Red Hat OpenShift 5: First Look
Lab Overview
This two-hour hands-on lab introduces the key capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift 5. You work directly on a pre-deployed OCP 5 cluster and complete four confirmed modules covering AI-assisted operations, the redesigned install and upgrade path, RHCOS 10’s image-based lifecycle, and the expanded security stack.
| Module | Topic | Duration |
|---|---|---|
1 |
Intelligent OpenShift — MCP server, agentic troubleshooting, Perses dashboards, upgrade risk analysis |
35 min |
2 |
Install & Upgrade — Operator Update Planner, Agent Installer, disconnected deployment |
30 min |
3 |
RHCOS 10 — bootc image lifecycle, day-2 OS update flow, immutability |
15 min |
4 |
Security, Sovereign & Disconnected — oc mirror v2 delta mirroring, post-quantum cryptography |
20 min |
No OCP 5 experience is required.
Familiarity with OpenShift 4 operations (deploying workloads, using the oc CLI, managing Operators) is assumed.
Why This Workshop Matters
OpenShift 5 is a significant release — not an incremental update. It introduces structural changes across four areas that your customers will ask about before they plan an upgrade:
AI as a platform feature, not a plugin. The MCP server and gateway ship as part of the OCP 5 control plane. Any MCP-compatible AI client can connect, invoke live cluster tools, and drive autonomous workflows — without custom agents or sidecar deployments. Agentic troubleshooting, on-demand dashboard generation, and upgrade risk scanning are available to every OCP 5 cluster out of the box.
A new install and upgrade story. The OCP 4→5 upgrade path is architecturally different from minor-version upgrades. The Operator Update Planner removes the manual compatibility research that blocked customers from upgrading confidently. The Agent Installer now supports fully disconnected deployments with no dependency on an external image registry at install time.
RHCOS 10 and the bootc lifecycle. Red Hat CoreOS 10 replaces rpm-ostree with a bootc image-based model. Node OS updates are now atomic, rollback-capable, and do not require full node reprovisioning. This changes how customers plan maintenance windows and reason about node compliance.
Security hardening that customers will require. Post-quantum cryptography cipher suite support on the API server and ingress controller is a forward-looking requirement for regulated industries. oc mirror v2 delta mirroring dramatically reduces the bandwidth and time needed to keep disconnected Operator catalogs current.
Completing this lab gives you hands-on evidence for each of these areas — not slide content, but terminal output and console screenshots you can use directly in customer conversations.
What You Will Need
The lab environment provides everything:
-
A pre-deployed OCP 5 multinode cluster
-
The MCP gateway pre-exposed and accessible from the lab terminal
-
A MaaS endpoint pre-configured for agentic operations
-
A pre-broken workload for the agentic troubleshooting exercise
-
Pre-staged disconnected content for the Agent Installer walkthrough
-
All required Operators installed
Your credentials and gateway URL are in the Lab Credentials panel on the right side of the screen.