Glossary & concepts

Concepts

Short explanations of concepts used across the test plans — networking, storage, secrets management, and more — for anyone who does not work with them every day.

macvtap (NOT supported) vs. OVN-K localnet (official path)

macvtap gives a VM its own MAC — but is NOT officially supported in OpenShift Virtualization. The correct approach is OVN-K localnet.

WaitForFirstConsumer (StorageClass binding mode)

A PVC stays deliberately 'Pending' until a pod/VM actually uses it — not an error!

NodeNetworkConfigurationPolicy (NNCP)

Declarative node network configuration via the Kubernetes API — instead of manual nmcli commands.

OVN-Kubernetes & br-ex

OpenShift's default network plugin uses an OVS bridge (br-ex) that takes over the physical NIC.

HCP: does every hosted cluster need its own public IP?

No — only the API server (with the KubeVirt/on-prem provider) needs a dedicated IP or dedicated port. OAuthServer, Konnectivity, and Ignition already share the management cluster's existing Ingress route today.

Sealed vs unsealed — why pods stay 0/1 Ready

A sealed OpenBao holds only encrypted data and refuses almost every request — the pod runs but is not Ready. Unsealing reconstructs the barrier key.

KV v2 — versions, soft delete, and check-and-set (CAS)

KV v2 keeps a version history per secret and can require a version number on every write — a write is a whole new version, not a field update.

Kubernetes auth method — SA token in, OpenBao token out

Pods authenticate with their projected ServiceAccount JWT; OpenBao validates it against the kube-apiserver and returns a short-lived token carrying the role's policies.

OpenBao vs Vault — why /vault/ still appears everywhere

OpenBao is the Linux Foundation fork of HashiCorp Vault and keeps API and tooling compatibility — so UI routes, sidecar paths, and third-party integrations still say 'vault'.

OpenBao forked from Vault after the licence change and deliberately keeps the API surface compatible. That is why the OIDC callback is /ui/vault/auth/oidc/oidc/callback (TC-OPENBAO-AUTH-002), the injector renders files under /vault/secrets/ (TC-OPENBAO-INT-003, TC-OPENBAO-UC-002), cert-manager's issuer type is 'Vault' (TC-OPENBAO-PKI-002), and ESO/CSI use their Vault providers unchanged. The binary and env vars are renamed (bao, BAO_ADDR, BAO_TOKEN), the licence is MPL-2.0, and development happens under the Linux Foundation. For existing Vault knowledge and tooling this compatibility is a feature, not an accident.

✓ ADVANTAGES

Vault ecosystem tooling (ESO, CSI, cert-manager, injector annotations) works as-is
Vault experience and most documentation transfer directly
Open-source licence without BUSL restrictions

⚠ LIMITATIONS

Path names are confusing at first — 'vault' in URLs does not mean Vault is installed
Features diverge over time — check openbao.org docs, not Vault docs, for specifics
Mixed environments (Vault + OpenBao) need care with CLI env vars (VAULT_* vs BAO_*)

Raft integrated storage — leader, quorum, snapshots

OpenBao stores data itself and replicates it with the Raft consensus protocol — no external database, but quorum rules apply.

📚 Glossary & concepts

Glossary & concepts