7.2.2. Base image options

The base image you choose to build your application on contains a set of software that resembles a Linux system to your application. When you build your own image, your software is placed into that file system and sees that file system as though it were looking at its operating system. Choosing this base image has major impact on how secure, efficient and upgradeable your container is in the future.

Red Hat provides a new set of base images referred to as Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI). These images are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and are similar to base images that Red Hat has offered in the past, with one major difference: they are freely redistributable without a Red Hat subscription. As a result, you can build your application on UBI images without having to worry about how they are shared or the need to create different images for different environments.

These UBI images have standard, init, and minimal versions. You can also use the Red Hat Software Collections images as a foundation for applications that rely on specific runtime environments such as Node.js, Perl, or Python. Special versions of some of these runtime base images are referred to as Source-to-Image (S2I) images. With S2I images, you can insert your code into a base image environment that is ready to run that code.

S2I images are available for you to use directly from the OpenShift Container Platform web UI. In the Developer perspective, navigate to the +Add view and in the Developer Catalog tile, view all of the available services in the Developer Catalog.

图 7.2. Choose S2I base images for apps that need specific runtimes