Chapter 1. Architecture overview Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is a cloud-based Kubernetes container platform. The foundation of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is based on Kubernetes and therefore shares the same technology. To learn more about Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS and Kubernetes, see product architecture . 1.1. Glossary of common terms for Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS architecture This glossary defines common terms that are used in the architecture content. access policies A set of roles that dictate how users, applications, and entities within a cluster interact with one another. An access policy increases cluster security. admission plugins Admission plugins enforce security policies, resource limitations, or configuration requirements. authentication To control access to a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster, an administrator with the dedicated-admin role can configure user authentication to ensure only approved users access the cluster. To interact with a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster, you must authenticate with the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS API. You can authenticate by providing an OAuth access token or an X.509 client certificate in your requests to the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS API. bootstrap A temporary machine that runs minimal Kubernetes and deploys the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS control plane. certificate signing requests (CSRs) A resource requests a denoted signer to sign a certificate. This request might get approved or denied. Cluster Version Operator (CVO) An Operator that checks with the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS Update Service to see the valid updates and update paths based on current component versions and information in the graph. compute nodes Nodes that are responsible for executing workloads for cluster users. Compute nodes are also known as worker nodes. configuration drift A situation where the configuration on a node does not match what the machine config specifies. containers Lightweight and executable images that consist of software and all of its dependencies. Because containers virtualize the operating system, you can run containers anywhere, such as data centers, public or private clouds, and local hosts. container orchestration engine Software that automates the deployment, management, scaling, and networking of containers. container workloads Applications that are packaged and deployed in containers. control groups (cgroups) Partitions sets of processes into groups to manage and limit the resources processes consume. control plane A container orchestration layer that exposes the API and interfaces to define, deploy, and manage the life cycle of containers. Control planes are also known as control plane machines. CRI-O A Kubernetes native container runtime implementation that integrates with the operating system to deliver an efficient Kubernetes experience. deployment A Kubernetes resource object that maintains the life cycle of an application. Dockerfile A text file that contains the user commands to perform on a terminal to assemble the image. hosted control planes A Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS feature that enables hosting a control plane on the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster from its data plane and workers. This model performs the following actions: Optimize infrastructure costs required for the control planes. Improve the cluster creation time. Enable hosting the control plane using the Kubernetes native high level primitives. For example, deployments and stateful sets. Allow a strong network segmentation between the control plane and workloads. hybrid cloud deployments Deployments that deliver a consistent platform across bare metal, virtual, private, and public cloud environments. This offers speed, agility, and portability. Ignition A utility that RHCOS uses to manipulate disks during initial configuration. It completes common disk tasks, including partitioning disks, formatting partitions, writing files, and configuring users. installer-provisioned infrastructure The installation program deploys and configures the infrastructure that the cluster runs on. kubelet A primary node agent that runs on each node in the cluster to ensure that containers are running in a pod. kubernetes manifest Specifications of a Kubernetes API object in a JSON or YAML format. A configuration file can include deployments, config maps, secrets, daemon sets. Machine Config Daemon (MCD) A daemon that regularly checks the nodes for configuration drift. Machine Config Operator (MCO) An Operator that applies the new configuration to your cluster machines. machine config pools (MCP) A group of machines, such as control plane components or user workloads, that are based on the resources that they handle. metadata Additional information about cluster deployment artifacts. microservices An approach to writing software. Applications can be separated into the smallest components, independent from each other by using microservices. mirror registry A registry that holds the mirror of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS images. monolithic applications Applications that are self-contained, built, and packaged as a single piece. namespaces A namespace isolates specific system resources that are visible to all processes. Inside a namespace, only processes that are members of that namespace can see those resources. networking Network information of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster. node A worker machine in the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster. A node is either a virtual machine (VM) or a physical machine. OpenShift CLI ( oc ) A command line tool to run Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS commands on the terminal. OpenShift Update Service (OSUS) For clusters with internet access, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides over-the-air updates by using an OpenShift update service as a hosted service located behind public APIs. OpenShift image registry A registry provided by Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS to manage images. Operator The preferred method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application in a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster. An Operator takes human operational knowledge and encodes it into software that is packaged and shared with customers. OperatorHub A platform that contains various Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS Operators to install. Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) OLM helps you to install, update, and manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes native applications. OLM is an open source toolkit designed to manage Operators in an effective, automated, and scalable way. OSTree An upgrade system for Linux-based operating systems that performs atomic upgrades of complete file system trees. OSTree tracks meaningful changes to the file system tree using an addressable object store, and is designed to complement existing package management systems. over-the-air (OTA) updates The Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS Update Service (OSUS) provides over-the-air updates to Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS). pod One or more containers with shared resources, such as volume and IP addresses, running in your Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster. A pod is the smallest compute unit defined, deployed, and managed. private registry Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS can use any server implementing the container image registry API as a source of the image which allows the developers to push and pull their private container images. public registry Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS can use any server implementing the container image registry API as a source of the image which allows the developers to push and pull their public container images. RHEL Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS Cluster Manager A managed service where you can install, modify, operate, and upgrade your Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS clusters. RHEL Quay Container Registry A Quay.io container registry that serves most of the container images and Operators to Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS clusters. replication controllers An asset that indicates how many pod replicas are required to run at a time. role-based access control (RBAC) A key security control to ensure that cluster users and workloads have only access to resources required to execute their roles. route Routes expose a service to allow for network access to pods from users and applications outside the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS instance. scaling The increasing or decreasing of resource capacity. service A service exposes a running application on a set of pods. Source-to-Image (S2I) image An image created based on the programming language of the application source code in Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS to deploy applications. storage Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS supports many types of storage for cloud providers. You can manage container storage for persistent and non-persistent data in a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster. Telemetry A component to collect information such as size, health, and status of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS. template A template describes a set of objects that can be parameterized and processed to produce a list of objects for creation by Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS. web console A user interface (UI) to manage Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS. worker node Nodes that are responsible for executing workloads for cluster users. Worker nodes are also known as compute nodes. Additional resources For more information on storage, see Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS storage . For more information on authentication, see Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS authentication . For more information on Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM), see OLM . 1.2. Understanding how Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS differs from OpenShift Container Platform Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS uses the same code base as OpenShift Container Platform but is installed in an opinionated way to be optimized for performance, scalability, and security. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is a fully managed service; therefore, many of the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS components and settings that you manually set up in OpenShift Container Platform are set up for you by default. Review the following differences between Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS and a standard installation of OpenShift Container Platform on your own infrastructure: OpenShift Container Platform Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS The customer installs and configures OpenShift Container Platform. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is installed through Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager or the ROSA CLI ( rosa ) and in a standardized way that is optimized for performance, scalability, and security. Customers can choose their computing resources. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is hosted and managed in a public cloud (Amazon Web Services) provided by the customer. Customers have top-level administrative access to the infrastructure. Customers have a built-in administrator group ( dedicated-admin ), though the top-level administration access is available. Customers can use all supported features and configuration settings available in OpenShift Container Platform. Some OpenShift Container Platform features and configuration settings might not be available or changeable in Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS. You set up control plane components such as the API server and etcd on machines that get the control role. You can modify the control plane components, but are responsible for backing up, restoring, and making control plane data highly available. Red Hat sets up the control plane and manages the control plane components for you. The control plane is highly available. You are responsible for updating the underlying infrastructure for the control plane and worker nodes. You can use the OpenShift web console to update OpenShift Container Platform versions. Red Hat automatically notifies the customer when updates are available. You can manually or automatically schedule updates in OpenShift Cluster Manager. Support is provided based on the terms of your Red Hat subscription or cloud provider. Engineered, operated, and supported by Red Hat with a 99.95% uptime SLA and 24x7 coverage. For details, see Red Hat Enterprise Agreement Appendix 4 (Online Subscription Services) . 1.3. About the control plane The control plane manages the worker nodes and the pods in your cluster. You can configure nodes with the use of machine config pools (MCPs). MCPs are groups of machines, such as control plane components or user workloads, that are based on the resources that they handle. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS assigns different roles to hosts. These roles define the function of a machine in a cluster. The cluster contains definitions for the standard control plane and worker role types. You can use Operators to package, deploy, and manage services on the control plane. Operators are important components in Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS because they provide the following services: Perform health checks Provide ways to watch applications Manage over-the-air updates Ensure applications stay in the specified state 1.4. About containerized applications for developers As a developer, you can use different tools, methods, and formats to develop your containerized application based on your unique requirements, for example: Use various build-tool, base-image, and registry options to build a simple container application. Use supporting components such as OperatorHub and templates to develop your application. Package and deploy your application as an Operator. You can also create a Kubernetes manifest and store it in a Git repository. Kubernetes works on basic units called pods. A pod is a single instance of a running process in your cluster. Pods can contain one or more containers. You can create a service by grouping a set of pods and their access policies. Services provide permanent internal IP addresses and host names for other applications to use as pods are created and destroyed. Kubernetes defines workloads based on the type of your application. 1.5. About admission plugins You can use admission plugins to regulate how Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS functions. After a resource request is authenticated and authorized, admission plugins intercept the resource request to the master API to validate resource requests and to ensure that scaling policies are adhered to. Admission plugins are used to enforce security policies, resource limitations, configuration requirements, and other settings.

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