3.5. Single compared to multiple registries
A single shared Red Hat Quay registry can serve many clusters and data centers with organizations, RBAC, and geo-replication. You can avoid multiple distinct registries and reduce storage, infrastructure, and operational costs in most scenarios.
Many users consider running multiple, distinct registries. The preferred approach with Red Hat Quay is to have a single, shared registry:
- If you want a clear separation between development and production images, or a clear separation by content origin, for example, keeping third-party images distinct from internal ones, you can use organizations and repositories, combined with role-based access control (RBAC), to achieve the desired separation.
- Given that the image registry is a critical component in an enterprise environment, you may be tempted to use distinct deployments to test upgrades of the registry software to newer versions. The Red Hat Quay Operator updates the registry for patch releases as well as minor or major updates. This means that any complicated procedures are automated and, as a result, there is no requirement for you to provision multiple instances of the registry to test the upgrade.
- With Red Hat Quay, there is no need to have a separate registry for each cluster you deploy. Red Hat Quay is proven to work at scale at Quay.io, and can serve content to thousands of clusters.
- Even if you have deployments in multiple data centers, you can still use a single Red Hat Quay instance to serve content to multiple physically-close data centers, or use the HA functionality with load balancers to stretch across data centers. Alternatively, you can use the Red Hat Quay geo-replication feature to stretch across physically distant data centers. This requires the provisioning of a global load balancer or DNS-based geo-aware load balancing.
- One scenario where it may be appropriate to run multiple distinct registries, is when you want to specify different configuration for each registry.
In summary, running a shared registry helps you to save storage, infrastructure and operational costs, but a dedicated registry might be needed in specific circumstances.
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