OpenShift Container Storage 4.3: Bringing dynamic storage to the cloud

Running your applications in the cloud isn’t just a simple act of building software as has always been done. Just as with moving from traditional to functional programming models and languages, moving traditional applications to the cloud can mean whole-sale rearchitecting as the basic necessities like state and local storage are yanked out from under the developer like so many rugs.

One way to alleviate some of these worries is to implement a storage and data layer into your cloud. We’ve been working under this assumption for a great many years, and the fruits of those labors were fully realized in the release of OpenShift Container Storage (OCS) 4.2. Today, we announce the release of OpenShift Container Storage 4.3. This update spread our scalable and robust data service to AWS, VMware, and bare metal, while laying the groundwork for syncing up release schedules and version numbers with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Eran Tamir, OpenShift Container Storage Product Manager, said that, “From the customer’s point of view, we are taking advantage of OperatorHub. You deploy storage like any other application. It’s very easy and a great user experience. Once you deploy this storage data layer, you get storage services out of the box, and you get exactly the same experience regardless of the environment. On prem, you can create dynamic and persistent volumes, as well as object bucket claims. Everything is out of the box. You get the same experience regardless of cloud provider or your on-prem infrastructure. If you take the same OpenShift deployment with OCS running in each platform, you keep using the exact same tools. There is no learning curve for developers, and no learning curve for DevOps. The starting point is going to Operator Hub and clicking to install,” said Tamir.

Tamir went on, “Whenever we are talking about our data service, It’s important to say that. We are targeting transactional workloads like databases, messaging and anything that requires low latency, with highly scalable block storage without compromising the enterprise high availability. We also target ML/AI with shared file storage and Object service.”

Important New Generally Available Features

Greater Deployment Flexibility - With the release of OCS 4.2 three months ago, we built a new foundation for storage in OpenShift. From this foundation, and with feedback from customers, we will continue to release OCS with deployment options that offer greater flexibility in differing architectural patterns and use cases. For example, in this release, users are now able to set an initial capacity for cluster creation to match their existing resources (0.5-4TiB). This is important for small Proof of Concept environments as well as small clusters in general. 

Simplified User Interface - The "Add Capacity" page has been redesigned to include a storage class selection and consistent user experience during installation for any certified product.

Multicloud Object Gateway Enhancements - With each new release we will also be extending the platform support and features for the new Multicloud Object Gateway:

• User Interface support for AWS S3 compatible bucket policies 

  We now allow administrators to grant users access permissions for buckets and the objects in them through the UI. This simplifies management and administration of the bucket policies and is important for web applications running on OpenShift that need to keep their assets in an object service. 

• IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) as a new backing store 

  By supporting IBM COS as a new backing store, we now offer even more options for cloud infrastructure deployments. This will enable current and future IBM COS customers the ability to mirror data between On-Premise and IBM Cloud COS, leverage existing object store investments, further extending multicloud data protection and agility. 

• New OpenShift Console Pages for Object Buckets

  The user experience has been improved with new configuration pages in OpenShift Console for Object Bucket Claims which allows easier creation of the object buckets.

Important New Technology Preview Features

Bare metal platform support - In addition to VMware and AWS, we are extending OCS support for bare metal with local storage. OpenShift deployments on bare metal are growing, driven by application workloads and performance requirements. 

For further deployment flexibility, new deployments can now use local storage devices to provide storage for OCS on VMware and AWS:

• VMware direct-attached drives - In addition to VSAN and VMFS datastore support introduced in OpenShift Container Storage 4.2, we now support VMware direct-attached drives for VMware deployments.

• Amazon I3 storage optimized instances - Targeting mainly Cloudbursting use cases as well as the accompanying test environments, due to the ephemeral storage in this instance type.

Additional Resources

OpenShift Container Storage: openshift.com/storage

Release Notes for OpenShift Container Storage 4.3

OpenShift | Storage YouTube Playlist

OpenShift Commons ‘All Things Data’ YouTube Playlist

Feedback

To find out more about OpenShift Container Storage or to take a test drive, visit https://www.openshift.com/products/container-storage/.

If you would like to learn more about what the OpenShift Container Storage team is up to or provide feedback on any of the new 4.3 features, take this brief 3-minute survey.