What are validated patterns?

Validated patterns are living code architectures for different edge computing and hybrid cloud use cases. They're created by using Helm Charts—a collection of files that describe a set of related Kubernetes resources—and play a critical role in bringing together the Red Hat® portfolio and technology ecosystem to help you build your edge architecture faster.

These predefined edge computing configurations contain all the code necessary to build a comprehensive edge or hybrid cloud stack. You can even create a reference architecture that goes beyond documentation by using automated processes in GitOps that simplify deployment and ensure consistency across multiple sites and clusters. Each use case’s git repository is open, and Red Hat regularly collaborates with customers to change use cases or add partner technologies to configurations.

Validated patterns are not only highly customizable, but are continuously tested against current product releases to ensure that deployments are kept up to date. Using a validated pattern gives the confidence of using a best practice, reduces the risk of falling behind a crucial release point, and makes your deployment operable at scale.

At Red Hat, we specialize in open source software. However, there are still challenges when it comes to proprietary cloud operations. To address this gap in the market,  we have collaborated with an upstream community, Operate First, to extend upstream first¹ principles of open development, including the needs of the target operational environment, from start to finish.

Operate First supports developers, operators, site reliability engineers (SREs), etc., by hosting their in-progress open source projects on a production cloud. There, they receive important feedback on their code and other artifacts, which can then become a relatively stable blueprint for other developers to use.²

You can think of these blueprints as a community pattern, or an operational model that is developed and tested in the upstream community using GitOps principles. Community patterns are use cases that bring together several technologies in a modular configuration to demonstrate a specific capability, but are maintained by their creators, not Red Hat.

Some patterns, however, are taken up in the downstream community at Red Hat to be tested further for wider use. These are called validated patterns, and they must achieve the following, based on GitOps principles:

• Deployed at a customer site
• Require three or more Red Hat technologies
• Maintained over time and have their own lifecycle, which allows for pattern versions to be tested based on new versions
• Include a demo of the use case that uses the API connections between products to ensure the pattern works across product versions
• Designed as modular so that individual functions can be replaced to apply to other solutions

Once these requirements have been met, the use case is included in Red Hat’s continuous integration (CI) for you to use and customize to fit your needs.