RHEL for Edge (RFE) introduces a new model for building and deploying RHEL. This repository contains necessary documentation and automation to support a GitOps approach to building and delivering RFE content at scale.
Our design will focus on the following topics:
- Deployment of Image Builder(s)
- Management of Blueprint Definitions
- Building RFE Images
- Managing/Hosting RFE Artifacts
- Kickstarts
- RFE OSTree Content
- CI/CD Tooling/Process
- End to End Installation/Update of RFE Deployments
- Managing RFE Deployments at Scale
- Aggregating Logging/Metrics Collection
- Deploying Containerized Workloads
The overall architecture is still being defined. We have split out "Above Site" components (things like RFE build orchestration and CI/CD tooling) and "Below Site" (the actual RFE deployments). All Above Site components will be hosted on OpenShift.
OpenShift is used to host all of the above site components. These components include:
- Helm/Argo CD for GitOps based deployment and configuration
- OpenShift Virtualization for RHEL Image Builder
- Ability to deploy multiple Image Builder VMs to support parallel pipelines (composes)
- OpenShift Pipelines driving Ansible playbooks
- Nexus for artifact storage
- OpenShift Data Foundation (NooBaa only) for general object storage
- Red Hat Quay to host RFE OSTree content
Helm and Argo CD are used to deploy and manage project components. Helm is used to dynamically generate an app of apps pattern in Argo CD, which in turn will pull in all the necessary Helm charts to deploy the specific components needed in the target environment.
Before beginning, make sure you have the latest versions of oc
/kubectl
, git
, tkn
and helm
clients installed. You will also need to generate an SSH key pair for the Image Builder VMs (example using ssh-keygen
documented below).
First clone the repository by running the following command:
git clone https://github.com/redhat-cop/rhel-edge-automation-arch.git
Several secrets are created during the deployment. We will need to provide values for those as part of the bootstrap process. A table of the specific components are laid out below:
Component | Description |
---|---|
SSH Key | Use to support key based authentication to the Image Builder VM |
Red Hat Portal Username | Username to subscribe Image Builder VM |
Red Hat Portal Password | Password to subscribe Image Builder VM |
Pool ID | Red Hat Subscription Manager Pool ID use to map the appropriate subscription to the Image Builder VM |
Red Hat Portal Offline Token | Token used to access the Red Hat API and download RHEL images |
To generate the SSH keypair, run the following command:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C cloud-user@image-builder -f ~/.ssh/image-builder
From the root of the repository, create symlinks to the key pair you just created:
ln -s ~/.ssh/image-builder charts/bootstrap/files/ssh/image-builder-ssh-private-key
ln -s ~/.ssh/image-builder.pub charts/bootstrap/files/ssh/image-builder-ssh-public-key
The rest of the values will be defined in a Helm values file. In the root of the repository, make the following directory:
mkdir -p examples/values/local
Copy the example rhsm.yaml
values file from examples/values/deployment
to examples/values/local
as shown:
cp examples/values/deployment/rhsm.yaml examples/values/local/rhsm.yaml
Edit examples/values/local/rhsm.yaml
and change the values of offlineToken
, poolId
, username
, and password
to match the details for your account. If you are not sure how to generate an offline token for the Red Hat API, it is documented here.
After editing, values in rhsm.portal
should look similar to the following:
rhsm:
...
portal:
secretName: redhat-portal-credentials
offlineToken: "Opij2qw3eCf890ujjwec8j..."
password: "changeme"
poolId: "ssa77eke7ahs0123djsdf92340p9okjd"
username: "alice"
...
Once the SSH keypair and values file are in place, we can begin to deploy. Run the following script to install the OpenShift GitOps Operator and Argo CD.
./setup/init.sh
To deploy a reference environment in an empty OpenShift cluster, run the following command:
helm upgrade -i -n rfe-gitops bootstrap charts/bootstrap/ -f examples/values/deployment/application-manager.yaml -f examples/values/local/rhsm.yaml
The default installation will deploy and configure all of the managed components on the cluster. An HTPasswd identity provider is configured for 5 users (user{1-5}
) with openshift
as the password.
You can track the progress of the deployment on the Argo CD dashboard. To get the URL run the following command:
oc get route argocd-server -n rfe-gitops -ojsonpath='https://{.spec.host}'
The parent application is rfe-automation
. To verify everything is deployed, rfe-automation
should show Sycned/Healthy:
$ oc get application rfe-automation -n rfe-gitops
NAME SYNC STATUS HEALTH STATUS
rfe-automation Synced Healthy
Helm and Argo CD are used to deploy and manage all of the project components. From a high level, a Helm chart called application-manager is used to dynamically build a nested app of apps pattern in Argo CD. Each application in Argo CD is a pointer to a Helm chart that installs and configures a specific project component. When bootstrapping the deployment, a Helm values file is used to tell the application manager which components should be deployed and how they should be configured. Using this pattern gives us a significant amount of flexibility when tailoring deployments to specific environments.
The default Values file is stored in examples/values/deployment/application-manager.yaml
. If you want to make changes, we recommend copying this file to examples/values/local/application-manager.yaml
first. Make your changes and then deploy with the following command:
helm upgrade -i -n rfe-gitops bootstrap charts/bootstrap/ -f examples/values/local/application-manager.yaml -f examples/values/local/rhsm.yaml
If you want to disable the deployment/management of certain components (for example, if you want to bring your own cluster that has ODF already installed), set disabled: true
in the chart's values file. For example, to disable ODF, modify examples/values/local/application-manager.yaml
and disable the deployment of the operator and the application (example shows only relevant fields):
# Dynamically Generated Charts
application-manager:
charts:
# Top Level RFE App of App Chart
rfe-automation:
values:
charts:
# Cluster Configuration App of App Chart
cluster-configs:
values:
charts:
# OpenShift Data Foundations
odf:
disabled: true
# Operators App of App Chart
operators:
values:
charts:
odf-operator:
disabled: true
Currently only ODF and OpenShift Virtualization are supported for disabled: true
.
A basic walkthrough to demonstrate the end to end flow of building RHEL for Edge content and using it to create a RHEL for Edge instance can be found below:
A more advanced example of building a MicroShift image that uses additional Image Builder content sources can be found here: