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Install

Simplyblock Disaster Recovery (component name dr-simplyblock) is installed with two Helm charts. The dr-simplyblock-hub chart turns a Kubernetes cluster into the DR hub, and the dr-simplyblock-spoke chart joins each site cluster to that hub. Everything else, including Open Cluster Management (OCM), the Ramen operators, and Velero, is installed by dr-simplyblock itself. The snapshot controller and csi-addons come with the simplyblock storage installation.

Installation Flow

The installation follows the same order on every deployment:

  1. Prerequisites: The hub and site clusters, the S3 buckets, and the network paths described in Disaster Recovery Requirements are in place. Each site runs a simplyblock storage cluster with the simplyblock CSI driver.
  2. Hub: The dr-simplyblock-hub chart installs OCM, the Ramen hub operator, and dr-hub on the hub cluster. See Installing the Hub.
  3. Archive and state bundle: An S3 archive for reports and a signed DR state bundle are configured, so that the hub itself can be rebuilt after a disaster. See Archive and State Bundle.
  4. Sites: Each site cluster joins the hub with a bootstrap token and the dr-simplyblock-spoke chart. The hub then delivers the site stack to it. See Joining Site Clusters.
  5. Verification: The managed clusters report Joined and Available, the dr-agent addon is available on every site, and the DRConfig status lists every site agent and site stack.

Once the installation is complete, protection is configured with protection plans, DR paths, and protected applications, as described in Configuration.

Components per Cluster

The hub cluster runs the control components. Site clusters only run agents and the data-path components. The site clusters connect to the hub API server. The hub never connects to a site cluster.

Component Hub Site Version
dr-hub Yes No Chart version
OCM cluster manager Yes No 1.3.1
OCM governance-policy addon Yes Addon agents v0.18.0
OCM ocm-controller Yes Addon agent Bundled
Ramen hub operator Yes No Pinned by digest
OCM klusterlet (registration and work agents) No Yes 1.3.1
dr-agent (OCM addon, namespace simplyblock-dr-agent) No Yes Chart version
Ramen DR cluster operator No Yes Pinned by digest
Ramen Recipe CRD No Yes Pinned
Velero with velero-plugin-for-aws and kubevirt-velero-plugin No Yes v1.16.1, v1.12.0, v0.8.0
Simplyblock storage, Simplyblock Operator, and CSI driver No Yes Installed separately
Snapshot controller and snapshot CRDs (with group snapshots) No Yes Installed with simplyblock
csi-addons CRDs and controller No Yes Installed with simplyblock

The exact versions of a release can be printed from the hub image:

Listing the pinned component versions
kubectl -n dr-simplyblock exec deploy/dr-hub -- dr-bootstrap render versions

The hub installs the site stack on every joining site. The individual components can be left out on a site that already runs them, as described in Opting Out of Site Stack Components.

The web console is optional on the hub: the Simplyblock Operator chart deploys it next to a simplyblock control plane, the hub chart deploys its DR-only mode (console.enabled). See Control Center.

Air-Gapped Installation

All manifests of the bootstrapped components are embedded in the dr-simplyblock image. Installing never downloads anything, neither manifests nor charts. Only container images are pulled.

For an air-gapped installation, the images are mirrored into a local registry, and the charts point to it:

  • Hub images: image.registry of the hub chart points to the mirror of quay.io/simplyblock-io.
  • Bootstrapped images: bootstrap.imageRegistry of the hub chart makes every bootstrapped component (OCM, Ramen, the site stack) pull from the mirror. It is stored in DRConfig.spec.bootstrap.imageRegistry.
  • Klusterlet images: images.registry of the spoke chart points to the mirror of quay.io/open-cluster-management.

General guidance on mirroring images is available in Air-Gapped Installation.

Installing on an Existing ACM or ODF Hub

On a hub where OCM and Ramen are already installed, for example, by Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) or OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF), the bootstrap is turned off with bootstrap.enabled=false. In this mode:

  • No bootstrap: The chart installs neither OCM nor Ramen, and dr-hub does not deliver the site stack.
  • Ramen configuration: dr-hub does not manage the Ramen hub configuration (DRConfig.spec.ramen.managed is false). Protection plans must reference an existing Ramen S3 profile with spec.s3Profile instead of declaring the stores of the sites with spec.s3Profiles.
  • Addon rollout: The dr-agent addon is rolled out by agent.installStrategy, either manually (a ManagedClusterAddOn named dr-agent in each cluster namespace) or through OCM Placements.

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