OpenShift operators
Operators are pieces of software that ease the operational complexity of running another piece of software. They act like an extension of the software vendor’s engineering team, watching over a Kubernetes environment (such as OpenShift Container Platform) and using its current state to make decisions in real time. Advanced Operators are designed to handle upgrades seamlessly, react to failures automatically, and not take shortcuts, like skipping a software backup process to save time.
More technically, Operators are a method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application.
Operators provide:
Repeatability of installation and upgrade.
Constant health checks of every system component.
Over-the-air (OTA) updates for OpenShift components and ISV content.
A place to encapsulate knowledge from field engineers and spread it to all users, not just one or two.
For more information about usings, check out the operator section in OpenShift documentation.
The level of sophistication of the management logic encapsulated within an Operator can vary. This logic is also in general highly dependent on the type of the service represented by the Operator. To this end, the following Operator Maturity model defines five phases of maturity for generic day two operations of an Operator.
