Integrating ROSA Applications with AWS Services: A Practical Guide

As enterprises increasingly adopt hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) has emerged as a powerful platform for running Kubernetes-native applications with the backing of AWS’s robust cloud infrastructure. But ROSA's true potential is unlocked when its containerized applications seamlessly integrate with native AWS services.

This article explores how you can integrate ROSA-hosted applications with key AWS offerings like Amazon RDS, S3, CloudWatch, IAM, Secrets Manager, and more — enabling a secure, scalable, and cloud-optimized solution.

🔧 What is ROSA?

ROSA (Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS) is a fully managed OpenShift platform jointly developed by Red Hat and AWS. It allows organizations to run OpenShift clusters natively in AWS with tight integration into AWS networking, security, billing, and operations.

ROSA brings:

• Full Kubernetes compatibility

• Built-in CI/CD pipelines

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) nodes

• Integrated monitoring and observability tools

But its real power lies in its ability to integrate cloud-native AWS services directly into your workloads.

🔌 Key AWS Services to Integrate with ROSA

1️⃣ Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)

To use Amazon RDS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) from a ROSA-hosted app:

• Deploy RDS in a VPC subnet accessible from ROSA

• Use Kubernetes Secrets to store DB credentials securely

• Connect via environment variables or ConfigMaps

• Ensure IAM policies and security groups allow traffic from ROSA worker nodes

💡 Tip: Use Service Binding Operator in OpenShift to simplify connecting apps to RDS and auto-inject credentials into pods.

2️⃣ Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Applications in ROSA can store/retrieve files from S3 buckets by:

• Using AWS SDKs in your application code (Python, Node.js, Go, etc.)

• Mounting S3 buckets with tools like s3fs-fuse (if needed)

• Managing access using IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA)

To enable fine-grained access, configure:

• IAM OIDC provider in ROSA

• IAM Roles associated with Kubernetes service accounts

3️⃣ Amazon CloudWatch

CloudWatch can be used to:

• Stream logs from OpenShift apps and nodes

• Monitor metrics and custom dashboards

• Set up alerts and notifications

You can forward logs using:

• Fluentd or Fluent Bit log forwarders

• CloudWatch Agent

• OpenShift Logging Operator configured with AWS as the backend

🔧 Integration Example: Configure Fluent Bit as a DaemonSet to forward logs from to CloudWatch Logs.

4️⃣ AWS Secrets Manager

Use AWS Secrets Manager to store sensitive data and inject it securely into your ROSA pods:

• Use IRSA to give pods temporary, scoped credentials

• Leverage the Secrets Store CSI Driver to automatically mount secrets as volumes inside your containers

• Or, sync secrets from AWS Secrets Manager into OpenShift secrets

This reduces secret sprawl and centralizes access control and auditing.

5️⃣ IAM Integration with ROSA (IRSA)

IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) allows your pods to assume IAM roles securely — without hardcoding keys.

Steps:

1. Enable OIDC provider in your ROSA cluster.

2. Create an IAM role with the needed permissions.

3. Annotate your Kubernetes service account with that IAM role.

4. Run workloads using that service account — they’ll get temporary AWS credentials.

🎯 Use Case: An app in ROSA accesses S3, but only the specific service account gets the permissions — not the whole cluster.

6️⃣ Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

For persistent shared storage across multiple pods or applications:

• Deploy EFS CSI Driver in the ROSA cluster

• Create a PersistentVolume (PV) and PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC)

• Mount the volume to pods needing shared data

EFS is ideal for workloads needing simultaneous access to files like ML models, configs, or reports.

Security & Networking Considerations

• Use VPC peering or PrivateLink to keep communication internal

• Manage IAM access via fine-grained roles and policies

• Use Security Groups and Network Policies to restrict traffic flow

• Monitor using AWS CloudTrail and GuardDuty for threat detection

🚀 Real-World Example: Integrating a Flask App on ROSA with AWS Services

Let’s say you deploy a Python Flask app on ROSA. Here’s how it might use AWS services:

• Stores file uploads in Amazon S3

• Stores user data in Amazon RDS

• Loads DB credentials from AWS Secrets Manager

• Logs performance metrics to CloudWatch

• Uses IRSA to securely connect to each service

This setup offers the best of both worlds: container portability with cloud-native functionality.

✅ Conclusion

ROSA provides the agility of OpenShift with the scalability and flexibility of AWS. By integrating your ROSA-hosted applications with AWS services like RDS, S3, CloudWatch, and IAM, you empower your applications with secure, performant, and production-ready capabilities.

Whether you're building microservices, enterprise APIs, or data-driven apps, leveraging native AWS services through ROSA makes your Kubernetes environment smarter, more secure, and cloud-native to the core.

📣 Next Steps

• 🔧 Set up IRSA in your ROSA cluster

• 🚀 Start integrating S3, RDS, and CloudWatch with your apps

• Explore the OpenShift Operator Hub for AWS-related operators

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