Multi-cluster IBM Fusion HCI using Hosted Control Plane

Create a Hosted Control Plane with Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization clusters or Bare Metal clusters (both internal and external) on IBM Fusion HCI.

To know more about internal and external, see Choose your configuration.

Note: Hosted Control Plane supports only connected, non-proxy environments.

For these clusters, the control plane components are hosted on a IBM Fusion HCI management cluster, and the compute nodes are provisioned as virtual machines or Bare Metal servers. A hosted control plane refers to a solution that offers a decoupled management plane where you can install and run the core control plane components on a IBM Fusion HCI. Instead of running control plane components on a dedicated physical or virtual machine, you can use the hosted control plane feature to run these components as lightweight pods on the IBM Fusion HCI cluster. You can host the control plane components, API server, etcd, and control manager, separately from the compute nodes.

The IBM Fusion HCI can now host multiple IBM Fusion clusters. You can create clusters that match your specific workload needs, and clusters can be created and deleted on demand. IBM Fusion HCI supports Hosted Control Plane clusters using OpenShift virtualization and Bare Metal nodes (both internal and external).

Benefits of hosted control plane:

Cost efficiency
The reduction in the number of nodes makes clusters more cost-effective:
- You do not need control nodes per cluster.
- Reduced number of Bare Metal nodes needed for clusters.
- Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization VMs can be used as compute nodes. The control pods on a hosting cluster allows for the two variants: Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Bare Metal.
Ability to provide Cluster on demand
You can delete clusters when they are no longer needed. The resources are freed up for new provisioning.

For more information and benefits of the Hosted Control Plan, see https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/openshift_container_platform/4.18/html/hosted_control_planes/index.

OpenShift Virtualization Hosted Control Plane clusters

IBM Fusion HCI supports hosted control plane in the configurations of virtual clusters and Bare Metal clusters. The virtual clusters are virtualized VMs as nodes within the IBM Fusion HCI.

For more information about the deployment, see Deployment of virtualized clusters with Fusion Data Foundation.

Bare Metal Hosted Control Plane clusters

For bare metal clusters, an IBM Fusion HCI admin can provision on demand OpenShift clusters on Bare Metal IBM Fusion HCI, and support is available for both internal and external. Though the control plane is hosted in a similar manner as virtualized clusters, the compute nodes are deployed on physical servers.

Hosted Control Plane Bare Metal internal servers in a rack: Using servers inside the IBM Fusion HCI rack, you can set up workloads to run on your Bare Metal Hosted Control Plane cluster using a GPU node. For example, watsonx.ai is a workload.
The IBM Fusion HCI rack houses all the servers required for the system, with some serving as OpenShift hosts. A Hosted Control Plane Bare Metal cluster is created using a subset of these servers, which takes on the workload of a GPU node. By converting three control servers into control pods on this hosted cluster, you save three control servers. The following diagram illustrates this managed topology:

Hosted Control Plane Bare Metal external servers: External servers outside of the IBM Fusion HCI cluster can be used to create Bare Metal Hosted Control Plane clusters with Fusion data services. Here, bring your own Bare Metal hosts and turn them into nodes. The control planes of this Hosted Control Plane cluster are hosted in the IBM Fusion HCI management cluster. You can create more Bare Metal compute nodes out of your stock of x86 servers.
On the IBM Fusion HCI rack, you can set up your own host cluster. The external rack you bring can be utilized for OpenShift clusters, where a Hosted Control Plane Bare Metal cluster is created. Meanwhile, the control pods operate on the IBM Fusion HCI cluster, enabling you to make the most of your existing hardware resources. The following diagram illustrates this external topology:

For more information about the deployment, see Deployment of Bare Metal clusters with Fusion Data Foundation.

Benefits of IBM Fusion in Hosted Control Plane

Provision OpenShift Container Platform clusters with services like Fusion Data Foundation, Backup & Restore, IBM Data Cataloging, and disaster recovery. You can add labels during the time of hosted cluster creation so that you need not log in to your cluster to install the services. For an overview on each of the Fusion services, see Fusion services.
Note: You can also add service label later based on your need. Only Data Foundation Backup & Restore can be done via labeling.
Support is available for Provider and consumer mode in Fusion Data Foundation. In the provider mode, you run a storage cluster locally that can serve multiple mode clusters. The provider mode is similar to an external Fusion Data Foundation configuration. It acts as the provider and base storage on the host cluster. You can provision new clusters within a internal rack and use storage from the central provider cluster. Here, the provider and consumer are in a hosted control plane relationship.
Data services are automatically cleaned up upon the deletion of Hosted Control Plane clusters.
Single dashboard for managing Backup & Restore and storage.
Manage logs and events of multiple clusters.
Provide dynamic storage for applications in Hosted Control Plane clusters.
Disaster recovery is available for applications on Hosted Control Plane clusters.
Provide Backup & Restore for applications in Hosted Control Plane clusters.
With IBM Fusion HCI, you can order GPU nodes and install them in your rack so that you can run a dedicated cluster for your AI workloads.
Support for deployment of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration and IBM Software Hub on Hosted Control Plane.