Chapter 5. Disaster recovery

Procedure

1. Select a control plane host to use as the recovery host. This is the host that you will run the restore operation on.

2. Establish SSH connectivity to each of the control plane nodes, including the recovery host.

   The Kubernetes API server becomes inaccessible after the restore process starts, so you cannot access the control plane nodes. For this reason, it is recommended to establish SSH connectivity to each control plane host in a separate terminal.

   Important

   If you do not complete this step, you will not be able to access the master hosts to complete the restore procedure, and you will be unable to recover your cluster from this state.

3. Copy the etcd backup directory to the recovery control plane host.

   This procedure assumes that you copied the backup directory containing the etcd snapshot and the resources for the static pods to the /home/core/ directory of your recovery control plane host.

4. Stop the static pods on all other control plane nodes.

   Note

   It is not required to manually stop the pods on the recovery host. The recovery script will stop the pods on the recovery host.

   1. Access a control plane host that is not the recovery host.

   2. Move the existing etcd pod file out of the kubelet manifest directory:

      [core@ip-10-0-154-194 ~]$ sudo mv /etc/kubernetes/manifests/etcd-pod.yaml /tmp

   3. Verify that the etcd pods are stopped.

      [core@ip-10-0-154-194 ~]$ sudo crictl ps | grep etcd | grep -v operator

      The output of this command should be empty. If it is not empty, wait a few minutes and check again.

   4. Move the existing Kubernetes API server pod file out of the kubelet manifest directory:

      [core@ip-10-0-154-194 ~]$ sudo mv /etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-apiserver-pod.yaml /tmp

   5. Verify that the Kubernetes API server pods are stopped.

      [core@ip-10-0-154-194 ~]$ sudo crictl ps | grep kube-apiserver | grep -v operator

      The output of this command should be empty. If it is not empty, wait a few minutes and check again.

   6. Move the etcd data directory to a different location:

      [core@ip-10-0-154-194 ~]$ sudo mv /var/lib/etcd/ /tmp

   7. Repeat this step on each of the other master hosts that is not the recovery host.
5. Access the recovery control plane host.

6. If the cluster-wide proxy is enabled, be sure that you have exported the NO_PROXY, HTTP_PROXY, and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables.

   Tip

   You can check whether the proxy is enabled by reviewing the output of oc get proxy cluster -o yaml. The proxy is enabled if the httpProxy, httpsProxy, and noProxy fields have values set.

7. Run the restore script on the recovery control plane host and pass in the path to the etcd backup directory:

   [core@ip-10-0-143-125 ~]$ sudo -E /usr/local/bin/cluster-restore.sh /home/core/backup

   Example script output

   ...stopping kube-scheduler-pod.yaml
   ...stopping kube-controller-manager-pod.yaml
   ...stopping etcd-pod.yaml
   ...stopping kube-apiserver-pod.yaml
   Waiting for container etcd to stop
   .complete
   Waiting for container etcdctl to stop
   .............................complete
   Waiting for container etcd-metrics to stop
   complete
   Waiting for container kube-controller-manager to stop
   complete
   Waiting for container kube-apiserver to stop
   ..........................................................................................complete
   Waiting for container kube-scheduler to stop
   complete
   Moving etcd data-dir /var/lib/etcd/member to /var/lib/etcd-backup
   starting restore-etcd static pod
   starting kube-apiserver-pod.yaml
   static-pod-resources/kube-apiserver-pod-7/kube-apiserver-pod.yaml
   starting kube-controller-manager-pod.yaml
   static-pod-resources/kube-controller-manager-pod-7/kube-controller-manager-pod.yaml
   starting kube-scheduler-pod.yaml
   static-pod-resources/kube-scheduler-pod-8/kube-scheduler-pod.yaml

8. Restart the kubelet service on all master hosts.

   1. From the recovery host, run the following command:

      [core@ip-10-0-143-125 ~]$ sudo systemctl restart kubelet.service

   2. Repeat this step on all other master hosts.

9. Verify that the single member control plane has started successfully.

   1. From the recovery host, verify that the etcd container is running.

      [core@ip-10-0-143-125 ~]$ sudo crictl ps | grep etcd | grep -v operator

      Example output

      3ad41b7908e32       36f86e2eeaaffe662df0d21041eb22b8198e0e58abeeae8c743c3e6e977e8009                                                         About a minute ago   Running             etcd                                          0                   7c05f8af362f0

   2. From the recovery host, verify that the etcd pod is running.

      [core@ip-10-0-143-125 ~]$ oc get pods -n openshift-etcd | grep etcd

      Note

      If you attempt to run oc login prior to running this command and receive the following error, wait a few moments for the authentication controllers to start and try again.

      Unable to connect to the server: EOF

      Example output

      NAME                                             READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
      etcd-ip-10-0-143-125.ec2.internal                1/1     Running     1          2m47s

      If the status is Pending, or the output lists more than one running etcd pod, wait a few minutes and check again.

10. Force etcd redeployment.

    In a terminal that has access to the cluster as a cluster-admin user, run the following command:

    $ oc patch etcd cluster -p='{"spec": {"forceRedeploymentReason": "recovery-'"$( date --rfc-3339=ns )"'"}}' --type=merge 1

    1

    The forceRedeploymentReason value must be unique, which is why a timestamp is appended.

    When the etcd cluster Operator performs a redeployment, the existing nodes are started with new pods similar to the initial bootstrap scale up.

11. Verify all nodes are updated to the latest revision.

    In a terminal that has access to the cluster as a cluster-admin user, run the following command:

    $ oc get etcd -o=jsonpath='{range .items[0].status.conditions[?(@.type=="NodeInstallerProgressing")]}{.reason}{"\n"}{.message}{"\n"}'

    Review the NodeInstallerProgressing status condition for etcd to verify that all nodes are at the latest revision. The output shows AllNodesAtLatestRevision upon successful update:

    AllNodesAtLatestRevision
    3 nodes are at revision 7 1

    1

    In this example, the latest revision number is 7.

    If the output includes multiple revision numbers, such as 2 nodes are at revision 6; 1 nodes are at revision 7, this means that the update is still in progress. Wait a few minutes and try again.

12. After etcd is redeployed, force new rollouts for the control plane. The Kubernetes API server will reinstall itself on the other nodes because the kubelet is connected to API servers using an internal load balancer.

    In a terminal that has access to the cluster as a cluster-admin user, run the following commands.

    1. Update the kubeapiserver:

       $ oc patch kubeapiserver cluster -p='{"spec": {"forceRedeploymentReason": "recovery-'"$( date --rfc-3339=ns )"'"}}' --type=merge

       Verify all nodes are updated to the latest revision.

       $ oc get kubeapiserver -o=jsonpath='{range .items[0].status.conditions[?(@.type=="NodeInstallerProgressing")]}{.reason}{"\n"}{.message}{"\n"}'

       Review the NodeInstallerProgressing status condition to verify that all nodes are at the latest revision. The output shows AllNodesAtLatestRevision upon successful update:

       AllNodesAtLatestRevision
       3 nodes are at revision 7 1

       1

       In this example, the latest revision number is 7.

       If the output includes multiple revision numbers, such as 2 nodes are at revision 6; 1 nodes are at revision 7, this means that the update is still in progress. Wait a few minutes and try again.

    2. Update the kubecontrollermanager:

       $ oc patch kubecontrollermanager cluster -p='{"spec": {"forceRedeploymentReason": "recovery-'"$( date --rfc-3339=ns )"'"}}' --type=merge

       Verify all nodes are updated to the latest revision.

       $ oc get kubecontrollermanager -o=jsonpath='{range .items[0].status.conditions[?(@.type=="NodeInstallerProgressing")]}{.reason}{"\n"}{.message}{"\n"}'

       Review the NodeInstallerProgressing status condition to verify that all nodes are at the latest revision. The output shows AllNodesAtLatestRevision upon successful update:

       AllNodesAtLatestRevision
       3 nodes are at revision 7 1

       1

       In this example, the latest revision number is 7.

       If the output includes multiple revision numbers, such as 2 nodes are at revision 6; 1 nodes are at revision 7, this means that the update is still in progress. Wait a few minutes and try again.

    3. Update the kubescheduler:

       $ oc patch kubescheduler cluster -p='{"spec": {"forceRedeploymentReason": "recovery-'"$( date --rfc-3339=ns )"'"}}' --type=merge

       Verify all nodes are updated to the latest revision.

       $ oc get kubescheduler -o=jsonpath='{range .items[0].status.conditions[?(@.type=="NodeInstallerProgressing")]}{.reason}{"\n"}{.message}{"\n"}'

       Review the NodeInstallerProgressing status condition to verify that all nodes are at the latest revision. The output shows AllNodesAtLatestRevision upon successful update:

       AllNodesAtLatestRevision
       3 nodes are at revision 7 1

       1

       In this example, the latest revision number is 7.

       If the output includes multiple revision numbers, such as 2 nodes are at revision 6; 1 nodes are at revision 7, this means that the update is still in progress. Wait a few minutes and try again.

13. Verify that all master hosts have started and joined the cluster.

    In a terminal that has access to the cluster as a cluster-admin user, run the following command:

    $ oc get pods -n openshift-etcd | grep etcd

    Example output

    etcd-ip-10-0-143-125.ec2.internal                2/2     Running     0          9h
    etcd-ip-10-0-154-194.ec2.internal                2/2     Running     0          9h
    etcd-ip-10-0-173-171.ec2.internal                2/2     Running     0          9h

Procedure

1. Get the list of current CSRs:

   $ oc get csr

2. Review the details of a CSR to verify that it is valid:

   $ oc describe csr <csr_name> 1

   1

   <csr_name> is the name of a CSR from the list of current CSRs.

3. Approve each valid node-bootstrapper CSR:

   $ oc adm certificate approve <csr_name>