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Install Fabric

Under construction.

Prerequisites

  • Have a machine with access to the Internet to use Fabricator and build installer
  • Have a machine to install Fabric Control Node on with enough NICs to connect to at least one switch using Front Panel ports and enough CPU and RAM (see System Requirements) as well as IPMI access to it to install the OS
  • Have enough Supported Switches for your Fabric

Main steps

This chapter is dedicated to the Hedgehog Fabric installation on bare-metal control node(s) and switches, their preparation and configuration.

Get hhfab installed following instructions from the Download section.

The main steps to install Fabric are:

  1. Install hhfab on the machines with access to the Internet
    1. Prepare Wiring Diagram
    2. Select Fabric Configuration
    3. Build Control Node configuration and installer
  2. Install Control Node
    1. Install Flatcar Linux on the Control Node
    2. Upload and run Control Node installer on the Control Node
  3. Prepare supported switches
    1. Install Hedgehog ONIE (HONIE) on them
    2. Reboot them into ONIE Install Mode to have them automatically provisioned

Build Control Node configuration and installer

It's the only step that requires Internet access, to download artifacts and build the installer.

Once you've prepared the Wiring Diagram, initialize Fabricator by running hhfab init command and passing optional configuration into it as well as wiring diagram file(s) as flags. Additionally, there are a lot of customizations available as flags, e.g. to setup default credentials, keys and etc. For more details on the command invocation, refer to hhfab init --help.

The --dev option activates the development mode which enables default credentials and keys for the Control Node and switches:

  • Default user with passwordless sudo for the Control Node and test servers is core with password HHFab.Admin!.
  • Admin user with full access and passwordless sudo for the switches is admin with password HHFab.Admin!.
  • Read-only, non-sudo user with access only to the switch CLI for the switches is op with password HHFab.Op!.

Alternatively, you can pass your own credentials and keys using --authorized-key and --control-password-hash flags. Generate a password hash with command openssl passwd -5. Further customization items are available in the config file and can be passed using the --config flag.

hhfab init --preset lab --dev --wiring file1.yaml --wiring file2.yaml
hhfab build

As a result, you will get the following files in the .hhfab directory or the one you've passed using --basedir flag:

  • control-os/ignition.json - ignition config for the Control Node to get OS installed
  • control-install.tgz - installer for the Control Node, it will be uploaded to the Control Node and run there

More details on configuring the Fabric are available in the Configuration section.

Install Control Node

Connected Instructions

This control node should be given a static IP address. Either a lease or statically assigned.

  1. Download the latest stable Flatcar Container Linux ISO ~400MiB

  2. Bios boot the control node using the ISO, via virtual media, USB, or other way.

  3. Once the control node has booted it will auto login to a shell

  4. Upload the file ignition.json built during the previous step to the system and run the Flatcar installation:

sudo flatcar-install -d /dev/sda -i ignition.json

Where /dev/sda is a disk you want to install Control Node to and ignition.json is the control-os/ignition.json file from previous step uploaded to the Flatcar installer. This installer reaches out to the publically available images to download, verify and install flatcar to the given disk.

The installation is finished when you see a message similar to the following:

Installing Ignition config ignition.json...
Success! Flatcar Container Linux stable 3510.2.6 is installed on /dev/sda

Move on to the next step

Air Gapped Instructions

Control Node installation is fully air-gapped and doesn't require Internet access. A static IP is still needed as command and control communications between the switches and controller use IP. The instructions are similar to above.

  1. Download the latest stable Flatcar Container Linux ISO ~400MiB and bios boot into it (using IPMI attaching media, USB stick or any other way).

  2. Download the latest stable Flatcar Container Linux Image ~500MiB and copy that file to media that can be attached to the control node.

  3. Copy the control-os/ignition.json file to the media from the above step.

  4. Bios boot the control node using the iso from above.

  5. Once the control node has booted, it will auto-login to a shell.

  6. Attach the media containing both the container image file and the ignition file to the booted control node.

  7. Uncompress the image bunzip -d ./path/to/flatcar_production_image.bin.bz2, if you want to keep the compressed image use the -k flag.

sudo flatcar-install -d /dev/sda -i ignition.json -f flatcar_production_image.bin

Where /dev/sda is a disk you want to install Control Node to and ignition.json is the control-os/ignition.json file from previous step uploaded to the Flatcar installer. By providing an image to the installer, no public internet connections will be attemtped.

The installation is finished when you see a message similar to the following:

Installing Ignition config ignition.json...
Success! Flatcar Container Linux stable 3510.2.6 is installed on /dev/sda
Move on to the next step

Install HedgeHog Controller

Once the installation is finished, reboot the machine and wait for it to boot into the installed Flatcar Linux.

At that point, you should get into the installed Flatcar Linux using the dev or provided credentials with user core and you can now install Hedgehog Open Network Fabric on it. Download control-install.tgz to the just installed Control Node (for example, by using scp) and run it.

tar xzf control-install.tgz && cd control-install && sudo ./hhfab-recipe run

The command prints the logs generated while installing Fabric (including logs from the Kubernetes cluster, miscellaneous OCI registry misc components, and more). At the end, you should observe lines similar to the following:

...
01:34:45 INF Running name=reloader-image op="push fabricator/reloader:v1.0.40"
01:34:47 INF Running name=reloader-chart op="push fabricator/charts/reloader:1.0.40"
01:34:47 INF Running name=reloader-install op="file /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/manifests/hh-reloader-install.yaml"
01:34:47 INF Running name=reloader-wait op="wait deployment/reloader-reloader"
deployment.apps/reloader-reloader condition met
01:35:15 INF Done took=3m39.586394608s

At that point, you can start interacting with the Fabric using kubectl, kubectl fabric and k9s, all preinstalled as part of the Control Node installer.

You can now get HONIE installed on your switches and reboot them into ONIE Install Mode to have them automatically provisioned from the Control Node.

Last update: August 1, 2024
Created: October 26, 2023