Chapter 1. Introduction
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage is software-defined storage that is optimized for container environments. It runs as an operator on OpenShift Container Platform to provide highly integrated and simplified persistent storage management for containers.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage is integrated into the latest Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform to address platform services, application portability, and persistence challenges. It provides a highly scalable backend for the next generation of cloud-native applications, built on a new technology stack that includes Red Hat Ceph Storage, the Rook.io Operator, and NooBaa’s Multicloud Object Gateway technology.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage provides a trusted, enterprise-grade application development environment that simplifies and enhances the user experience across the application lifecycle in a number of ways:
- Provides block storage for databases.
- Shared file storage for continuous integration, messaging, and data aggregation.
- Object storage for cloud-first development, archival, backup, and media storage.
- Scale applications and data exponentially.
- Attach and detach persistent data volumes at an accelerated rate.
- Stretch clusters across multiple data-centers or availability zones.
- Establish a comprehensive application container registry.
- Support the next generation of OpenShift workloads such as Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Internet of Things (IoT).
- Dynamically provision not only application containers, but data service volumes and containers, as well as additional OpenShift Container Platform nodes, Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes and other infrastructure services.
1.1. About this release
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 (RHBA-2020:5606 and RHBA-2020:5605) is now available. New enhancements, features, and known issues that pertain to OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 are included in this topic.
Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 is supported on the latest Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform version. For more information, see Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage Supportability and Interoperability Guide.
OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 is an Extended Update Support (EUS) release. More information on Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage EUS is available in OpenShift Life Cycle, under layered products, and OpenShift EUS Overview.
With the release of OpenShift Container Storage 4.6, version 4.3 is now end of life. For more information, see the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Life Cycle Policy.
