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Welcome to the official OpenShift Container Platform 4.5 documentation, where you can find information to help you learn about OpenShift Container Platform and start exploring its features.

To navigate the OpenShift Container Platform 4.5 documentation, you can either

  • Use the left navigation bar to browse the documentation or

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

You can start with Architecture and Security. Then see Release Notes.

Cluster installer activities

As someone setting out to install an OpenShift Container Platform 4.5 cluster, this documentation will help you:

Developer activities

Ultimately, OpenShift Container Platform is a platform for developing and deploying containerized applications. As an application developer, OpenShift Container Platform documentation will help you:

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

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

  • Work with applications: Use the Developer perspective in the OpenShift Container Platform web console to easily create and deploy applications. Use the Topology view to visually interact with your applications, monitor status, connect and group components, and modify your code base.

  • 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 OpenShift Container Platform concepts, allowing developers to focus on developing their applications.

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

  • Deploy Helm charts: Helm 3 is a package manager that helps developers define, install, and update application packages on Kubernetes. A Helm chart is a packaging format that describes an application that can be deployed using the Helm CLI.

  • Understand Operators: Operators are the preferred method for creating on-cluster applications for OpenShift Container Platform 4.5. Learn about the Operator Framework and how to deploy applications using installed Operators into your projects.

  • 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 OpenShift Container Platform (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. Use the Workloads page or oc CLI to manage deployments. 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.

  • Create Operators: Operators are the preferred method for creating on-cluster applications for OpenShift Container Platform 4.5. 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: Lists OpenShift Container Platform application programming interface endpoints.

Cluster administrator activities

Ongoing tasks on your OpenShift Container Platform 4.5 cluster include various activities for managing machines, providing services to users, and following monitoring and logging features that watch over the cluster. As a cluster administrator, this documentation will help you:

Manage cluster components

Change cluster components

Monitor the cluster