OpenShift 4.4 adds tech previews & improves efficiency

On April 28, 2020 Red Hat announced a new update to OpenShift, the leading enterprise Kubernetes solution. OpenShift is a container platform that helps provide automated lifecycle management through the cloud and container stack. According to Red Hat, OpenShift is used by more than 1,000 enterprise customers worldwide, including Delta Airlines and Volkswagen.

Version 4.4 builds upon Kubernetes version 1.17, includes performance upgrades, new tools, previews of new features, and more.

This release continues to improve efficiency using the Kubernetes Operators model to automate the OpenShift platform and services that users depend on to deploy their containerized applications. OpenShift 4.4, includes features that IT operations teams and application developers can both appreciate.

Tushar Katarki

SEE ALSO: DevSecOps best practices for enterprises leveraging Kubernetes

OpenShift 4.4 highlights

This update aims to improve the developer experience and push the Kubernetes platform to the limits. Some of the highlights of 4.4 include:

• Descheduler tool: Admins can re-balance workload distribution.
• Support for Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
• Tech Preview: OpenShift Pipelines creates CI/CD pipelines that can run on-demand inside containers.
• Improved DNS forwarding: Users can now resolve name queries for endpoints outside of their clusters.
• Developer Preview: OpenShift Builds can be used to build lean images from application source code.
• Improved performance: OpenShift 4.4 reduces the time it takes to produce ACL unique-id allocations.
• Storage enhancements: Includes re-size, restore, and snapshot capabilities.
• Upgrade to HAProxy 2.0: Includes end-to-end HTTP/2 support and improved security.
• New metrics dashboard: Keep track of necessary functions with better visibility for Red Hat operators.

Windows Server Containers preview

OpenShift 4.4 also includes a Developer Preview for running Windows Server Containers.

With this new preview, OpenShift allows Windows to run Windows Server containers, all while Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs Linux containers. OpenShift works with the mixed workloads, orchestrating, scheduling, and managing within.

Read the blog by Red Hat’s Anandnatraj Chandramohan for an in-depth explanation of this new preview feature and how it came to be.

Anandnatraj Chandramohan writes:

The ideal world for customers is a singular container orchestration fabric that supports the two leading commercial operating systems in customer datacenters — Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. At Red Hat, we understand that customers do not want a binary choice between Windows vs. Linux, or .NET vs Java – they want cloud platforms to support all technologies.

SEE ALSO: Kubernetes: How to use readiness, liveness, and startup probes

Helm 3

Helm, The Kubernetes package manager tool updated to version 3 in late 2019. OpenShift benefits from the changes made in Helm 3.

Notably, Helm 3 removes Tiller, which boosts security. According to Helm, Tiller “became more difficult to manage” after Kubernetes 1.6 added role-based access controls (RBAC) by default. The removal of Tiller also helps simplify the security model.

OpenShift 4.4 is now available for upgrade. See how to get started and learn how to deploy applications.

The post OpenShift 4.4 adds tech previews & improves efficiency appeared first on JAXenter.