Chapter 2. New features and enhancements

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

2.1. Increased flexibility in deployment

Customers can now set the OSD size during deployment according to their environment requirements and are allowed to increase the capacity only in the increment of the initial OSD size set. This feature is available only on OCP 4.3.2 or later.

Three different OSD capacities that are now allowed at the time of storage cluster creation are:

  • 0.5 TiB (Small Scale)
  • 2 TiB (Standard)
  • 4 TiB (Large Scale)

For more information, see Supported Configurations in Planning your deployment guide.

2.2. Deployment using local storage devices

[Technology preview feature] Red hat OpenShift Container Storage can now be deployed using local storage devices to provide attached storage on the following platforms:

  • Amazon EC2 storage optimized instances
  • Bare metal
  • VMware direct-attached drives

The Amazon EC2, bare metal, and VMware clusters can also be expanded to increase the storage capacity.

For more information, see Installing OpenShift Container Storage on local storage devices, Scaling up storage by adding capacity to your OpenShift Container Storage nodes using local storage devices, and Adding a node on a local storage device.

2.3. Enhanced User Interface

The OpenShift console’s Storage section has been modified to create object bucket claims and configure object buckets using the Multicloud Object Gateway.

The revised Add Capacity page design includes a storage class selection for the user as well as a clear and consistent user experience with a simplified interface for installing and performing dashboard operations.

2.4. Multicloud Object Gateway

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage now supports Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket policies. Bucket policies allow you to grant users access permissions for buckets and the objects in them. For more information, see Bucket policies in the Multicloud Object Gateway section of the Managing OpenShift Container Storage Guide.
  • IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) is now an available backingstore in the Multicloud Object Gateway.
  • Object Bucket Claims can now be created using the OpenShift Console user interface. For more information, see Creating an Object Bucket Claim using the Multicloud Object Gateway user interface section of the Managing OpenShift Container Storage Guide.

2.5. Seamless upgrade process from OpenShift Container Storage version 4.2 to version 4.3

OpenShift Container Storage 4.2 customers now have an easy to use straight forward method for upgrading their existing clusters to OpenShift Container Storage 4.3.

For more information, see Updating OpenShift Container Storage.