Overview
IBM Cloud Pak System can reduce effort and make it easier to manage your OCP cluster post deployment. It comes with support for automated capability to add worker nodes to cluster and restart cluster. This tutorial focuses on the management of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.4.
This tutorial walks you through the steps to manage Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.4.0 Cluster instance on IBM Cloud Pak System V2.3.3.0
Introduction
IBM Cloud Pak System reduces effort and makes it easier to manage your OpenShift Container Platform cluster post deployment. It comes with a support for automated capability to add or delete worker nodes to a cluster and restart a cluster.
This tutorial focuses on the management of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.4. For details on the deployment of OpenShift Container Platform cluster in IBM Cloud Pak System, see the IBM Developer article Deploying RedHat OpenShift Container Platform 4.4 on IBM Cloud Pak System.
Step-by-step
- View nodes and pods summary of OpenShift Container Platform cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
You can see a summary of cluster nodes, pods, PVCs, and resource utilization in the Managed environment >Your cluster page of IBM Cloud Pak System console as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
- Nodes details for OpenShift Container Platform cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
You can see a complete virtual machine list for the OpenShift Container Platform cluster in the Managed environment>Your cluster page > Nodes tab of IBM Cloud Pak System console as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
- Performing actions on your cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
IBM Cloud Pak system simplifies OpenShift Container Platform cluster management on IBM Cloud Pak System by providing one click operations for life cycle operations. These operations are available in the Actions menu of Managed environment > Your cluster page as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
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- Stopping and Starting your cluster important on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
To stop the cluster, click Stop cluster in the Actions menu as shown in Figure 3. A message box appears prompting you for confirmation as shown in Figure 4. Type STOP to confirm.
Figure 4
Cluster gets stopped in few minutes and the status gets updated accordingly on the console as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5
Similarly, you can also start a cluster by using the Start cluster option in the Actions menu as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6
It takes few minutes for the virtual machines to come up and services to restart. Confirm whether the cluster is started as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7
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- Bringing your cluster under maintenance on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
If you want to perform any maintenance operations on the cluster, click the Maintenance mode in the Actions menu to bring the cluster under maintenance mode. See Figure 3 for reference.
If you want to stop/start virtual machine from the console individually, follow the mentioned step to first bring the cluster under maintenance mode. After the maintenance tasks are completed, cluster can be brought back to running state by turning off Maintenance mode in the Actions menu.
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- Marking your cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
IBM Cloud Pak System allows you to tag your clusters as important. Use the Mark cluster switch in the Actions menu to mark or unmark a cluster. Marking prevents the cluster to be accidently deleted or stopped.
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- Deleting your cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
To delete a cluster, click Delete cluster in the Actions menu as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8
A message box appears prompting you for confirmation as shown in Figure 9. Type DELETE to confirm.
Figure 9
Cluster gets deleted in few minutes and all resources get added back to the available resource pools of the cloud group.
- Scale up worker nodes after deployment for your cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
While a sizing is performed before cluster deployment, there might be a need to add more workers to support additional workloads post cluster deployment. IBM Cloud Pak System has a simplified process of adding more workers to OpenShift Container Platform cluster post deployment with just one click.
Before you add worker nodes to your cluster, review the available resources in your system to ensure that enough vCPUs, RAM, IPs, and disk storage are available in the cloud group. Each worker that gets added to the cluster will have the same hardware configuration as the worker node that got configured during deployment time.
Note: Scaling worker node by using the IBM Cloud Pak System scaling policy is not supported for “OpenShift Container Platform with OpenShift Container Storage” accelerator and “Cloud Pak for Integration with OpenShift Container Storage” accelerator.
To add worker nodes to cluster, navigate to Managed environment->Your cluster page. Go to Nodes tab and click Edit workers as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10
Provide the number of worker nodes you want to add to the cluster as shown in Figure 11 and click Submit.
Figure 11
A successful operation submission message appears on top of the page as shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12
After few minutes, a new worker node is added to cluster. To confirm, go to Managed environment->Your cluster page and see the history section.
- Scale down worker nodes after deployment for your cluster on IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0
Worker nodes can also be removed from OpenShift Container Platform cluster after deployment. IBM Cloud Pak System has a simplified process of removing worker nodes from OpenShift Container Platform cluster post deployment with just one click.
Note: A random worker may be removed without any control on the selection of node to be deleted.
To remove worker nodes from cluster, navigate to Managed environment->Your cluster page. Go to Nodes tab and click Edit workers. Select Remove node button and specify the number of workers you may want to remove. Click submit as shown in Figure 13.
Figure 13
After few minutes, worker node(s) is removed from the cluster. To confirm, go to Managed environment->Your cluster page and see the history section and Nodes section.
NOTE: You can only scale down worker nodes. Control plane nodes scaling up/down is not allowed and recommended by Red Hat.
Conclusion
IBM Cloud Pak System 2.3.3.0 enables you to quickly roll out one or more Red Hat OpenShift 4.4 clusters. It not only simplifies the roll out and management of OpenShift Container Platform cluster processes, but also provides one click day 2 operations for your cluster.
I would like to thank Shyamala Rajagopalan for helping in creating this article.