      Example output

      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
           openshift-machine-api -o yaml

      Example output

      ...
      template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk 1
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker 2
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a

      1
      The cluster ID.
      2
      A default node label.
  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml
  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api

    Example output

    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
    agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.

2.5. Creating a machine set on RHV

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on Red Hat Virtualization (RHV). For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Important

This process is not applicable for clusters with manually provisioned machines. You can use the advanced machine management and scaling capabilities only in clusters where the Machine API is operational.

2.5.1. Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines
A fundamental unit that describes the host for a node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.
Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

Warning

Control plane machines cannot be managed by machine sets.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler
The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.
Cluster autoscaler
This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.
Machine health check
The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

2.5.2. Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on RHV

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs on RHV and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<node_role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructure_id> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 1
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 2
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 3
  name: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 4
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: <number_of_replicas> 5
  selector: 6
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 7
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 8
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 9
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 10
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 11
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 12
    spec:
      metadata:
        labels:
          node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "" 13
      providerSpec:
        value:
          apiVersion: ovirtproviderconfig.machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
          cluster_id: <ovirt_cluster_id> 14
          template_name: <ovirt_template_name> 15
          instance_type_id: <instance_type_id> 16
          cpu: 17
            sockets: <number_of_sockets> 18
            cores: <number_of_cores> 19
            threads: <number_of_threads> 20
          memory_mb: <memory_size> 21
          os_disk: 22
            size_gb: <disk_size> 23
          network_interfaces: 24
            vnic_profile_id:  <vnic_profile_id> 25
          credentialsSecret:
            name: ovirt-credentials 26
          kind: OvirtMachineProviderSpec
          type: <workload_type> 27
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data
1 7 9
Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI (oc) installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command:
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster
2 3 10 11 13
Specify the node label to add.
4 8 12
Specify the infrastructure ID and node label. These two strings together cannot be longer than 35 characters.
5
Specify the number of machines to create.
6
Selector for the machines.
14
Specify the UUID for the RHV cluster to which this VM instance belongs.
15
Specify the RHV VM template to use to create the machine.
16
Optional: Specify the VM instance type.
Warning

The instance_type_id field is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

If you include this parameter, you do not need to specify the hardware parameters of the VM including CPU and memory because this parameter overrides all hardware parameters.

17
Optional: The CPU field contains the CPU’s configuration, including sockets, cores, and threads.
18
Optional: Specify the number of sockets for a VM.
19
Optional: Specify the number of cores per socket.
20
Optional: Specify the number of threads per core.
21
Optional: Specify the size of a VM’s memory in MiB.
22
Optional: Root disk of the node.
23
Optional: Specify the size of the bootable disk in GiB.
24
Optional: List of the network interfaces of the VM. If you include this parameter, OpenShift Container Platform discards all network interfaces from the template and creates new ones.
25
Optional: Specify the vNIC profile ID.
26
Specify the name of the secret that holds the RHV credentials.
27
Optional: Specify the workload type for which the instance is optimized. This value affects the RHV VM parameter. Supported values: desktop, server (default), high_performance. high_performance improves performance on the VM, but there are limitations. For example, you cannot access the VM with a graphical console. For more information see Configuring High Performance Virtual Machines, Templates, and Pools in the Virtual Machine Management Guide.
Note

Because RHV uses a template when creating a VM, if you do not specify a value for an optional parameter, RHV uses the value for that parameter that is specified in the template.

2.5.3. Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster:

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api

      Example output

      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
           openshift-machine-api -o yaml

      Example output

      ...
      template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk 1
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker 2
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a

      1
      The cluster ID.
      2
      A default node label.
  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml
  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api

    Example output

    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
    agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.

2.6. Creating a machine set on vSphere

You can create a different machine set to serve a specific purpose in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster on VMware vSphere. For example, you might create infrastructure machine sets and related machines so that you can move supporting workloads to the new machines.

Important

This process is not applicable for clusters with manually provisioned machines. You can use the advanced machine management and scaling capabilities only in clusters where the Machine API is operational.

2.6.1. Machine API overview

The Machine API is a combination of primary resources that are based on the upstream Cluster API project and custom OpenShift Container Platform resources.

For OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 clusters, the Machine API performs all node host provisioning management actions after the cluster installation finishes. Because of this system, OpenShift Container Platform 4.7 offers an elastic, dynamic provisioning method on top of public or private cloud infrastructure.

The two primary resources are:

Machines
A fundamental unit that describes the host for a node. A machine has a providerSpec specification, which describes the types of compute nodes that are offered for different cloud platforms. For example, a machine type for a worker node on Amazon Web Services (AWS) might define a specific machine type and required metadata.
Machine sets

MachineSet resources are groups of machines. Machine sets are to machines as replica sets are to pods. If you need more machines or must scale them down, you change the replicas field on the machine set to meet your compute need.

Warning

Control plane machines cannot be managed by machine sets.

The following custom resources add more capabilities to your cluster:

Machine autoscaler
The MachineAutoscaler resource automatically scales machines in a cloud. You can set the minimum and maximum scaling boundaries for nodes in a specified machine set, and the machine autoscaler maintains that range of nodes. The MachineAutoscaler object takes effect after a ClusterAutoscaler object exists. Both ClusterAutoscaler and MachineAutoscaler resources are made available by the ClusterAutoscalerOperator object.
Cluster autoscaler
This resource is based on the upstream cluster autoscaler project. In the OpenShift Container Platform implementation, it is integrated with the Machine API by extending the machine set API. You can set cluster-wide scaling limits for resources such as cores, nodes, memory, GPU, and so on. You can set the priority so that the cluster prioritizes pods so that new nodes are not brought online for less important pods. You can also set the scaling policy so that you can scale up nodes but not scale them down.
Machine health check
The MachineHealthCheck resource detects when a machine is unhealthy, deletes it, and, on supported platforms, makes a new machine.

In OpenShift Container Platform version 3.11, you could not roll out a multi-zone architecture easily because the cluster did not manage machine provisioning. Beginning with OpenShift Container Platform version 4.1, this process is easier. Each machine set is scoped to a single zone, so the installation program sends out machine sets across availability zones on your behalf. And then because your compute is dynamic, and in the face of a zone failure, you always have a zone for when you must rebalance your machines. The autoscaler provides best-effort balancing over the life of a cluster.

2.6.2. Sample YAML for a machine set custom resource on vSphere

This sample YAML defines a machine set that runs on VMware vSphere and creates nodes that are labeled with node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "".

In this sample, <infrastructure_id> is the infrastructure ID label that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster, and <role> is the node label to add.

apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
kind: MachineSet
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  labels:
    machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 1
  name: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 2
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 3
      machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 4
  template:
    metadata:
      creationTimestamp: null
      labels:
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: <infrastructure_id> 5
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: <role> 6
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: <role> 7
        machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: <infrastructure_id>-<role> 8
    spec:
      metadata:
        creationTimestamp: null
        labels:
          node-role.kubernetes.io/<role>: "" 9
      providerSpec:
        value:
          apiVersion: vsphereprovider.openshift.io/v1beta1
          credentialsSecret:
            name: vsphere-cloud-credentials
          diskGiB: 120
          kind: VSphereMachineProviderSpec
          memoryMiB: 8192
          metadata:
            creationTimestamp: null
          network:
            devices:
            - networkName: "<vm_network_name>" 10
          numCPUs: 4
          numCoresPerSocket: 1
          snapshot: ""
          template: <vm_template_name> 11
          userDataSecret:
            name: worker-user-data
          workspace:
            datacenter: <vcenter_datacenter_name> 12
            datastore: <vcenter_datastore_name> 13
            folder: <vcenter_vm_folder_path> 14
            resourcepool: <vsphere_resource_pool> 15
            server: <vcenter_server_ip> 16
1 3 5
Specify the infrastructure ID that is based on the cluster ID that you set when you provisioned the cluster. If you have the OpenShift CLI (oc) installed, you can obtain the infrastructure ID by running the following command:
$ oc get -o jsonpath='{.status.infrastructureName}{"\n"}' infrastructure cluster
2 4 8
Specify the infrastructure ID and node label.
6 7 9
Specify the node label to add.
10
Specify the vSphere VM network to deploy the machine set to. This VM network must be where other compute machines reside in the cluster.
11
Specify the vSphere VM clone of the template to use, such as user-5ddjd-rhcos.
Important

Do not specify the original VM template. The VM template must remain off and must be cloned for new RHCOS machines. Starting the VM template configures the VM template as a VM on the platform, which prevents it from being used as a template that machine sets can apply configurations to.

12
Specify the vCenter Datacenter to deploy the machine set on.
13
Specify the vCenter Datastore to deploy the machine set on.
14
Specify the path to the vSphere VM folder in vCenter, such as /dc1/vm/user-inst-5ddjd.
15
Specify the vSphere resource pool for your VMs.
16
Specify the vCenter server IP or fully qualified domain name.

2.6.3. Creating a machine set

In addition to the ones created by the installation program, you can create your own machine sets to dynamically manage the machine compute resources for specific workloads of your choice.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy an OpenShift Container Platform cluster.
  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).
  • Log in to oc as a user with cluster-admin permission.
  • Create a tag inside your vCenter instance based on the cluster API name. This tag is utilized by the machine set to associate the OpenShift Container Platform nodes to the provisioned virtual machines (VM). For directions on creating tags in vCenter, see the VMware documentation for vSphere Tags and Attributes.
  • Have the necessary permissions to deploy VMs in your vCenter instance and have the required access to the datastore specified.

Procedure

  1. Create a new YAML file that contains the machine set custom resource (CR) sample and is named <file_name>.yaml.

    Ensure that you set the <clusterID> and <role> parameter values.

    1. If you are not sure which value to set for a specific field, you can check an existing machine set from your cluster:

      $ oc get machinesets -n openshift-machine-api

      Example output

      NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
      agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    2. Check values of a specific machine set:

      $ oc get machineset <machineset_name> -n \
           openshift-machine-api -o yaml

      Example output

      ...
      template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-cluster: agl030519-vplxk 1
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-role: worker 2
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machine-type: worker
              machine.openshift.io/cluster-api-machineset: agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a

      1
      The cluster ID.
      2
      A default node label.
  2. Create the new MachineSet CR:

    $ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml
  3. View the list of machine sets:

    $ oc get machineset -n openshift-machine-api

    Example output

    NAME                                DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AVAILABLE   AGE
    agl030519-vplxk-infra-us-east-1a    1         1         1       1           11m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1a   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1b   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1c   1         1         1       1           55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1d   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1e   0         0                             55m
    agl030519-vplxk-worker-us-east-1f   0         0                             55m

    When the new machine set is available, the DESIRED and CURRENT values match. If the machine set is not available, wait a few minutes and run the command again.