Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes consists of several multicluster components, which are used to access and manage your clusters.
Learn more about the following components for Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes:
- Hub cluster
- Managed cluster
- Cluster lifecycle
- Application lifecycle
- Governance and risk
The hub cluster is the common term that is used to define the central controller that runs in a Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes cluster. From the hub cluster, you can access the console and product components, as well as APIs such as the rcm-api, which handles API requests related to cluster lifecycle management, which is defined later in this topic.
The hub cluster aggregates information from multiple clusters by using an asynchronous work request model. With a graph database, the hub cluster maintains the state of clusters and applications that run on it. The hub cluster also uses etcd, a distributed key value store, to store the state of work requests and results from multiple clusters, and provides a set of REST APIs for the various functions that it supports.
The managed cluster is the term that is used to define additional clusters with the multicluster-endpoint, which is the agent that initiates a connection to the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes hub cluster. The managed cluster receives and applies requests, then returns the results. See Managing your clusters to learn about managing clusters, which is part of Cluster lifecycle.
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes cluster lifecycle defines the process of creating, importing, and managing clusters across public and private clouds. From the hub cluster console, you can view an aggregation of all cluster health statuses, or view individual health metrics. You can upgrade managed Red Hat Openshift clusters individually or in bulk, as well as destroy any Red Hat Openshift clusters that you created from your hub cluster.
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes application lifecycle defines the processes that are used to manage application resources on your managed clusters. A multi-cluster application uses a Kubernetes specification, but with additional automation of the deployment and lifecycle management of resources to individual clusters. A multi-cluster application allows you to deploy resources on multiple clusters, while maintaining easy-to-reconcile service routes, as well as full control of Kubernetes resource updates for all aspects of the application. See Managing applications for more application topics.
Governance and risk is the term used to define the processes used to manage security and compliance. After you configure a Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes hub cluster and a managed cluster, you can view and create policies for Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes with templates from the Governance and risk page. For more information see, Governance and risk.
See Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes installation to prepare your cluster and get configuration information. See the components topic to learn more about what is installed with the product.