This post describes the technical details of the resources needed for deploying a Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) framework.
You can read part 1 here: Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes: High availability and disaster recovery (part 1)
Understand Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management HA and DR requirements
Confirm that the standby hub cluster has Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management installed and configured according to the customer's standards. It is also important to verify that any additional operator needs are installed on the same versions.
- The steps described in the next sections are required in all hub clusters (Active/Standby).
Enable the backup and restore operator
The backup and restore operator is not enabled by default when Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management is installed and configured. To enable it on all clusters, you must edit the MultiClusterHub resource on each Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management cluster, setting the cluster-backup field to true. Here is an example:
$ oc edit -n open-cluster-management multiclusterhub apiVersion: operator.open-cluster-management.io/v1 kind: MultiClusterHub metadata: creationTimestamp: "2023-07-04T16:35:40Z" finalizers: - finalizer.operator.open-cluster-management.io generation: 2 name: multiclusterhub namespace: open-cluster-management resourceVersion: "66615" uid: e39427a9-dc60-4c2c-9063-8ef6b9d51021 spec: availabilityConfig: High enableClusterBackup: false ingress: sslCiphers: - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 - ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 - ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 - ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 nodeSelector: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra: "" overrides: components: - enabled: true name: console - enabled: true name: insights - enabled: true name: grc - enabled: true name: cluster-lifecycle - enabled: true name: volsync - enabled: true name: multicluster-engine - enabled: true name: search - enabled: true name: app-lifecycle - enabled: true name: cluster-backup separateCertificateManagement: false
Deploy object storage
If you do not have an object storage solution, you can deploy a Noobaa-based Standalone Object Gateway. You can also use Minio or any S3-compatible solution you want.
Warning: In a production environment, object storage must reside on resilient infrastructure (the cloud, for example) so that it does not become a single point of failure.
Set the S3 storage secret
A secret containing the S3 storage access credentials is required for the operator to store backup data.
- For example, if you are using Minio and the credentials used to access the Minio console are admin/redhat123, the file must contain this information.
Create a file containing the S3 storage credentials with contents similar to the one below:
$ cat credentials [backupStorage] aws_access_key_id=admin aws_secret_access_key=redhat123
You must create the secret in the open-cluster-management-backup namespace:
$ oc create secret generic cloud-credentials --namespace open-cluster-management-backup --from-file cloud=<CREDENTIALS_FILE_PATH>
Check if the secret was created:
$ oc get secrets -n open-cluster-management-backup cloud-credentials -o yaml
Note: The name of the profile created in the credentials file (backupStorage in the example above) can be set to any value suitable for the client's environment. This name will be referenced later. You can add multiple profiles to the same credential file if needed.
Configure the ManagedServiceAccount
This feature automatically connects managed clusters (clusters that already exist and were manually imported into Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management) to the new hub cluster. The ManagedServiceAccount is available with the backup and restore component as of Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management 2.7.
The backup controller available with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management 2.7 uses the ManagedServiceAccount component on the main hub cluster to create a token for each of the managed clusters that were manually imported.
See below for more details.
Edit the MultiClusterEngine
Enable the ManagedServiceAccount component on the MultiClusterEngine by editing the MultiClusterEngine resource and setting the enable: true value for the managedserviceaccount-preview component. See the following example:
$ oc edit -n open-cluster-management multiclusterengine apiVersion: multicluster.openshift.io/v1 kind: MultiClusterEngine metadata: creationTimestamp: "2023-07-04T16:37:56Z" finalizers: - finalizer.multicluster.openshift.io generation: 2 labels: installer.name: multiclusterhub installer.namespace: open-cluster-management multiclusterhubs.operator.open-cluster-management.io/managed-by: "true" name: multiclusterengine resourceVersion: "63543" uid: a0711500-5db9-40da-85f5-dacfc5bc3637 spec: availabilityConfig: High nodeSelector: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra: "" overrides: components: - enabled: true name: local-cluster - enabled: true name: assisted-service - enabled: true name: cluster-lifecycle - enabled: true name: cluster-manager - enabled: true name: discovery - enabled: true name: hive - enabled: true name: server-foundation - enabled: true name: cluster-proxy-addon - enabled: true name: hypershift-local-hosting - enabled: true name: managedserviceaccount-preview - enabled: false name: hypershift-preview - enabled: true name: console-mce targetNamespace: multicluster-engine tolerations: - effect: NoSchedule key: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra operator: Exists
Confirm it was enabled:
$ oc get -n open-cluster-management MultiClusterEngine -o yaml | grep -B1 managedserviceaccount-preview - enabled: true name: managedserviceaccount-preview
Confirm the cluster backup operator
Verify that the cluster-backup operator is active on the hub cluster. See the following example:
$ oc get -n open-cluster-management multiclusterhub -o yaml | grep -B1 cluster-backup$ - enabled: true name: cluster-backup
Attention: If you have not already enabled the backup-operator, editing the above component installs the OpenShift APIs for Data Protection (OADP) operator in the open-cluster-management-backup namespace. Make sure you are using a supported version as described at the beginning of this document.
![OADP Version 1.1.5 is suitable for Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management](/rhdc/managed-files/styles/wysiwyg_full_width/private/RHACM-high-availability-disaster-recovery-img1.png.webp?itok=3_OQUm4C)
OADP Version 1.1.5 is suitable for Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management
Backup configuration on the hub cluster
You need to create a resource named Data Protection Application on your hub clusters.
Set the DataProtectionApplication
The DataProtectionApplication (DPA) provides all necessary settings for performing backups and restores. The following is an example of DPA using S3 storage:
$ cat dpa.yaml apiVersion: oadp.openshift.io/v1alpha1 kind: DataProtectionApplication metadata: name: dpa namespace: open-cluster-management-backup spec: configuration: velero: defaultPlugins: - openshift - aws restic: enable: false backupLocations: - name: default velero: provider: aws default: true objectStorage: bucket: acm-backup prefix: hubcluster2 config: s3Url: "http://192.168.15.133:9000" s3ForcePathStyle: "true" region: homecloud profile: "backupStorage" credential: name: cloud-credentials key: cloud
Verify that the DPA settings are correct:
$ oc get -n open-cluster-management-backup dataprotectionapplications.oadp.openshift.io -o yaml
Setup details
- objectStorage.bucket must be set to the bucket created on S3 storage.
- objectStorage.prefix is an optional parameter, but it can help with cluster identification.
- config.s3Url must be set to the S3 storage access URL. If necessary, also include the TCP port number for the connection.
- config.s3ForcePathStyle is needed in some cases, like Minio and Noobaa object storage. On some object storage solutions this parameter may be unnecessary.
- config.region must reflect the region configured on the object storage bucket. It can also be your on-premises cluster name.
- config.profile should reflect the name of the profile created earlier in the secret for S3 storage.
Important: The name parameter in the DPA needs to be relatively short as a route (expose) will be created as part of the provisioning process. Long cluster names may exceed the 63-character limit, which will prevent the solution from working correctly.
Finish the setup
That's it for this process. The next part demonstrates dealing with backup tasks, such as scheduling and restoration.
About the author
Andre Rocha is a Consultant at Red Hat focused on OpenStack, OpenShift, RHEL and other Red Hat products. He has been at Red Hat since 2019, previously working as DevOps and SysAdmin for private companies.
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