OpenShift 4 Cluster Operations 101

OpenShift is one of the most popular Kubernetes distributions in the world. In 2019, OpenShift jumped further into the bright container future with the release of version 4. In 2020, the open source version of it, OKD 4 was released.

This is the good moment for us to start a series of videos about OpenShift 4 and some of the amazing new container technologies and approaches it brings into the picture. By the end of this course, you will learn essentials of how OpenShift 4 functions and which core cluster operations features and concepts it has.

In the first video, Kirill Shirinkin will show you how to install the new production-ready OKD 4 cluster on AWS and demonstrate the benefits of the new openshift-installer.

Before we proceed with learning OpenShift 4, we need to understand what Container Operating System is.

What do you need to run containers in production? Linux kernel? Container manager? Some security features built-in? Is there anything else? One of the trends in cloud native world is to run specialized Container Operating Systems that are purpose-built to run containerized workloads.

Started with CoreOS, continued with RancherOS and others, we now have plenty of better options to choose from. In this video, we will look at what Container Operating Systems are and we will see one of them, Fedora CoreOS, in action. We will see what is OStree and rpm-ostree, Ignition configuration and how to run Fedora CoreOS on AWS with ECR.

In the second video about OpenShift / OKD 4, we will discover 3 core features of the OpenShift Cluster management:

1. Usage of the container operating system

2. Running every cluster component with containers, with cri-o

3. Tighlty integrating Kubernetes Nodes with Cloud Providers via Machine and MachineSet APIs

OpenShift and OKD 4 are using CoreOS for cluster nodes. The only way to configure them is to use Ignition and OSTree. Both of them are automated with MachineConfig Operator, which we will see in this video - how it works and how to use it to customize the cluster.

Any Kubernetes / OpenShift cluster might break and you need to know how to fix it. OpenShift and OKD 4 are a bit special, so troubleshooting them is also a bit special. In the last video, Kirill Shirinkin shares some tips on how you could troubleshoot your cluster issues.