OpenShift

How to Install and configure vSphere CSI Driver on OpenShift 4.x

Kubernetes, VMware, ,

Introduction

In this post I am going to install the vSphere CSI Driver version 2.0 with OpenShift 4.x, in my demo environment I’m connecting to a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC and vCenter, however the steps are the same for an on-prem deployment.

I have updated the available configuration files available from Red Hat for installing the CSI Driver in OpenShift, to make them compatible with the latest CSI Driver. You can find these in my GitHub repo;

- Pre-Reqs
- - vCenter Server Role
- - Download the deployment files
- - Create the vSphere CSI secret in OpenShift
- - Create Roles, ServiceAccount and ClusterRoleBinding for vSphere CSI Driver
- Installation
- - Install vSphere CSI driver
- - Verify Deployment
- Create a persistent volume claim
- Using Labels
- Troubleshooting

In your environment, cluster VMs will need “disk.enableUUID” and VM hardware version 15 or higher.

Pre-Reqs
vCenter Server Role

In my environment I will use the default administrator account, however in production environments I recommend you follow a strict RBAC procedure and configure the necessary roles and use a dedicated account for the CSI driver to connect to your vCenter.

To make life easier I have created a PowerCLI script to create the necessary roles in vCenter based on the vSphere CSI documentation;

Download the deployment files

Run the following;

git clone https://github.com/saintdle/vSphere-CSI-Driver-2.0-OpenShift-4.git

Create the vSphere CSI Secret in OpenShift

Edit the file “csi-vsphere-for-OCP.conf” with your vCenter infrastructure details;

[Global]
 
# run the following on your OCP cluster to get the ID
# oc get clusterversion -o jsonpath='{.items[].spec.clusterID}{"\n"}'
cluster-id = "OCP_CLUSTER_ID"

[VirtualCenter "VC_FQDN"]
insecure-flag = "true"
user = "USER"
password = "PASSWORD"
port = "443"
datacenters = "VC_DATACENTER"

Create the secret;

oc create secret generic vsphere-config-secret --from-file=csi-vsphere-for-OCP.conf --namespace=kube-system

oc get secret vsphere-config-secret --namespace=kube-system

This configuration is for block volumes, it is also supported to configure access to VSAN File volumes, and you can see an example of the configuration here;

Remove your “csi-vsphere-for-OCP.conf” once the secret is created, as it contains your password in clear text for vCenter.

Create Roles, ServiceAccount and ClusterRoleBinding for vSphere CSI Driver

Continue reading How to Install and configure vSphere CSI Driver on OpenShift 4.x →

OpenShift

How to deploy OpenShift 4.3 on VMware vSphere with Static IP addresses using Terraform

Kubernetes, VMware, , , ,
Install OpenShift 4.x on vSphere 6.x/7.x

The following procedure is intended to create VM’s from an OVA template booting with static IP’s when the DHCP server can not reserve the IP addresses.

The Problem

OCP requires that all DNS configurations be in place. VMware requires that the DHCP assign the correct IPs to the VM. Since many real installations require the coordination with different teams in an organization, many times we don’t have control of DNS, DHCP or Load balancer configurations.

The CoreOS documentation explain how to create configurations using ignition files. I created a python script to put the network configuration using the ignition files created by the openshift-install program.

Reference Architecture

For this guide, we are going to deploy 3 master nodes (control-plane) and 2 worker nodes (compute This guide uses RHEL CoreOS 4.3 as the virtual machine image, deploying Red Hat OCP 4.3, as per the support of N-1 from Red Hat.

We will use a centralised Linux server (Ubuntu) that will perform the following functions;

  • Load Balancer – HAProxy
  • Web Server – Apache2
  • Terraform automation host – version 0.11.14
    • The deployment will be semi-automated using Terraform, so that we can easily build configuration files used by the CoreOS VM’s that have Static IP settings.
    • Using a later version of Terraform will cause failures.
  • Client Tools for OpenShift deployment
    • OC
    • Kubectl
    • Openshift-install

DNS will be provided by a Windows Server.

The installation will use a Bootstrap server to bring the cluster online, which will be removed at the end of the build process.

Deployment Steps

In this guide we will deploy our environment in the following order;

  • Configure DNS
  • Import Red Hat Core OS image into vCenter
  • Deploy Ubuntu Host
    • Configure Apache
    • Configure HAProxy
    • Install Client-Tools
    • Install Terraform
  • Build OpenShift Cluster configuration
  • Configuring the Terraform deployment
  • Running the Terraform deployment
DNS

Openshift uses a “clusterName.BaseDomain” format.

For example; I want to call my Openshift cluster Demo. And my DNS Domain is Simon.local, then my full format used by Openshift is “demo.simon.local”

Below is a table plan of the IP addresses you will use to build the environment.

The last three addresses are cluster level resources that are available on each control-plane node, accessible via the load balancer.

To configure the DNS records in Windows, you can use the Script and CSV file here

In the below screenshot, the script has created the “demo” domain folder and entered my records. It is important that you have PTR records setup for everything apart from the “etcd-X” records.

Import Red Hat CoreOS Image into vCenter

Continue reading How to deploy OpenShift 4.3 on VMware vSphere with Static IP addresses using Terraform →

Veeam Backup For Azure – Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication

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In this blog post we will cover the following topics;

- Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication
- Viewing your protected data
- What can you do with your data?
- - Backup Copy to another repository
- - File Level Recovery
- - Veeam Explorer - Application Item restore
- - Instant Virtual Machine recovery to vSphere and Hyper-v
- - Restore to Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure

The follow up blog posts are;

- Getting started with Veeam Backup for Azure
- - Configuring the backup infrastructure
- - Monitoring
- - Protecting your installation
- - System and session logs
- Configuring a backup policy
- - Viewing and Running a Backup Policy 
- - Looking at Session logs
- Restoring a Backup 
- - Viewing protected data 
- - File Level Recovery 
- - Virtual Machine Disk Restore 
- - Full VM Restore

If you have an Veeam Backup and Replication install up and running, either on-premise to protect VMware or Hyper-V workloads, or even running in a Public cloud to provide resiliency to your infrastructure, then it’s simple enough to integrate that deployment with the data protected by Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.

By linking your Veeam Backup for Azure repository (Azure Storage Account) to your Veeam Backup and Replication environment, you then get access to a whole host of options.

  • File level recovery via Veeam Backup and Replication console
  • Instant VM recovery to vSphere/Hyper-V
  • Restore VM to Amazon EC2
  • Restore VM to Microsoft Azure
  • Perform a Backup Copy to another location such as a Cloud Connect Partner.
Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication

Open your Veeam Backup and Replication console > Go to the “Backup Infrastructure” tab, and right click on External Repositories > Click “Add external repositories”, this will open up the wizard.

Select “Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure”

Continue reading Veeam Backup For Azure – Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication →

Veeam Backup for Azure – Configuring your first Backup Policy

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In this blog post we will cover the following topics

- How a backup policy works
- Creating a Backup Policy
- Viewing and Running a Backup Policy
- - Looking at Session logs
- Summary and next steps

The follow up blog posts are;

- Getting started with Veeam Backup for Azure
- - Configuring the backup infrastructure
- - Monitoring
- - Protecting your installation
- - System and session logs
- Restoring a backup
- - Viewing protected data 
- - File Level Recovery 
- - Virtual Machine Disk Restore 
- - Full VM Restore
- Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication
- - Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication
- - Viewing your protected data
- - What can you do with your data?
- - - Restore/Recover/Protect
How a backup policy works

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, allows you to create the following types of snapshots and backups:

  • Snapshots; managed & unmanaged VHDs of Microsoft Azure VMs, which includes the configuration of a VM.
  • Backups of managed & unmanaged VHDs of Microsoft Azure VMs, which includes the configuration of a VM.

When you run a backup policy (A.k.a Backup Job), the Veeam services will perform the following tasks;

  1. Retrieve the configuration of your Microsoft Azure VMs, that are selected in the policy.
  2. Create either a backup or snapshot for the Microsoft Azure VMs, depending on the policy configuration
    • Backups – Both managed/unmanaged VHDs are saved to the configured Backup Repository.
    • Snapshots
      • Managed VHDs – snapshot saved to resource group of source VM,
      • Unmanaged VHDs – snapshots saved to Azure Storage Account of source VHD

For both backups and snapshots, the VM configuration is saved to the Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure configuration database.

The backup services running on the workers, encrypt & compresses data that you back up to backup repositories.

(Image Source)

Creating a Backup Policy

If you are in configuration mode, you can select the “exit configuration” in the top left of the UI.

Under Management, Select Policies > Add

  • Set your Policy name and description

  • Select your Azure Active Directories where your workloads are located

Continue reading Veeam Backup for Azure – Configuring your first Backup Policy →

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure – Restoring a Backup

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In this blog post we will cover the following topics

- Restoring a Backup
- - Viewing protected data
- - File Level Recovery
- - - File Level Recovery Session Log
- - Virtual Machine Disk Restore
- - Full VM Restore

The follow up blog posts are;

- Getting started with Veeam Backup for Azure
- - Configuring the backup infrastructure
- - Monitoring
- - Protecting your installation
- - System and session logs
- Configuring a backup policy
- - How a backup policy works 
- - Creating a Backup Policy 
- - Viewing and Running a Backup Policy
- Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication
- - Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication
- - Viewing your protected data
- - What can you do with your data?
- - - Restore/Recover/Protect
Viewing Protected Data

Once you have a successful backup policy run, you will find that by navigating to “Protected Data” in the left-hand navigation pane, you will find details of your protected workloads and the backups stored.

Highlighted in the purple box above, we are able to click on each of our protected virtual machines and see the details of the restore points held.

The available restore options are;

  • VM Restore
    • Restore a full virtual machine to the same or a different location. This restore uses both the VM configuration and VHD backups.
  • Disk Restore
    • Restore only a virtual machines hard drive to the same or a different location, these will not be attached to any virtual machines when the restore is complete.
  • File-Level Recovery
    • Restore of files and folders from protected instances, which are available to download to your local machine.

Below, we can see the available restore points for my “Ubuntu01” virtual machine. As the backup policy has only run once, I have a single snapshot held with the VM itself, and a single backup of the full virtual machine (VHDS and VM configuration, which are located in my configured Repository.

  • Backups – Both managed/unmanaged VHDs are saved to the configured Backup Repository.
  • Snapshots
    • Managed VHDs – snapshot saved to resource group of source VM,
    • Unmanaged VHDs – snapshots saved to Azure Storage Account of source VHD

From this view, we can select to restore the Full VM, the individual VHDs, under the Restore option, or we can perform a file-level Recovery under the second self-named option.

File Level Recovery

You can enter a file level recovery as per the above screenshot, or from the main screen by highlighting your protected VMs and clicking file level recovery.

By clicking “Change Restore Point” you will of course see the various points in time available.

Continue reading Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure – Restoring a Backup →