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Andre Rocha
Andre Rocha

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Installing Openshift: The hard way!

Welcome to my adventure learning Red Hat Openshift.
And before you start asking why I am doing this way, remember, I am learning and doing it the hard way!

My repository for this project is:
Git repository

Scenario

I am trying to replicate the same scenario as I encountered in the companies I worked for. Usually they are:

  • Offline environment (cluster does not have access to the internet).
  • Different machines for each service (company wild load balance, DNS, DHCP managed by different servers)
  • Network segregation (multiple networks for each part of the cluster)

Testing Environment

To see how my lab is configured and how it looks. Please check my dev.to blog post.

Building my home lab

Install Proxmox 9

Topology

I will be running everything into my proxmox server. The physical layer will look like this
Physical diagram

The virtual portion will be more like this:

Virtual diagram

DNS

  • You need a properly configured DNS zone.
  • Forward and reverse DNS records for all nodes.
  • Wildcard DNS entry for application routes (e.g. *.apps.cluster.example.com).
  • Internal name resolution between nodes.

Load Balancer

Balances traffic for:

  • API servers (port 6443 – control plane access).
  • Ingress controllers (HTTP/HTTPS routes for applications).

NTP (Network Time Protocol)

All cluster nodes need synchronized time.

DHCP

Not strictly required if you use static IP addressing.
Helps in labs or dynamic environments for auto-provisioning.

External Storage

For production workloads, you need persistent storage.
Options: NFS, iSCSI, Ceph/Rook, NetApp, Portworx.

Bastion Host

This VM will be the bridge between our internal and external network and will also host the offline registry required for openshift installation files.

Building the VMs

My next post I will be building the VMs on proxmox. Stay tuned!

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