Chapter 2. New features and enhancements

This release adds improvements related to the following components and concepts.

2.1. Installation and upgrade

Operator-based installation and configuration

Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage can be deployed on an existing Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform worker nodes using the OpenShift Web Console. Deploying Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage involves two parts:

  • Installing Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage operator from the Operator Hub.

  • Creating Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage service which requires selecting three worker nodes and results in the creation of a new storage cluster of three 2 TiB volumes with one volume per worker node. The default configuration uses a replication factor of 3 providing approximately 2 TiB of usable storage.

    For more information, see Deploying Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage can be used to provide storage for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform services, such as image registry, monitoring, and logging. Also, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform applications can be backed to use Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage. For more information, see Configure storage for OpenShift Container Platform services.

Deployment and upgrade automation

Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage provides complete new deployment automation with a few clicks, based on OpenShift Lifecycle Management (OLM). Using OLM enables optional over the air automatic updates, notifications of available updates, and easy deployment.

IPI and UPI

In Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.2, there are two primary installation experiences: Full stack automation (IPI) and pre-existing infrastructure (UPI).

With full stack automation, the installer controls all areas of the installation including infrastructure provisioning with an opinionated best practices deployment on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.2 supports Amazon Web Services with full stack automation.

With pre-existing infrastructure deployments, administrators are responsible for creating and managing their own infrastructure allowing greater customization and operational flexibility. Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.2 supports Amazon Web Services and VMware with pre-existing infrastructure deployments.

Red Hat cluster application migration tool and Red Hat control plane migration assistant

See Where can I find Red Hat Cluster Application Migration Tool (CAM) and Red Hat Control Plane Migration Assistant (CPMA) now that OpenShift 4.2 has GA’ed for information about CAM and CPMA.

2.2. Multicloud Object Gateway

Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.2 provides a new multicloud object service, including deduplication, encryption, and compression, providing multicloud and hybrid capabilities for object workloads.

By default, Multicloud Object Gateway uses a default backing store which is cloud native or RGW.

Multicloud Object Gateway can also use persistent volume (PV) storage directly, to scale locally and remotely. For more information, see Multicloud Object Gateway.

2.3. Web Console

Persistent Storage dashboard

The Persistent Storage dashboard shows the state of OpenShift Container Storage as a whole, as well as the state of persistent volumes. For more information, see Persistent storage dashboard.

Object Service dashboard

The Object Service dashboard shows the state of the Multicloud Object Gateway and any object claims in the cluster. For more information, see Object Service dashboard.