Chapter 1. Introduction to OpenShift Data Foundation
Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation is a highly integrated collection of cloud storage and data services for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. It is available as part of the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Service Catalog, packaged as an operator to facilitate simple deployment and management.
Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation services are primarily made available to applications by way of storage classes that represent the following components:
- Block storage devices, catering primarily to database workloads. Prime examples include Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform logging and monitoring, and PostgreSQL.
Block storage should be used for any worklaod only when it does not require sharing the data across multiple containers.
- Shared and distributed file system, catering primarily to software development, messaging, and data aggregation workloads. Examples include Jenkins build sources and artifacts, Wordpress uploaded content, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform registry, and messaging using JBoss AMQ.
- Multicloud object storage, featuring a lightweight S3 API endpoint that can abstract the storage and retrieval of data from multiple cloud object stores.
- On premises object storage, featuring a robust S3 API endpoint that scales to tens of petabytes and billions of objects, primarily targeting data intensive applications. Examples include the storage and access of row, columnar, and semi-structured data with applications like Spark, Presto, Red Hat AMQ Streams (Kafka), and even machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow and Pytorch.
Running PostgresSQL workload on CephFS persistent volume is not supported and it is recommended to use RADOS Block Device (RBD) volume. For more information, see the knowledgebase solution ODF Database Workloads Must Not Use CephFS PVs/PVCs.
Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation version 4.x integrates a collection of software projects, including:
- Ceph, providing block storage, a shared and distributed file system, and on-premises object storage
- Ceph CSI, to manage provisioning and lifecycle of persistent volumes and claims
- NooBaa, providing a Multicloud Object Gateway
- OpenShift Data Foundation, Rook-Ceph, and NooBaa operators to initialize and manage OpenShift Data Foundation services.
