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# System prepended metadata

title: VMWare IPI Installation - PreReqs

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# VMWare IPI Installation - PreReqs

In OpenShift Container Platform version 4.7+, you can install a cluster on your VMware vSphere instance by using installer-provisioned infrastructure.

Following document details minimum requirements for an IPI installation. 

## VMware vSphere infrastructure requirements
| Component      |  | Version   |
| ---------- | ------ | --- |
| Hypervisor |:  | vSphere 6.5 with HW version 13     |
| Networking (NSX-T) |:  | vSphere 6.5U3 or vSphere 6.7U2 and later     |
| Storage with in-tree drivers |:  | vSphere 6.5 and later     |

### CPU & Memory
As part of installion we create following Virtual machines:
* 1 bootstrap node
* 3 control plane nodes
* 3 compute machines
For each of the theses VM's we recommened  

| VM    | OS |	vCPU |Virtual RAM| Storage |
| --- | ----- | ------ | -------| ----- |
| Bootstrap | RHCOS |  4 | 16 GB | 120 GB| 
| Control plane | RHCOS | 4 | 16 GB| 120 GB|
| Compute | RHCOS | 2 | 8 GB | *
| Compute (for ACM)| RHCOS  | 12 | 32 GB| 500 GB 

Recommeded a minimum of 12 vCPU and 64GB /worker if installing ODF and ACM. 
The bootstrap VM is destroyed during cluster installation.

### Storage

* Persistent Storage, a minimum of 800GB for OCP
* ODF will need additional resources 
    * vSAN or VMFS datastore via the vsphere-volume provisioner
    * VMDK, RDM, or DirectPath storage devices via the Local Storage Operator.
    * For local storage deployment, any disk size of 4 TiB or less can be used, and all disks should be of the same size and type. 
* for this POC, we require a minimum 1.5TB Storage space

### Access to vCenter
A user account with following privileges is required 

| Resource    |     | Actions    |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Datastore | : |  Allocate space
| | | Browse datastore|
| | |Low level file operations
| | |Remove file
|Folder|: | Create folder| 
| | |Delete folder
|vSphere Tagging |: |All privileges
|Network |:  | Assign network 
| Resource | : |  Assign virtual machine to resource pool
|Profile-driven storage | :|  All privileges
|vApp | : | All privileges
|Virtual machine | : | All privileges

### vCenter root CA certificates
Because the installation program requires access to your vCenter’s API, you must add your vCenter’s trusted root CA certificates to your system trust before you install


## Networking Requirements 
For the installation will need internet access and other services. 

### Firewall 
* Firewall allow access to following sites
    * registry.redhat.io
    * quay.io
    * *.quay.io
    * sso.redhat.com
    * openshift.org
    Please refer to Configuring Firewall for [more details](https://docs.openshift.com/container-platform/4.5/installing/install_config/configuring-firewall.html#configuring-firewall)

### NTP 
Each OpenShift Container Platform node in the cluster must have access to a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server.

### DHCP 

You must use DHCP for the network and ensure that the DHCP server is configured to provide persistent IP addresses and host names to the cluster machines. 

#### IP addresses for API & Ingress
An installer-provisioned vSphere installation requires two static IP addresses:

* The API address is used to access the cluster API.
* The Ingress address is used for cluster ingress traffic.


### DNS
Create DNS records for two static IP addresses 
|  VIP      |   DNS     |  Detail      | 
| ------ | ------ | ------ |
| API  | api.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>. | This DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record must point to the load balancer for the control plane machines. This record must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster. | 
|Ingress  | *.apps.<cluster_name>.<base_domain>.| A wildcard DNS A/AAAA or CNAME record that points to the load balancer that targets the machines that run the Ingress router pods, which are the worker nodes by default. This record must be resolvable by both clients external to the cluster and from all the nodes within the cluster.