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Astra Control Center
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Astra Control Center requirements

Contributors netapp-revathid
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Kubernetes cluster general requirements

A Kubernetes cluster must meet the following general requirements so you can discover and manage it from Astra Control Center.

  • Image registry: You must have an existing private Docker image registry to which you can push Astra Control Center build images. You must have the URL of the image registry where you will upload the images, and you must have tagged the images for the private container registry.

  • Trident / ONTAP storage configuration: Astra Control Center requires that Trident version 21.01 or 21.04 already be installed and configured to work with NetApp ONTAP version 9.5 or newer as the storage backend. Astra Control Center requires that a storage class be created and set as the default storage class. Astra Control Center supports the following ONTAP drivers provided by Trident:

    • ontap-nas

    • ontap-nas-flexgroup

    • ontap-san

    • ontap-san-economy

If you are planning to manage the Kubernetes cluster from Astra Control Center as well as use the cluster to host the Astra Control Center installation, the cluster has the following additional requirements:

  • The most recent version of the Kubernetes snapshot-controller component is installed

  • A Trident volumesnapshotclass object has been defined by an administrator

  • A default Kubernetes storage class exists on the cluster

  • At least one storage class is configured to use Trident

  • A method for pointing the FQDN of Astra Control Center to the external IP address of the Astra Control Center service

OpenShift clusters

Astra Control Center requires a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.6.8 or 4.7 cluster that has Trident storage classes backed by ONTAP 9.5 or newer, with the following attributes:

  • At least 300GB of available ONTAP storage capacity

  • 3 controller nodes with 4 CPU cores, 16GB RAM, and 120GB of available storage each

  • 3 worker nodes with at least 12 CPU cores, 32GB RAM, and 50GB of available storage each

  • Kubernetes version 1.19 or 1.20

  • Service type "LoadBalancer" available for ingress traffic to be sent to services in the OpenShift cluster

  • A method for pointing the FQDN of Astra Control Center to the load balanced IP address

Note These minimum requirements assume that Astra Control Center is the only application running on the OpenShift cluster. If the cluster is running additional applications, you need to adjust these minimum requirements accordingly.

Make sure that your cluster meets the minimum requirements and that you follow Kubernetes best practices so that Astra Control Center is highly available in your Kubernetes cluster.

Note OpenShift 4.8 is not supported.
Note

During app cloning, Astra Control Center needs to allow OpenShift to mount volumes and change the ownership of files. Because of this, ONTAP needs to be configured to allow volume operations to complete successfully using the following commands:

  1. export-policy rule modify -vserver svm0 -policyname default -ruleindex 1 -superuser sys

  2. export-policy rule modify -policyname default -ruleindex 1 -anon 65534
Note If you plan to add a second OpenShift 4.6 or 4.7 cluster as a managed compute resource, you need to ensure that the Trident Volume Snapshot feature is enabled. See the official Trident instructions to enable and test Volume Snapshots with Trident.

App management requirements

Astra Control Center has the following app management requirements:

  • Licensing: You need an Astra Control Center license to manage apps using Astra Control Center.

  • Helm 3: If you use Helm to deploy apps, Astra Control Center requires Helm version 3. Managing and cloning apps deployed with Helm 3 (or upgraded from Helm 2 to Helm 3) are fully supported. Apps deployed with Helm 2 are not supported.

  • Operator management: Astra Control Center does not support apps that are deployed with Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM)-enabled operators or cluster-scoped operators.

Access to the internet

You should determine whether you have outside access to the internet. If you do not, some functionality might be limited, such as receiving monitoring and metrics data from NetApp Cloud Insights, or sending support bundles to the NetApp Support Site.

License

Astra Control Center requires an Astra Control Center license for full functionality. Obtain an evaluation license or full license from NetApp. Without a license, you will be unable to:

  • Define custom apps

  • Create snapshots or clones of existing apps

  • Configure data protection policies

If you want to try Astra Control Center, you can use a 90-day evaluation license.

Service type "LoadBalancer" for on-premises Kubernetes clusters

Astra Control Center uses a service of the type "LoadBalancer" (svc/traefik in the Astra Control Center namespace), and requires that it be assigned an accessible external IP address. For on-premises OpenShift clusters, you can use MetalLB to automatically assign an external IP address to the service. In the internal DNS server configuration, you should point the chosen DNS name for Astra Control Center to the load-balanced IP address.

Networking requirements

The cluster that hosts Astra Control Center communicates using the following TCP ports. You should ensure that these ports are allowed through any firewalls, and configure firewalls to allow any HTTPS egress traffic originating from the Astra network. Some ports require connectivity both ways between the cluster hosting Astra Control Center and each managed cluster (noted where applicable).

Product Port Protocol Direction Purpose

Astra Control Center

443

HTTPS

Ingress

UI / API access - Ensure this port is open both ways between the cluster hosting Astra Control Center and each managed cluster

Astra Control Center

9090

HTTPS

  • Ingress (to cluster hosting Astra Control Center)

  • Egress (random port from the node IP address of each worker node of each managed cluster)

Metrics data to metrics consumer - ensure each managed cluster can access this port on the cluster hosting Astra Control Center

Trident

34571

HTTPS

Ingress

Node pod communication

Trident

9220

HTTP

Ingress

Metrics endpoint

Supported web browsers

Astra Control Center supports recent versions of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome with a minimum resolution of 1280 x 720.

What's next

View the quick start overview.