Home > Workload Solutions > Container Platforms > Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform > Archive > Design Guide—Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.10 on Intel-powered Dell Infrastructure > OpenShift Data Foundation
Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation delivers a persistent data foundation which is integrated with and optimized for OpenShift Container Platform. OpenShift Data Foundation provides file, block, and object storage classes that enable workloads for data at rest (such as databases and warehouses, data in motion, and automated data pipelines) and data in action. OpenShift Data Foundation also provides services for continuous deployment models, analytics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). As a part of Red Hat Data Services offerings, OpenShift Data Foundation provides a consistent experience irrespective of the underlying infrastructure. Deployed, consumed, and managed through the OpenShift administrator console, the platform is built on Red Hat Ceph storage, offering tightly integrated persistent data services for OpenShift and hybrid and multicloud environments.
Cloud providers and system providers can offer storage for diverse workloads. The storage layers are often delivered using different storage interface technologies depending on the storage protocol that is addressed by an application. These solutions lack a service-level interface that delivers a consistent experience to users regardless of the underlying storage technologies. OpenShift Data Foundation provides data services for applications in Kubernetes that support multiple workload types across multiple cloud platforms, providing:
Earlier releases of OpenShift Data Foundation were focused on a fully containerized Ceph cluster that is run with an OpenShift Container Platform cluster, optimized as necessary to provide block, file, or object storage with standard 3x replication. While this approach made it easy to deploy a fully integrated Ceph cluster within an OpenShift environment, it had the following limitations:
OpenShift Data Foundation external mode overcomes these limitations by allowing OpenShift Container Platform to access a separate and independent Ceph Storage cluster, as shown in the following figure:
Figure 10. OpenShift Data Foundation accessing an external Ceph Storage cluster
Alongside traditional internal-mode storage, Ceph Storage gives solution architects multiple deployment options to address their specific workload needs. These options preserve a common and consistent storage services interface to applications and workloads while providing distinct benefits:
For more information, see Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation 4.10.
The PowerEdge R750 server is optimized for storage and provides an ideal combination of performance and flexibility for software-defined storage applications. The server can accommodate various storage device configurations, including 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs), and nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) devices.
Red Hat and Intel® have collaborated to test several configurations to optimize workloads for OpenShift Data Foundation. For information about these predefined recommended configurations, see ODF node configs.