Chapter 2. An overview of OpenShift Data Foundation architecture

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation provides services for, and can run internally from Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Figure 2.1. Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation architecture

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation supports deployment into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters deployed on Installer Provisioned Infrastructure or User Provisioned Infrastructure. For details about these two approaches, see OpenShift Container Platform - Installation process. To know more about interoperability of components for the Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, see the interoperability matrix.

OpenShift Data Foundation uses failure domain configuration to determine how data replicas are distributed across the cluster. A failure domain represents a physical boundary, such as a host, rack, or availability zone within which replicas of the data are spread to ensure high availability. OpenShift Data Foundation automatically identifies these failure domains based on the labels assigned to the storage nodes. For more information, see the knowledgebase article, OpenShift Data Foundation internal topology aware failure domain configuration.

In internal mode, OpenShift Data Foundation enables read‑affinity by default to improve performance. This feature directs read operations to the nearest available OSD, reducing latency and minimizing cross-failure domain traffic. This behavior is especially valuable in public cloud environments, where it helps reduce expensive data transfers between Availability Zones. In stretched cluster deployments, read‑affinity also prioritizes the local datacenter to ensure efficient, localized data access.

For information about the architecture and lifecycle of OpenShift Container Platform, see OpenShift Container Platform architecture.