Installing Red Hat software 4.14 or later

Install Red Hat software 4.14 or later using the Red Hat Customer Portal, IBM Passport Advantage, or by downloading binary files.

Before you begin

Before you install Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform 4.14 or later, if you do not have a free Red Hat account, you must create one at Create a Red Hat Login External link icon. You must have a Red Hat account to access the OpenShift Cluster Manager. You do not need a paid Red Hat subscription entitlement to access any IBM® offering.

You can download and install Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 or later from the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager External link icon. Log in with your existing, or newly created, account credentials.

The Cluster Manager displays tiles that represent various cloud providers and infrastructure types. Click the tile for the type of infrastructure where you would like to install the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Some cloud providers support Installer-Provisioned Infrastructure, which installs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on cloud infrastructure that is automatically provisioned by the Cluster Manager. For other cloud providers and infrastructure types, a cluster can be installed on User-Provisioned Infrastructure.

Select your preferred infrastructure type and choose either Installer-Provisioned Infrastructure or User-Provisioned Infrastructure, and then follow the instructions that are displayed.

For any of the User-Provisioned Infrastructure types, including the Bare Metal tile, you are presented with a short series of steps to follow. For detailed installation instructions, you can click Get Started to open the official installation documentation. For more information about bare metal installation, see Installing a cluster on bare metal External link icon.

  1. Download the OpenShift installer by using the link provided by the Cluster Manager website. These files are accessible directly over the internet, and do not require a Red Hat ID to download.
  2. Download or copy your OpenShift pull secret. This step requires you to be logged in with a Red Hat ID but does not require a paid subscription.
  3. Download RHEL CoreOS (RHCOS) by using the link provided by the Cluster Manager website. These files are accessible directly over the internet, and do not require a Red Hat ID to download.
  4. Download the OpenShift CLI (openshift-install) by using the link that is provided by the Cluster Manager website and add them to your PATH. These files are accessible directly over the internet, and do not require a Red Hat ID to download.
  5. Follow the official documentation for your infrastructure type to complete the installation by using the openshift-install command. When the installer is complete, you see the console URL and credentials for accessing your new cluster. A kubeconfig file is also generated for you to use with the oc CLI tools that you downloaded.

Optional: Accessing Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation binary files

RHCOS is the only supported operating system for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform master node hosts. RHCOS and RHEL are both supported operating systems for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform worker node hosts, though RHCOS is the default. If you prefer to use RHEL as the operating system for the worker node hosts, you must download the RHEL installation binary files separately. RHEL installation binary files are not available to download without paid entitlement.

The preferred method of accessing and installing RHEL is to follow the standard installation documentation from Red Hat and register your systems by using your Red Hat Network subscription. You can access installation binary files, documentation, and entitlement information from the Red Hat Customer Portal External link icon. For more information about the Red Hat Customer Portal, including guided tours, see Getting Started with Red Hat External link icon.

Preferred method for accessing RHEL: Using the Red Hat Customer Portal

Accessing installation binary files through the Red Hat Customer Portal
After your IBM Cloud Pak order processes, you will receive a confirmation email from Red Hat. The email notifies you about the update to your subscription and lists your entitlement quantities for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 or later

For more information about which RHEL version corresponds to your Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform version, see RHEL Versions Utilized by RHEL CoreOS and OCP External link icon.

If RHEL is not installed, use the following links to complete your installation:

Installing Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

After you successfully provision hosts or virtual machines (VMs) with RHEL installed and registered, proceed to install Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform by using the following Red Hat Customer Portal documentation:

Alternative method for accessing RHEL: Using Passport Advantage

Accessing binary files for manual installation from Passport Advantage

If you must install the IBM Cloud Pak before the Red Hat Customer Portal updates your entitlements, you can. The binary files for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and RHEL CoreOS are available for download with a free Red Hat account. These binary files are not available for download from IBM Passport Advantage®.

If you install RHEL as the host operating system on your worker nodes and do not have an active Red Hat subscription, the binary files are accessible through Passport Advantage. For Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 or later, RHEL 7.9 through RHEL 9.2 are accessible through Passport Advantage. Installation images and RPMs for RHEL 7.9 through RHEL 9.2 can be downloaded from Passport Advantage (Part number CC4KJEN), which is part of your IBM Cloud Pak eAssembly.) This file has the description IBM Red Hat Enterprise Linux English only eImage in Passport Advantage. This installation is required to be registered and associated with your Red Hat Network ID later.

The download is approximately 50 GB, and more storage is required when you extract the files.

This manual installation process requires the creation of a local HTTP server to host the RPM files that are provided in the mentioned download package. These steps are not required when you use the preferred installation method, since that scenario enables access to the necessary files through Red Hat Network.

To manually install RHEL, complete the following steps:

  1. If RHEL is not installed, log in to Passport Advantage and download the RHEL eImage, which is associated with the IBM Cloud Pak eAssembly. Download IBM Red Hat Enterprise Linux English only eImage (part number CC4KJEN). The file name to download is IBM_RED_HAT_ENTERPRISE_LINUX_ENGLISH.tgz.
  2. Provision a physical host or VM with an HTTP server to support the local installation. You can use the web server of your choice as the repository.

    If you do not have a web server available, you can install and configure an Apache web server on a RHEL system. For more information about configuring your web server, see Prepare and populate the repository server External link icon.

  3. Copy the downloaded IBM_RED_HAT_ENTERPRISE_LINUX_ENGLISH.tgz file to the web server. Extract it into the repos subdirectory under the document root of your web server (/var/www/html/repos, if you followed the instructions for creating a web server in the documentation).
    Important: Ensure that the repository files can be read by any user.
    chmod -R +r /var/www/html/repos
  4. Install RHEL on the worker nodes. If RHEL is not installed, provision the hosts or VMs for the master and worker nodes for the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cluster where you want to install the IBM Cloud Pak. Use the ISO file that you downloaded from Passport Advantage to install RHEL.

    For RHEL 7.9, complete instructions for downloading and installing RHEL 7.9, including prerequisites and host preparation, can be found in the Installation Guide External link icon in the Red Hat Customer Portal.

    An ISO image of the rhel-server-7.9-x86_64-dvd.iso installation media can be found in the directory where you extracted your Passport Advantage file. Use these files in place of steps in Chapter 2. Downloading Red Hat Enterprise Linux External link icon of the RHEL installation guide. The guide describes downloading RHEL from the Red Hat Customer Portal. If you are creating VMs to provision your nodes, you can use this image directly.

    For RHEL 8.4, Complete instructions for downloading and installing RHEL 8.4, including prerequisites and host preparation, can be found in the Performing a standard REHL installation: RHEL 8 External link icon on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

    An ISO image of the rhel-server-8.4-x86_64-dvd.iso installation media can be found in the directory where you extracted your Passport Advantage file. Use these files in place of steps in Chapter 3. Downloading a RHEL installation ISO image External link icon of the RHEL installation guide. The guide describes downloading RHEL from the Red Hat Customer Portal. If you are creating VMs to provision your nodes, you can use this image directly.

    For more information about creating physical installation media or accessing installation media over a network if you are installing RHEL on a physical host, see Chapter 3. Making media External link icon.

  5. Install Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform by using the following Red Hat Customer Portal documentation.

You are now ready to start working with your entitlement.