ATTENTION: this card is blocked by SPLAT-1158 (implementing the workflow proposed in https://docs.providers.openshift.org/platform-external )

Background

As a followup to SPLAT-1158 and  SPLAT-1425, we should create an cluster with platform type "External" and workflows/steps/jobs that run on vSphere infrastructure using regular OpenShift CI e2e workflow, using the provisioning steps proposed in the docs.providers (https://docs.providers.openshift.org/platform-external).

There are currently a few platform "External" steps (install) that are associated with vSphere, but supposedly only OPCT (need more investigation) conformance workflow is using it.

in the ci-operator, these should be used as reference for building a new test that will deploy OpenShift on vSphere using platform "External" with and without CCM. This will be similar to the vSphere platform "None" (and platform "External" from SPLAT-1782.

Steps

• research existing platform external steps and workflows using by OPCT, and if there is using regular e2e workflow.
• create/aggregate steps to deploy a platform External for vSphere
• create a new workflow/chain to capture a full test run using regular e2e workflow
• create a new job in ci-operator to run as a periodic test, once a week to begin with
• review if OPCT jobs needs to be updated
   

Caveats:

Currently there is a workflow "upi-vsphere-platform-external-ccm" but it isn't used for any jobs. In other hand, there are a few workflows on OPCT Conformance using the step "upi-vsphere-platform-external-ovn-pre" to install a cluster on vSphere using platform type external.

Recently in SPLAT-1425 the regular e2e step incorporated support to platform external type, we need to create an workflow consuming the default OCP CI e2e workflow to get signals using the same workflow as the other platforms, and engineers are familiar.

Stakeholders

• openshift eng

Definition of Done

• platform External test is passing on vSphere

• Docs

• n/a

• Testing

• n/a