OpenShift Origin : Multiple Masters installation - openshift

I'm a bit new with OpenShift, i've already made a install for a master and multiple nodes ( this setup is deleted now ).
Now i need more reliability, so i'm currently preparing my hosts with three masters and two nodes ( for starting ).
I've a dns, a dhcp and an etcd2 cluster up and running with the specifics entries for the hosts like :
openshift-router ( external and internal access this will be use as LB with HAproxy )
openshift-etcd1
openshift-etcd2
openshift-etcd2
openshift-master1
openshift-master2
openshift-master3
openshift-node1
openshift-node2
But now i have three questions :
Where do i run my ansible playbook from the router or on one of the masters ?
Do i need to create a shared pool for the docker-storage or just create a new disk on each master ?
Have you already experienced issues with the multi master configuration ?
i know, i ask many questions, but thoses questions are in the same subject, how to make a HA setup with OpenShift.
Thanks you in advance.

I am able to answer only 2 of your questions.
It does not matter from which host you run the Ansible playbook. You can also run it from a host which is not part of the whole openshift setup (e.g. your laptop)
Note: If you change a host's role (from master to node or vice versa), be sure to delete the Ansible facts before running the config playbook again. Otherwise the changes won't be picked up
Follow up: are you asking about the shared pool in reference to High Availability of the Masters ?
Multi master setup provisioned using the Ansible playbook works as expected. The state of the masters is synced using etcd
Some minor issues faced:
There was a small hiccup w.r.t. origin-node service not finding
docker's PID. Workaround:
https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/26259#issuecomment-229303274
openvswitch fails to set up networking correctly. Workaround: restart openvswitch service

Related

Can I run user pods on Openshift master or Infra nodes

New to openshift so I am bit confused if we can run user pods on master or infra nodes. We have 2 worker nodes and one master and infra nodes each making 4 nodes. The reason for change is to share the loads between all 4 nodes rather than 2 compute nodes.
By reading some documents it seems possible to assign 2 roles to one node but is there any security risk or is it not best practice?
Running on openshift version v3.11.0+d699176-406
if we can run user pods on master or infra nodes
Yes, you absolutely can, the easiest way is to configure that at installation time, refer to https://docs.openshift.com/container-platform/3.11/install/example_inventories.html#multi-masters-using-native-ha-ai for example
is there any security risk or is it not best practice
Running single master node or a single infra node is already a risk to high availability of your cluster. If master fails - your cluster is basically headless, if infra node fails - you lose your internal registry and routers - thus losing an external access or an ability to create new images for your imagestreams. This also applies to host OS upgrades, you will have to reboot master and infra nodes some day, are you okay with having a guaranteed downtime during patching? What if something goes wrong during update?
Regarding running user workload on master and infra nodes - if you are not running privileged SCCs (which can allow to run privileged pods or using any uids on system etc) - you are somewhat safe from container breach, assuming there are no known bugs in container engine you are using. However you should pay close attention to your resource consumption and avoid running any workloads without CPU and memory limits, because overloading master node may result in cluster degradation. You should also monitor disk usage, since running user pods results in more images loaded to your docker storage.
So basically it boils down to this:
Better have multiple master (ideally 3) and couple of infra nodes than a single point of failure for both of these roles. Having separate master and worker nodes is of course better than hosting them together, but multimaster setup even with user workloads should be more resilient if you are watching resource usage carefully.

What is the best way to rename okd cluster's master?

We are running a cluster "Single master and multiple nodes" (in https://docs.okd.io/latest/install/index.html#multi-masters-using-native-ha-colocated). Let's call our servers oomaster1, oonode1 and oonode2.
I would like to add other masters one day and I think the first step would be to add a VIP oomaster, now pointing only to oomaster1, and then rename the cluster (currently oomaster1) to oomaster.
What would be the best way to proceed ? I mean I can just stop all okd related services and replace oomaster1 (and its address) with oomaster (and its address) in every file in /etc/origin and /etc/etcd and then restart services. But I suppose it is more complex...
Thanks in advance for advices
I think you should replace the existing cluster(master and nodes) with new cluster which is configured as new hostname, because the master and nodes are deployed the various certificates based on master hostname for encrypted communication and authentication. And I have no idea whether or not the existing master hostname can change.

Consistent deployment for ejabberd cluster in cloud?

From the docs # http://docs.ejabberd.im/admin/guide/clustering/#clustering-setup
Adding a node into the cluster is done by starting a new ejabberd node within the same network, and running a command from a cluster node. On second node for example, as ejabberd is already started, run the following command as the ejabberd daemon user, using the ejabberdctl script: ejabberdctl join_cluster 'ejabberd#first'
How does this translate into deployment in the cloud- where instances can (hopefully) be shutdown/restarted based on a consistent image and behind a load balancer?
Can all of them, including the initial instance, use "example.com" as "first" in the example above (assuming "example.com" is setup in DNS to point to the cloud load balancer)?
Or must the first instance not attempt to join a cluster, and subsequent ones all use the ip address of that initial instance instead of "first" (and if this is the case- does it get wacky if that initial instance goes down)?
Can all of them, including the initial instance, use "example.com" as "first" in the example above (assuming "example.com" is setup in DNS to point to the cloud load balancer)?
No, the node name parameter is the node name of an Erlang ejabberd node. It should even more be on the internal Amazon network, not the public one, so it should not rely on a central DNS. It must be a name of an Erlang node as the newly started node with connect to the existing node to share the same "cluster schema" and do an initial sync of the data.
So, the deployment is done as follow:
first instance does not need to join a cluster indeed as there is no cluster schema to share.
New instance can use the node name of any other node of the cluster. It means they will add themselves to the ejabberd cluster schema. It means ejabberd knows that users can be on any node of this cluster. You can point to any running node in the cluster to add a new one, as they are all equivalent (there is no master).
You still need to configure the load balancer to balance traffic to public XMPP port on all nodes.
You only need to perform the cluster config for each once for each extra cluster node. The configuration with all the node is kept locally, so when you stop and restart a node, it will then automatically rejoined the cluster after it has been properly set up.

Pre-existing MySQL data with Vagrant / VirtualBox

Background: I used to develop using MAMP and over the months/years I've accumulated a large mysql database (a few gigs) that I use for development for my different projects. I finally got around to setting up a VM using Vagrant and I've gotten everything set up and working nicely except my database. I'm running a CentOS 6.5 guest box on an OSX host.
My problem: I need my database to be completely persistent so I can vagrant up/destroy as many boxes as I need to, but the mysql persists.
My solution #1: I initially mounted a synced folder using vboxsf. This works pretty well and seems to be my best option so far, but performance is pretty bad. Query-intensive pages on my dev sites take 1-3 seconds to load whereas they might normally take under a second to load.
My solution #2: I then tried mounting a synced folder using nfs because the performance should be much better. The issue here is that mysql complains b/c, given the nature of nfs, it can't chown the data directory to the mysql:mysql user. I get the following errors when trying to start up the mysqld service:
chown: changing ownership of '/www/mysql': Operation not permitted
chmod: changing permissions of '/www/mysql': Permission denied
Sooo, my question is: are there any better ways to accomplish what I need? I feel like NFS would be the best solution, but I don't know how to get around the whole ownership/permission issues automatically with Vagrant. Any help would be appreciated.
I had the same issue or requirement for my local dev on Mac. And I found a solution for a MySQL-only Vagrant box with external data linked as folder_sync. But it'll run on Win too I guess.
Here is the Vagrant box config: https://github.com/ronnyhartenstein/vagrant-mysql-shared-folder
And if you understand German, here is my blog article with some background infos and tests (and fails of course): http://blog.rh-flow.de/2014/11/11/es-hat-sich-ausgemampft-vagrant-ist/
First of all, let me start with saying this is not best practice. You may know yourself that this can lead to problems if e.g. your PC goes blank or you want to give one project to another person for development. Of course, especially as a one-person-endevour, there are more important things than having test data importers and stuff :) So let's look for solutions.
NFS Permissions
To get NFS permissions right, your users need to have the same UID and GUID on host and guest. It's pretty tricky to setup and you should not change it from the guest. Maybe you can change it on the host to make it writeable to mysql and make UID and GUID the same. Of course, the moment the host changes this won't work anymore.
rsync shared folder
Rsync might not be the fastest in terms of syncing, but if you create on rsync shared folder where only MySQL is writing and which syncs back to some folder on your host this might be a solution. The "real" projects could still live inside a virtualbox share or nfs and you don't need to bother with correct permissions.
There might be some other solutions as well:
Create a backup/restore strategy
One way to go would be to backup MySQL inside your vagrant box at various points, e.g. every day. You could also run the backup when the box is shut down, thus creating a backup right before you destroy the box. Placing this backup at a shared folder, you'd have up-to-date data in case you destroy a box. Performance should be pretty good as the data MySQL is using wouldn't be on a shared folder.
Run MySQL on host or other vagrant box
It's of course possible to connect from within your vagrant box to your host or another vagrant box which runs MySQL. Your host or this box could be long-lived and could serve as a central "MySQL Server" for all your projects.
Have a MySQL slave running on the same machine which writes to shared folder
I believe with MySQL a master/slave combination is possible. Running both on one machine with the master (which you use in your projects) living inside your vm and not writing anything to a shared folder and a slave which writes to your shared folder and is a mirror of your master. This would mean that you have high performance and a few secs of delay between writing something and having it written to your shared folder. Of course, keeping this setup running and making sure it works all the time can be tricky.
You can use bindfs for changing the user/group of a share. I'm actually using a plugin called vagrant-bindfs which let's you remount a share with different ownerships. It works, but i haven't tried it with mysql to see how it performs.
Relevant lines on my Vagrantfile:
unless Vagrant.has_plugin?("vagrant-bindfs")
raise 'vagrant-bindfs is not installed! Please install with vagrant plugin install vagrant-bindfs'
end
config.vm.synced_folder "../", "/temp-nfs-mounts/sites-unbinded", type: :nfs
config.bindfs.bind_folder "/temp-nfs-mounts/sites-unbinded", "/sites", :force_user => "vagrant", :force_group => "vagrant", :create_as_user => true

How to get a new EC2 instance to mount an existing volume on which there is a MySQL database?

Several months ago, I followed http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1663 and got it all running. Then, my PC crashed and I lost the keypair (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7949835/accessing-ec2-instance-after-losing-keypair) and could no longer access the instance.
I want to now launch a new instance and mount this MySQL/DB volume which is left over from before and see if I can get to the data on it. How can I go about doing that?
You outlined the correct approach to this problem already, and the author of the article you referenced, Eric Hammond, has written another one detailing this very process, see Fixing Files on the Root EBS Volume of an EC2 Instance - it boils down to:
start another EC2 instance
stop the EC2 instance you can't access anymore
detach the EBS volume from the stopped instance
attach the EBS volume to the running instance
SSH into the running instance
mount the EBS volume in the running instance
perform whatever fixes necessary, i.e. adjust the /var permissions in your case
Please see Eric's instructions for details on how to do this from the command line; obviously you can achieve all steps up to the SSH access via the AWS Management Console as well, removing the need to install the Amazon EC2 API Tools, in case they aren't readily available already.