Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP or “OpenShift”) is an enterprise-class open-source container platform that is based on the Kubernetes open-source project. It supports both virtualized and bare-metal deployment models and includes some specialized components including Operator Hub and Operator Life-cycle manager. OpenShift Container Platform is a traditional Kubernetes platform. The Kubernetes core components are installed on a Linux based platform (Red Hat CoreOS). Some elements that make this distribution unique, include the use of Podman and CRIO as the preferred container engine, a unique application delivery platform of Operator Life-cycle Manager (OLM), and implementation of Cluster API (CAPI) for bare-metal bootstrapping.

OpenShift clusters built in data centers may be installed using installer provisioned infrastructure (IPI) or user provisioned infrastructure (UPI). The IPI automates the deployment and creates the required infrastructure such as nodes and application load balancers. This document uses the UPI method of installation and relies on a repository to assist with infrastructure setup.