Red Hat OpenShift 4.8 shines on CI/CD, serverless functions

Red Hat has announced OpenShift 4.8, the latest version of the company’s container-based application development platform anchored by Kubernetes orchestration technology, with improvements impacting cloud-native application development and on-demand computing.

Based on Kubernetes 1.21 and CRI-O (Container Runtime Interface) 1.21, OpenShift 4.8 is intended to simplify the developer experience while expanding use cases. Users can accommodate workloads ranging from machine learning and artificial intelligence to modernizing existing Java and .NET applications.

Announced June 28, OpenShift 4.8 is expected to be generally available in July, with developers able to give it a try in the OpenShift developer sandbox. OpenShift 4.8 capabilities include:

• Enhancements for developers in the OpenShift console, with Spring Boot developers able to test code locally before sharing. For Serverless deployment, OpenShift 4.8 enables advanced scaling options for the console.
• IPv6/IPv4 dual-stack support and IPv6 single-stack support, providing applications with interoperability and communications for environments using IPv6 in addition to IPv4 such as in cloud-native network functions for telecommunications. Additional security is provided.
• OpenShift Serverless, available as a technology preview, enables running of serverless functions on demand. Developers are spared from manual infrastructure provisioning and scaling.
• OpenShift Pipelines now allows users to declaratively define, version, and track changes to application delivery pipelines alongside source code in Git. Workflows in Git can automate CI/CD pipelines.
• Sandboxed containers, based on the Kata Containers open source project, offer a more secure container runtime via lightweight virtual machines. These containers offer an additional layer of isolation for sensitive tasks, such as privileged workloads or running untrusted code. This feature also is in a technology preview state.