Announcing the OpenShift Container Platform 3.9 GA

OpenShift Container Platform 3.9 is generally available today! As always, release notes, downloads, and other information are available on the Red Hat OpenShift customer portal. OCP 3.9 contains our usual nods to enhanced security and usability, including new central auditing capabilities, console time-outs, and improved service catalog workflows. CRI-O, an OCI-compliant implementation of the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface, is also available in this release as a fully-supported option. For a full walkthrough of what’s new in OCP 3.9, check out the latest OpenShift Commons briefing.

In this release, we’re also introducing features that support a growing diversity in the workloads that can be run on Kubernetes with OpenShift:

• Workload expansion through Device Plugin support (tech preview): In OpenShift 3.9, we’re graduating device plugin support from alpha into tech preview. This capability allows users to match workloads to specific devices, including GPUs, network adapters, and FPGAs, without writing custom Kubernetes code. It’s based on considerable work we’ve done with the community, and with device plugin support, we’re bringing users one step closer to accelerating their workloads and expanding the range of performance-sensitive use cases that can run on OpenShift and Kubernetes. We’ve posted a walkthrough of this capability here.
• Data preservation with Ansible Playbook Bundles for PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and MySQL: As containerized workloads grow more complex, teams need consistency and data persistence across a wider set of environments. With Ansible Playbook Bundles, OpenShift users can update or migrate to newer versions of their applications without worrying about data compatibility issues. Users can get started today with the updated Ansible Playbook Bundles for PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and MySQL.
• Local Storage (tech preview): As Kubernetes evolves to handle more diverse workloads, some - particularly those with low latency and higher read/write requirements - can benefit from better use of local storage. In OCP 3.9, we’re expanding the types of local storage supported, enhancing performance for these select workloads.

Also Announced Today: Container Native Storage 3.9

The latest release of Container Native Storage from Red Hat, is also being announced today. Container Native Storage is built with Red Hat Gluster storage, and is tightly integrated with OpenShift to provide persistent storage to containerized applications. In this release, the OpenShift and Container Native Storage teams have made it easy to resize persistent volume claims, customize volume names, and provide volume consumption metrics. You can read more about the release here.

For the perfect hands-on experience combining OpenShift and Container Native Storage, check out our Test Drive, a free, in-browser lab experience that walks you through using both.

Learn What’s Next - Join the OpenShift Community!
We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for OpenShift within the next couple of months. To stay up to date, we invite you to join the OpenShift Commons and attend one of our upcoming face-to-face OpenShift Commons Gatherings:

• May 1, Copenhagen (co-located with CNCF’s KubeCon EU), with a series of hands-on workshops and an evening reception with a CoreOS/Red Hat roadmap session from Brandon Phillips, plus a series of lightning talks from members of the OpenShift on Machine Learning SIG!
• May 7, San Francisco (coinciding with Red Hat Summit), with case studies from over a dozen OpenShift users sharing best practices and transformation stories.

If you can’t make it, as always, you can catch up with us by checking out the Commons Briefings online. Join us, reach out, and let us know what you think of the new release at @openshift!