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Welcome to the official OKD 4.12 documentation, where you can learn about OKD and start exploring its features.

To navigate the OKD 4.12 documentation, you can use one of the following methods:

  • Use the left navigation bar to browse the documentation.

  • Select the task that interests you from the contents of this Welcome page.

Cluster installer activities

Explore these OKD installation tasks.

  • Install a cluster on oVirt: You can deploy clusters on oVirt with a quick install or an install with customizations.

  • Install a cluster in a restricted network: If your cluster that uses user-provisioned infrastructure on AWS, GCP, or bare metal does not have full access to the internet, then mirror the OKD installation images and install a cluster in a restricted network.

  • Install a cluster in an existing network: If you use an existing Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in AWS or GCP or an existing VNet on Azure, you can install a cluster.

  • Install a private cluster: If your cluster does not require external internet access, you can install a private cluster on AWS, Azure, GCP, or IBM Cloud VPC Internet access is still required to access the cloud APIs and installation media.

  • Check installation logs: Access installation logs to evaluate issues that occur during OKD installation.

  • Access OKD: Use credentials output at the end of the installation process to log in to the OKD cluster from the command line or web console.

  • Install Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation: You can install Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation as an Operator to provide highly integrated and simplified persistent storage management for containers.

  • Install a cluster on Nutanix: You can install a cluster on your Nutanix instance that uses installer-provisioned infrastructure. This type of installation lets you use the installation program to deploy a cluster on infrastructure that the installation program provisions and the cluster maintains.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) image layering allows you to add new images on top of the base RHCOS image. This layering does not modify the base RHCOS image. Instead, it creates a custom layered image that includes all RHCOS functionality and adds additional functionality to specific nodes in the cluster.

Developer activities

Develop and deploy containerized applications with OKD. OKD is a platform for developing and deploying containerized applications. OKD documentation helps you:

  • Understand OKD development: Learn the different types of containerized applications, from simple containers to advanced Kubernetes deployments and Operators.

  • Work with projects: Create projects from the OKD web console or OpenShift CLI (oc) to organize and share the software you develop.

  • Work with applications:

  • Use the Developer perspective in the OKD web console to create and deploy applications.

  • Use the Topology view to see your applications, monitor status, connect and group components, and modify your code base.

  • Connect your workloads to backing services: The Service Binding Operator enables application developers to easily bind workloads with Operator-managed backing services by automatically collecting and sharing binding data with the workloads. The Service Binding Operator improves the development lifecycle with a consistent and declarative service binding method that prevents discrepancies in cluster environments.

  • Use the developer CLI tool (odo) : The odo CLI tool lets developers create single or multi-component applications easily and automates deployment, build, and service route configurations. It abstracts complex Kubernetes and OKD concepts, allowing you to focus on developing your applications.

  • Create CI/CD Pipelines: Pipelines are serverless, cloud-native, continuous integration and continuous deployment systems that run in isolated containers. Pipelines use standard Tekton custom resources to automate deployments and are designed for decentralized teams that work on microservice-based architecture.

  • Manage your infrastructure and application configurations: GitOps is a declarative way to implement continuous deployment for cloud native applications. GitOps defines infrastructure and application definitions as code. GitOps uses this code to manage multiple workspaces and clusters to simplify the creation of infrastructure and application configurations. GitOps also handles and automates complex deployments at a fast pace, which saves time during deployment and release cycles.

  • Deploy Helm charts: Helm is a software package manager that simplifies deployment of applications and services to OpenShift Container Platform clusters. Helm uses a packaging format called charts. A Helm chart is a collection of files that describes the OpenShift Container Platform resources.

  • Understand image builds: Choose from different build strategies (Docker, S2I, custom, and pipeline) that can include different kinds of source materials (from places like Git repositories, local binary inputs, and external artifacts). Then, follow examples of build types from basic builds to advanced builds.

  • Create container images: A container image is the most basic building block in OKD (and Kubernetes) applications. Defining image streams lets you gather multiple versions of an image in one place as you continue its development. S2I containers let you insert your source code into a base container that is set up to run code of a particular type, such as Ruby, Node.js, or Python.

  • Create deployments: Use Deployment and DeploymentConfig objects to exert fine-grained management over applications. Manage deployments using the Workloads page or OpenShift CLI (oc). Learn rolling, recreate, and custom deployment strategies.

  • Create templates: Use existing templates or create your own templates that describe how an application is built or deployed. A template can combine images with descriptions, parameters, replicas, exposed ports and other content that defines how an application can be run or built.

  • Understand Operators: Operators are the preferred method for creating on-cluster applications for OKD 4.12. Learn about the Operator Framework and how to deploy applications using installed Operators into your projects.

  • Develop Operators: Operators are the preferred method for creating on-cluster applications for OKD 4.12. Learn the workflow for building, testing, and deploying Operators. Then, create your own Operators based on Ansible or Helm, or configure built-in Prometheus monitoring using the Operator SDK.

  • REST API reference: Learn about OKD application programming interface endpoints.

Cluster administrator activities

As a cluster administrator for OKD, this documentation helps you:

  • Understand OKD management: Learn about components of the OKD 4.12 control plane. See how OKD control plane and compute nodes are managed and updated through the Machine API and Operators.

  • Enable cluster capabilities that were disabled prior to installation Cluster administrators can enable cluster capabilities that were disabled prior to installation. For more information, see Enabling cluster capabilities.

Manage cluster components

Change cluster components

Monitor the cluster

  • Work with OpenShift Logging: Learn about OpenShift Logging and configure different OpenShift Logging types, such as Elasticsearch, Fluentd, and Kibana.

  • Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform: Store and visualize large volumes of requests passing through distributed systems, across the whole stack of microservices, and under heavy loads. Use the distributed tracing platform for monitoring distributed transactions, gathering insights into your instrumented services, network profiling, performance and latency optimization, root cause analysis, and troubleshooting the interaction between components in modern cloud-native microservices-based applications.

  • Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry: Instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry traces, metrics, and logs to analyze and understand your software’s performance and behavior. Use open source backends like Tempo or Prometheus, or use commercial offerings. Learn a single set of APIs and conventions, and own the data that you generate.