Chapter 1. New and enhanced features
This section provides an overview of features that have been added to or significantly enhanced in this release of Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO).
RHOSO improves substantially over previous versions of Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP). The RHOSO control plane is natively hosted on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP) and the external RHEL-based data plane and workloads are managed with Ansible. This shift in architecture aligns with Red Hat’s platform infrastructure strategy. You can future proof your existing investments by using RHOCP as a hosting platform for all of your infrastructure services.
RHOSP 17.1 is the last version of the product to use the director-based OpenStack on OpenStack form-factor for the control plane.
1.1. Control plane new and enhanced features
- Control plane deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP)
The director-based undercloud is replaced by a control plane that is natively hosted on an RHOCP cluster and managed with the OpenStack Operator. The Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) control plane features include:
- Deployed in pods and governed by Kubernetes Operators.
- Deploys in minutes, consuming only a fraction of the CPU and RAM footprint required by earlier RHOSP releases.
- Takes advantage of native Kubernetes mechanisms for high availability.
- Features built-in monitoring based on RHOCP Observability.
1.2. Data plane new and enhanced features
- Ansible-managed data plane
The director-deployed overcloud is replaced by a data plane driven by the OpenStack Operator and executed by Ansible. RHOSO data plane features include:
-
The
OpenStackDataPlaneNodeSet
custom resource definition (CRD), which provides a highly parallel deployment model. -
Micro failure domains based on the
OpenStackDataPlaneNodeSet
CRD. If one or more node sets fail, the other node sets run to completion because there is no interdependency between node sets. - Faster deployment times compared to previous RHOSP versions.
-
Highly configurable data plane setup based on the
OpenStackDataPlaneNodeSet
andOpenStackDataPlaneService
CRDs.
-
The
1.3. Networking new and enhanced features
- Egress QoS support at NIC level using DCB (Technology Preview)
Egress quality of service (QoS) at the network interface controller (NIC) level uses the Data Center Bridging Capability Exchange (DCBX) protocol to configure egress QoS at the NIC level in the host. It triggers the configuration and provides the information directly from the top of rack (ToR) switch that peers with the host NIC. This capability, combined with egress QoS and OVS/OVN, enables end-to-end egress QoS.
This is a Technology Preview feature. A Technology Preview feature might not be fully implemented and tested. Some features might be absent, incomplete, or not work as expected.
- Configuring and deploying networking with Kubernetes NMState Operator and the RHEL NetworkManager service (Technology preview)
-
The RHOSO bare-metal network deployment uses
os-net-config
with a Kubernetes NMState Operator and NetworkManager back end. Therefore, administrators can use the Kubernetes NMState Operator,nmstate
, and the RHEL NetworkManager CLI toolnmcli
to configure and deploy networks on the data plane, instead of legacyifcfg
files andnetwork-init-scripts
.
1.4. Storage new and enhanced features
- Integration with external Red Hat Ceph Storage (RHCS) 7 clusters
- You can integrate RHOSO with external RHCS 7 clusters to include RHCS capabilities with your deployment.
- Distributed image import
- RHOSO 18.0 introduces distributed image import for the Image service (glance). With this feature, you do not need to configure a shared staging area for different API workers to access images that are imported to the Image service. Now the API worker that owns the image data is the same API worker that performs the image import.
- Block Storage service (cinder) backup and restore for thin volumes
- The backup service for the Block Storage service service now preserves sparseness when restoring a backup to a new volume. This feature ensures that restored volumes use the same amount of storage as the backed up volume. It does not apply to RBD backups, which use a different mechanism to preserve sparseness.
- Support for RHCS RBD deferred deletion
- RHOSO 18.0 introduces Block Storage service and Image service RBD deferred deletion, which improves flexibility in the way RBD snapshot dependencies are managed. With deferred deletion, you can delete a resource such as an image, volume, or snapshot even if there are active dependencies.
- Shared File Systems service (manila) CephFS NFS driver with Ganesha Active/Active
- The CephFS-NFS driver for the Shared File Systems service now consumes an active/active Ganesha cluster by default, improving both the scalability and high availability of the Ceph NFS service.
- Unified OpenStack client parity with native Shared File Systems service client
-
The Shared File Systems service now fully supports the
openstack
client command line interface.
1.5. Security new and enhanced features
This section outlines the top new and enhanced features for RHOSO security services.
- FIPS enabled by default
- Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) is enabled by default when RHOSO is installed on a FIPS enabled RHOCP cluster in new deployments.
- You do not enable or disable FIPS in your RHOSO configuration. You control the FIPS state in the underlying RHOCP cluster.
- TLS-everywhere enabled by default
- After deployment, you can configure public services with your own certificates. You can deploy without TLS-everywhere and enable it later. You cannot disable TLS-everywhere after you enable it.
- Secure RBAC enabled by default
- The Secure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policy framework is enabled by default in RHOSO deployments.
- Key Manager (barbican) enabled by default
- The Key Manager is enabled by default in RHOSO deployments.
1.6. High availability new and enhanced features
- High availability managed natively in RHOCP
- RHOSO high availability (HA) uses RHOCP primitives instead of RHOSP services to manage failover and recovery deployment.
1.7. Observability new and enhanced features
- Enhanced Openstack Observability
-
Enhanced dashboards provide unified observability with visualizations that are natively integrated into the RHOCP Observability UI. These include the
node_exporter
agent that exposes metrics to the Prometheus monitoring system. -
In RHOSO 18.0, the
node_exporter
agent replaces thecollectd
daemon, and Prometheus replaces the Time series database (Gnocchi).
-
Enhanced dashboards provide unified observability with visualizations that are natively integrated into the RHOCP Observability UI. These include the
- Logging
- The OpenStack logging capability is significantly enhanced. You can now collect logs from control plane and Compute nodes, and use RHOCP Logging to store them in-cluster via Loki log store, or forward them off-cluster to an external log store. Logs that are stored in-cluster with Loki can be visualized in the RHOCP Observability UI console.
- Service Telemetry Framework deprecation
- The Observability product for previous versions of RHOSP is Service Telemetry Framework (STF). With the release of RHOSO 18.0, STF is Deprecated and in maintenance mode. There are no feature enhancements for STF after STF 1.5.4, and STF status reaches end of life at the end of the RHOSP 17.1 lifecycle. Maintenance versions of STF will be released on new EUS versions of RHOCP until the end of the RHOSP 17.1 lifecycle.
1.8. Dashboard new and enhanced features
- Pinned CPUs
- The OpenStack Dashboard service (horizon) now shows how many pinned CPUs (pCPUs) are used and available to use in your environment.
1.9. Documentation new and enhanced features
The documentation library has been restructured to align with the user lifecycle of RHOSO. Each guide incorporates content from one or more product areas that work together to cover end-to-end tasks. The titles are organized in categories for each stage in the user lifecycle of RHOSO.
1.9.1. Documentation categories
The following categories are published with RHOSO 18.0:
- Plan
Information about the release, requirements, and how to get started before deployment. This category includes the following guides:
- Release notes
- Planning your deployment
- Integrating partner content
- Prepare, deploy, configure, test
Procedures for deploying an initial RHOSO environment, customizing the control plane and data plane, configuring validated architectures, storage, and testing the deployed environment. This category includes the following guides:
- Deploying Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift
- Customizing the Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift deployment
- Deploying a Network Functions Virtualization environment
- Deploying a hyper-converged infrastructure environment
- Configuring persistent storage
- Validating and troubleshooting the deployed cloud
- Adopt and update
Information about performing minor updates to the latest maintenance release of RHOSO, and procedures for adopting a Red Hat OpenStack Platform 17.1 cloud. This category includes the following guides:
- Updating your environment to the latest maintenance release
- Customize and scale
Procedures for configuring and customizing specific components of the deployed environment. These procedures must be done before you start to operate the deployment. This category includes the following guides:
- Configuring the Compute service for instance creation
- Configuring data plane networking
- Configuring load balancing as a service
- Customizing persistent storage
- Configuring security services
- Auto-scaling for instances
- Configuring high availability
- Manage resources and maintain the cloud
Procedures that you can perform during ongoing operation of the RHOSO environment. This category includes the following guides:
- Creating and managing instances
- Performing storage operations
- Performing security operations
- Managing cloud resources with the Dashboard
1.9.2. Documentation in progress
The following titles are being reviewed and will be published asynchronously:
- Adopting a Red Hat OpenStack Platform 17.1 deployment (Technology Preview)
- Managing networking resources
- Configuring the Bare Metal Provisioning service
- Configuring load balancing as a service (Technology Preview)
- Command line interface (CLI) reference
- Configuration reference
1.9.3. RHOCP feature documentation
Features that are supported and managed natively in RHOCP are documented in the RHOCP documentation library. The RHOSO documentation includes links to relevant RHOCP documentation where needed.
1.9.4. Earlier documentation versions
The RHOSO documentation page shows documentation for version 18.0 and later. For earlier supported versions of RHOSP, see Product Documentation for Red Hat OpenStack Platform 17.1.