Installation

Warning. The platform components must be deployed on physical servers (bare-metal servers).

Installation on virtual machines is allowed for demonstration purposes only, but nested virtualization must be enabled. If the platform is deployed on virtual machines, technical support will not be provided.

Platform scalability

The platform supports the following configuration:

• Maximum number of nodes: 1000.
• Maximum number of virtual machines: 50000.

The platform has no other restrictions and is compatible with any hardware that is supported by operating systems on which it can be installed.

Hardware Requirements

1. A dedicated machine for installation.

   This machine will run the Deckhouse installer. For example, it can be an administrator’s laptop or any other computer that is not intended to be added to the cluster. Requirements for this machine:

   • OS: Windows 10+, macOS 10.15+, Linux (Ubuntu 18.04+, Fedora 35+);
   • Installed Docker Engine or Docker Desktop (instructions for Ubuntu, macOS, Windows);
   • HTTPS access to the container image registry at registry.deckhouse.io;
   • SSH key-based access to the node that will serve as the master node of the future cluster;
   • SSH key-based access to the node that will serve as the worker node of the future cluster (if the cluster will consist of more than one master node).

2. Server for the master node

   There can be multiple servers running the cluster’s control plane components, but only one server is required at installation time. The others can be added later via node management mechanisms.

   Requirements for a physical bare-metal server:

   • Resources:
     • CPU:
       • x86_64 architecture;
       • Support for Intel-VT (VMX) or AMD-V (SVM) instructions;
       • At least 4 cores.
     • RAM: At least 8 GB.
     • Disk space:
       • At least 60 GB;
       • High-speed disk (400+ IOPS).
   • OS from the list of supported ones:
     • Linux kernel version 5.7 or newer.
   • Unique hostname across all servers in the future cluster;
   • Network access:
     • HTTPS access to the container image registry at registry.deckhouse.io;
     • Access to the package repositories of the chosen OS;
     • SSH key-based access from the installation machine (see p.1);
     • Network access from the installation machine (see p.1) on port 22322/TCP.
   • Required software:
     • The cloud-utils and cloud-init packages must be installed (package names may vary depending on the chosen OS).

   Warning. The container runtime will be installed automatically, so do not pre-install any containerd or docker packages.

3. Servers for worker nodes

   These nodes will run virtual machines, so the servers must have enough resources to handle the planned number of VMs. Additional disks may be required if you deploy a software-defined storage solution.

   Requirements for a physical bare-metal server:

   • Resources:
     • CPU:
       • x86_64 architecture;
       • Support for Intel-VT (VMX) or AMD-V (SVM) instructions;
       • At least 4 cores;
     • RAM: At least 8 GB;
     • Disk space:
       • At least 60 GB;
       • High-speed disk (400+ IOPS);
       • Additional disks for software-defined storage;
   • OS from the list of supported ones;
     • Linux kernel version 5.7 or newer;
   • Unique hostname across all servers in the future cluster;
   • Network access:
     • HTTPS access to the container image registry at registry.deckhouse.io;
     • Access to the package repositories of the chosen OS;
     • SSH key-based access from the installation machine (see p.1);
   • Required software:
     • The cloud-utils and cloud-init packages must be installed (package names may vary depending on the chosen OS).

   Important. The container runtime will be installed automatically, so do not pre-install any containerd or docker packages.

4. Storage hardware

   Depending on the chosen storage solution, additional resources may be required. For details, refer to the section Storage Management.

Supported OS for platform nodes

Supported guest operating systems

The virtualization platform supports operating systems running on x86 and x86_64 architectures as guest operating systems. For correct operation in paravirtualization mode, VirtIO drivers must be installed to ensure efficient interaction between the virtual machine and the hypervisor.

Successful startup of the operating system is determined by the following criteria:

• correct installation and booting of the OS;
• uninterrupted operation of key components such as networking and storage;
• no crashes or errors during operation.

For Linux family operating systems it is recommended to use guest OS images with cloud-init support, which allows initializing virtual machines after their creation.

For Windows operating systems, the platform supports initialization using the built-in sysprep utility.

Supported virtual machine configurations

Maximum number of cores supported: 254 Maximum amount of RAM: 1024 GB

Supported Storage Systems

Virtual machines use PersistentVolume resources. To manage these resources and allocate disk space within the cluster, one or more supported storage systems must be installed:

Installation

1. Deploy the Deckhouse Kubernetes Platform cluster by instruction.

2. To store virtual machine data (virtual disks and images), you must enable one or more supported storage.

3. Set default StorageClass.

4. Turn on the console module, which will allow you to manage virtualization components through via UI (This feature is available only to users of the EE edition).

5. Enable the virtualization module:

To enable the virtualization module, you need to create a ModuleConfig resource containing the module settings.

Example of module configuration:

d8 k apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: deckhouse.io/v1alpha1
kind: ModuleConfig
metadata:
  name: virtualization
spec:
  enabled: true
  settings:
    dvcr:
      storage:
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          size: 50G
        type: PersistentVolumeClaim
    virtualMachineCIDRs:
      - 10.66.10.0/24
  version: 1
EOF

The .spec.settings.dvcr block describes the settings for the repository for storing virtual machine images, this block specifies the size of the storage provided for storing images .spec.settings.dvcr.storage.persistentVolumeClaim.size. The .spec.settings.virtualMachineCIDRs block specifies the list of subnets. Virtual machine addresses will be allocated automatically or on request from the specified subnet ranges in order.

You can track the readiness of the module using the following command:

d8 k get modules virtualization

Example output:

# NAME             WEIGHT   STATE     SOURCE     STAGE   STATUS
# virtualization   900      Enabled   Embedded           Ready

The module status should be Ready.

Platform Update

Deckhouse Virtualization Platform uses five update channels designed for use in different environments that have different requirements in terms of reliability:

Deckhouse Virtualization Platform components can be updated automatically, or with manual confirmation as updates are released in the update channels.

For information on the versions available on the update channels, visit the site at https://releases.deckhouse.io/.