What is a validated pattern?

• Nothing—you can start here

Red Hat’s validated patterns are tools for simplifying and replicating your deployments. They are predefined configurations that comprehensively describe a full edge computing and hybrid cloud stack, from services to supporting infrastructure.

Unlike a reference architecture, validated patterns are based on actual customer deployments and are actively maintained over time. They are also validated not only through continuous integration (CI), but via the support of product teams and solutions architects. By using GitOps to deliver configuration as code, validated patterns leverage upstream repositories for open collaboration. 

In other words, validated patterns are reliable and less risky because they are maintained and deployed in the real world. They provide a quick proof of concept (PoC) for deploying complex workloads and can be quickly implemented into your streamlined GitOps framework. They have many opportunities for customization and innovation, and also include a demo to show an example workload use case.

At a high level, a validated pattern uses Helm charts to create templates of the code architecture for a given use case. This template is a well-defined workflow that contains values and secrets files that manage overrides, making the deployment specific to your use case. Sub-patterns are then applied to multiple layers of the architecture, helping to deploy the components reliably and according to best practices.

Deploying the pattern will follow these general steps:

1. Find a pattern for a use case that fits your needs and fork the pattern repository.
2. Change secrets and/or values files in the local clone to specify overrides for your use case.
3. Deploy the pattern workflow, which will first deploy Red Hat OpenShift® GitOps. OpenShift GitOps will deploy the application(s) and make sure all the components of the pattern are working correctly, including operators and application code.
4. Most patterns will also have a Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management operator deployed so that multi-cluster deployments can be managed.

If you’re still wanting to learn more about validated patterns, here are a few additional resources:

• What are validated patterns? 
• Available patterns and documentation
• Portfolio architectures for hybrid multi-cloud management with GitOps

• Troubleshoot with Red Hat support*
• OpenShift Commons validated patterns Slack channel
• GitHub repositories for validated patterns

*Red Hat supports subscribed Red Hat products used in validated patterns. The codified patterns are distributed as community projects and no additional support beyond subscribed Red Hat products is implied.