Home > Workload Solutions > Container Platforms > Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform > Archive > Design Guide—Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.2 > Hardware acquisition planning
Acquisition strategies for data center infrastructure hardware (servers, networking, storage) vary considerably based on industries and organizations, the stage of the consolidation efforts, standardization efforts, the adoption of new technologies or systems, and more. Often, the adoption of cloud-native microservices-based applications occurs at an early stage.
To minimize risk, organizations that are relatively new to Kubernetes-based technologies often seek out well-known platform hardware that has been well validated as a system. Ready Stack for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.2 is such a solution. The hardware guidance in this guide enables you to choose from a wide range of validated configurations.
Dell EMC is aware that some customers prefer to purchase nodes that are configured to just meet workload requirements. We are confident that you will find the right configurations for your data center needs. If your data center has chosen a homogenous server design in which all the servers for a specific purpose must be of identical configuration, the configuration options in this section address this choice also.
The Ready Stack for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.2 design requires a minimum of seven servers comprising three worker nodes. The maximum configuration that the customized Dell EMC deployment tools support is 210 servers.
The openshift-install tool deploys OpenShift Container Platform 4.2. Currently, the openshift-install tool does not natively support the ability to configure more than a single NIC. Dell EMC expects to provide a mechanism to enable deployment of bonded multi-NIC servers with the release of OpenShift Container Platform 4.3. The current design precludes deployment of an HA container platform infrastructure.
Note: Although is possible to deploy multiple bonded NICs by passing kernel parameters, Dell EMC considers this to be beyond the scope of a straightforward installation process.
The following figure provides an overview of the scope of validated OpenShift Container Platform 4.2 cluster designs:
Figure 7. Ready Stack for Red Hat OpenStack scales from 7 to 210 nodes per cluster
This design guide uses a server node base configuration for the PowerEdge R640 and PowerEdge R740xd server nodes that can be used in each node role. While you could use PowerEdge R740xd servers for the CSAH, master, worker, and higher (OpenShift Container Platform 4.3) storage node roles, we do not recommend doing so.
Appendix A shows the PowerEdge Server baseline configurations that we used in the design. The following table shows the hardware configuration that is required to build the cluster design that we used for our validation work:
Table 9. Cluster configuration: Number of servers
Node name |
Quantity |
Configuration |
CSAH |
1 |
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 server configuration |
Master |
3 |
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 server configuration |
Worker |
3 or more* |
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 or R740xd server configuration |
Storage** |
3 or more |
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 or R740xd server configuration |
*During installation, one node is used to create the bootstrap node that is needed to deploy the master nodes. The bootstrap node can be converted to a worker node.
**The storage nodes are not required for OpenShift Container Platform 4.2. They are shown here if you want to include integrated storage for your OpenShift cluster following the release of OpenShift Container Platform 4.3.
The following table provides additional cluster configuration information:
Table 10. Cluster configuration reference information
Quantity |
Description |
Dell EMC Reference |
1* |
Rack enclosure: APC AR3300 NetShelter SZ 42U |
|
1* |
Management switch: Dell EMC Networking S3048-ON |
|
2* |
Data switch: Dell EMC Networking S5248F-ON or Dell EMC Networking S5232-ON |
|
7 - 210* |
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640
Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 or Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd |
or
|
2-4* |
Power distribution unit: APC metered rack PDU 17.2 kW |
*Rack enclosures and power distribution units are site-specific. Review the physical dimensions and power requirements during a site survey.