Deploying OpenShift Virtualization on ROSA (CLI)

OpenShift Virtualization is a feature of OpenShift that allows you to run virtual machines alongside your containers. This is useful for running legacy applications that can’t be containerized, or for running applications that require special hardware or software that isn’t available in a container.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to deploy OpenShift Virtualization on Red Hat OpenShift on AWS (ROSA). I’ll show you how to create a ROSA cluster, deploy the OpenShift Virtualization operator, and create a virtual machine.

It’s important to keep in mind that this tutorial is designed to show you the quickest way to get started with OpenShift Virtualization on ROSA. It’s not designed to be a production-ready deployment. If you’re planning to deploy OpenShift Virtualization in a production environment, you should follow the official documentation and best practices.

If you don’t want to deploy the resources yourself, you can watch the video below to see how it’s done.

Pre-requisites

1. You will need a A ROSA Cluster (see Deploying ROSA HCP with Terraform if you need help creating one).

2. Set the cluster name as an environment variable (in the example we re-use the variable from the Terraform guide).

   export CLUSTER="${TF_VAR_cluster_name}"
   export METAL_AZ=$(terraform output -json private_subnet_azs | jq -r '.[0]')
   

3. Create a bare metal machine pool

   Note bare metal machines are not cheap, so be warned!

    rosa create machine-pool -c $CLUSTER \
      --replicas 1 --availability-zone $METAL_AZ \
      --instance-type m5zn.metal --name virt
   

Deploy the OpenShift Virtualization Operator

1. Deploy the OpenShift Virtualization Operator

   cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     name: openshift-cnv
   ---
   apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
   kind: OperatorGroup
   metadata:
     name: kubevirt-hyperconverged-group
     namespace: openshift-cnv
   spec:
     targetNamespaces:
       - openshift-cnv
   ---
   apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
   kind: Subscription
   metadata:
     name: hco-operatorhub
     namespace: openshift-cnv
   spec:
     source: redhat-operators
     sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace
     name: kubevirt-hyperconverged
     startingCSV: kubevirt-hyperconverged-operator.v4.15.1
     channel: "stable"
   EOF
   

2. If you want to see the progress of the operator you can log into the OpenShift Console (hint run oc whoami --show-console to get the URL)

   

3. Create an OpenShift Virtualization operand

   Note: this is all defaults, so will not support a lot of the more advanced features you might want such as live migration.

   cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
   apiVersion: hco.kubevirt.io/v1beta1
   kind: HyperConverged
   metadata:
     name: kubevirt-hyperconverged
     namespace: openshift-cnv
     annotations:
       deployOVS: "false"
     labels:
       app: kubevirt-hyperconverged
   spec:
     applicationAwareConfig:
       allowApplicationAwareClusterResourceQuota: false
       vmiCalcConfigName: DedicatedVirtualResources
     certConfig:
       ca:
         duration: 48h0m0s
         renewBefore: 24h0m0s
       server:
         duration: 24h0m0s
         renewBefore: 12h0m0s
     evictionStrategy: LiveMigrate
     featureGates:
       alignCPUs: false
       autoResourceLimits: false
       deployKubeSecondaryDNS: false
       deployTektonTaskResources: false
       deployVmConsoleProxy: false
       disableMDevConfiguration: false
       enableApplicationAwareQuota: false
       enableCommonBootImageImport: true
       enableManagedTenantQuota: false
       nonRoot: true
       persistentReservation: false
       withHostPassthroughCPU: false
     infra: {}
     liveMigrationConfig:
       allowAutoConverge: false
       allowPostCopy: false
       completionTimeoutPerGiB: 800
       parallelMigrationsPerCluster: 5
       parallelOutboundMigrationsPerNode: 2
       progressTimeout: 150
     resourceRequirements:
       vmiCPUAllocationRatio: 10
     uninstallStrategy: BlockUninstallIfWorkloadsExist
     virtualMachineOptions:
       disableFreePageReporting: false
       disableSerialConsoleLog: true
     workloadUpdateStrategy:
       batchEvictionInterval: 1m0s
       batchEvictionSize: 10
       workloadUpdateMethods:
       - LiveMigrate
     workloads: {}
   EOF
   

4. New “Virtualization” Section in the OpenShift Console

   Once the operator is installed you should see a new “Virtualization” section in the OpenShift Console (you may be prompted to refresh the page)

   

5. Close the popup window and click the “Download virtctl” button to download the virtctl binary.

Create a Virtual Machine

1. Create a project and a secret containing your public SSH key

   oc new-project my-vms
   oc create secret generic authorized-keys --from-file=ssh-publickey=$HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
   

2. Create a VM

   cat << EOF | oc apply -f -
   apiVersion: kubevirt.io/v1
   kind: VirtualMachine
   metadata:
     name: example-vm
   spec:
     dataVolumeTemplates:
     - apiVersion: cdi.kubevirt.io/v1beta1
       kind: DataVolume
       metadata:
         name: example-vm-disk
       spec:
         sourceRef:
           kind: DataSource
           name: rhel9
           namespace: openshift-virtualization-os-images
         storage:
           resources:
             requests:
               storage: 30Gi
     running: false
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           kubevirt.io/domain: example-vm
       spec:
         domain:
           cpu:
             cores: 1
             sockets: 2
             threads: 1
           devices:
             disks:
             - disk:
                 bus: virtio
               name: rootdisk
             - disk:
                 bus: virtio
               name: cloudinitdisk
             interfaces:
             - masquerade: {}
               name: default
             rng: {}
           features:
             smm:
               enabled: true
           firmware:
             bootloader:
               efi: {}
           resources:
             requests:
               memory: 8Gi
         evictionStrategy: LiveMigrate
         networks:
         - name: default
           pod: {}
         volumes:
           - name: rootdisk
             dataVolume:
               name: example-vm-disk
           - cloudInitConfigDrive:
               userData: |-
                 #cloud-config
                 user: cloud-user
                 password: not-a-secure-password
                 chpasswd: { expire: False }
             name: cloudinitdisk
         accessCredentials:
           - sshPublicKey:
               propagationMethod:
                 configDrive: {}
               source:
                 secret:
                   secretName: authorized-keys
   EOF
   

3. Start the VM

   virtctl start example-vm
   

4. Watch for the VM to be ready

   watch oc get vm example-vm
   

   Every 2.0s: oc get vm NAME AGE STATUS READY example-vm 3m16s Running False

5. SSH into the VM

   virtctl ssh cloud-user@example-vm -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa
   

   Register this system with Red Hat Insights: insights-client --register
   Create an account or view all your systems at https://red.ht/insights-dashboard
   Last login: Fri May 17 16:35:39 2024 from 10.130.0.41
   [cloud-user@example-vm ~]$
   

6. Congratulations! You now have a virtual machine running on OpenShift Virtualization on ROSA!

Cleanup

1. Delete the VM

   oc delete vm example-vm
   

2. Delete the ROSA Cluster

   terraform destroy