Chapter 2. New Features

Multicloud Object Gateway (MCG) now has the capability to share data between legacy applications and the cloud native applications, enables easier pipelines in the case of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The object storage capabilities of MCG is expanded to allow access to file systems using Amazon Web Services S3 protocol thereby enabling sharing of data for artificial intelligence and machine learning. For more information, see Sharing legacy application data with cloud native application using S3 protocol.

For cluster-wide encryption, you can use the Kubernetes authentication method when using HashiCorp Vault Key Management Service for automatic renewal of expired tokens and native integration for a more comprehensive encryption solution. This feature is already available for Persistent Volume encryption. For more information, see Enabling cluster-wide encryption with KMS using the Kubernetes authentication method.

OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) now supports general availability of deploying the ODF with minimum configuration when the standard deployment resource requirement is not met. For more information, see minimum deployment resource requirements in the Planning Guide.

OpenShift Data Foundation on IBM Cloud platform now supports Hyper Protect Crypto Services (HPCS) Key Management Services (KMS) as the encryption solution in addition to HashiCorp Vault KMS. HPCS is built on FIPS 140-2 Level 4-certified hardware.

In this release, when you deploy a standalone Multicloud Object Gateway using local storage devices, you have an option to select a storage class from the user interface.

In external mode, Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation exposes the Red Hat Ceph Storage services running outside of the OpenShift Container Platform cluster as storage classes. You can set up Red Hat Ceph Storage on an x86 platform-based OCP environment, and then use it for underlying storage purposes with Openshift Data Foundation on IBM Power and IBM Z infrastructure.