Chapter 2. New features and enhancements

Encrypted storage data

Administrators can now choose to encrypt all data in the OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 cluster as part of the deployment process. See Data encryption options for more information, and follow the OpenShift Container Storage documentation for deploying on your cloud or bare metal environment.

Flexible environment for applications

Users can now create multiple storage pools which map to the custom storage classes.

Expanding Persistent Volume Claims

OpenShift Container Storage 4.5 introduced the ability to expand Persistent Volume Claims as a Technology Preview feature providing more flexibility in the management of persistent storage resources.This feature is fully supported for expanding new or pre-existing persistent volume claims as of OpenShift Container Storage 4.6.

Unified view of multicloud object buckets

Associate your object buckets with a namespace bucket to see all objects across the associated buckets, while only writing to your current preferred storage provider. See Configuring namespace buckets for more information.

Automated scaling of Multicloud Object Gateway endpoint pods

Improved performance and serviceability to manage resources for S3 load with provision for automatic scaling when experiencing load increases or decreases.

Automated device discovery with filter

With this release, it is possible to view (or filter) all the available storage devices in the UI while deploying and adding devices for OpenShift Container Storage using the local storage devices in VMware and bare metal infrastructures.

User-friendly method to replace a failed local storage device.

With this release, users can replace their failed local storage devices in the VMware and bare metal infrastructures using UI. Users are provided with an inventory list of the disks where they can find the status of the disk and initiate the replacement of a failed device. Also, failed disk replacement can be initiated from the dashboard and alert notifications.

Volume snapshot

Developers and administrators can now take a volume snapshot which is the state of the storage volume in a cluster at a particular point in time. These snapshots help to use storage more efficiently by not having to make a full copy each time and can be used as building blocks for developing an application. The volume snapshots can be restored as a new persistent volume claim (PVC).

Volume Clone

Clone an OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 persistent volume, as well as use the cloned persistent volume for read/write operations in another application (on RHOCP 4.6) with no performance or application impact.

RADOS Gateway status and health

The Object Service dashboard now provides status and health information for the RADOS Gateway. For more information, see Viewing metrics in the Object Service dashboard.

Improved PV creation time

The Ceph CSI driver, ceph-csi, has moved to use the native Go binding against Red Hat Ceph Storage instead of invoking the ceph command line. This leads to improved PV creation time.

MDS and RGW configurations can be provided after external cluster installation

Previously, MDS and RGW configurations were accepted only at the initial time of external cluster creation. With this update, MDS and RGW configurations can be provided at a later point by updating the external secret. The OpenShift Container Storage Operator reconciles the changes and updates the resources accordingly. For more information, see Adding file and object storage to an existing external OpenShift Container Storage cluster.

Telemetry

New usage information regarding RADOS Block Device (RBD) and Ceph File System (CephFS) is now collected via Telemetry. For more information, see Information collected by Telemetry.

Improved uninstallation methods

User-friendly method to uninstall OpenShift Container Storage 4.6 so that there is no data, etc., remaining.

Consistent and comprehensive documentation

Re-organized the managing guide into smaller books so that relevant information can be easily found.

Seamless upgrade process from OpenShift Container Storage version 4.x to version 4.6

OpenShift Container Storage customers now have an easy to use method for upgrading their existing clusters to OpenShift Container Storage 4.6. For more information, see Updating OpenShift Container Storage.