Multi-cluster IBM Fusion using Hosted Control Plane

You can create Hosted Control Plane clusters with OpenShift® Virtualization on IBM Fusion and deploy IBM Fusion services on those clusters.

A single IBM Fusion hub deployment on Bare Metal, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or IBM Z can support IBM Fusion services on OpenShift Hosted Control Plane clusters. Hosted Control Planes enable the nodes in the host Red Hat® OpenShift Container Platform cluster to host multiple clusters that are virtualized using OpenShift Virtualization. This capability allows you to create clusters that match specific workload requirements, with clusters created on demand.

With Hosted Control Planes for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, control planes are created as pods on a hosting cluster, removing the need for dedicated virtual or physical machines for each control plane.

For Hosted Control Plane deployments, clusters are created using the IBM Fusion hub cluster, with storage provided by Fusion Data Foundation. The Fusion Data Foundation service must be deployed on the host (base) cluster to enable the deployment of Hosted Control Plane clusters.

In this architecture:

  • IBM Fusion is referred to as the hub cluster.
  • IBM Fusion spokes are referred to as hosted clusters.

To create hosted clusters, see Hosted control plane.

To deploy a storage client in the Hosted Control Plane clusters, see Installing Fusion Data Foundation on a Hosted Control Plane cluster.

Important:
  • IBM Fusion supports Bare Metal Hosted Control Plane and virtual machine based multi-cluster using KubeVirt. IBM Fusion supports Hosted Control Plane deployments on Bare Metal, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and IBM Z, including virtual machine–based multi‑cluster deployments using OpenShift Virtualization (KubeVirt).
  • Backup and restore of Hosted Control Plane clusters are not supported in IBM Fusion. For information about backup and restore of Hosted Control Plane clusters, see Hosted control planes section in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform documentation.
  • IBM Cloud Paks and IBM Maximo® applications are supported on Hosted Control Plane clusters in IBM Fusion. For more information, see IBM Cloud Paks support for IBM Fusion and IBM Maximo® Applications support for IBM Fusion.
  • Bare Metal and virtualized Hosted Control Plane clusters are supported in connected environments, including environments that use a proxy.
  • Hosted Control Plane deployments are supported in both connected environments (including environments that use a proxy) and offline (disconnected) environments.