About Quay IO

Quay.io is a registry for storing, building, and distributing container images and other OCI artifacts. This robust and feature-rich container registry service has gained widespread popularity among developers, organizations, and enterprises, establishing itself as one of the pioneering platforms in the containerization ecosystem. It offers both free and paid tiers to cater to various user needs.

At its core, Quay.io serves as a centralized repository for storing, managing, and distributing container images. One primary advantage of Quay.io is its flexibility and ease of use. It offers an intuitive web interface that allows users to quickly upload and manage their container images. Developers can create private repositories, ensuring sensitive or proprietary code remains secure within their organization. Additionally, users can set up access controls and manage team collaboration, enabling seamless sharing of container images among designated team members.

Quay.io addresses container security concerns through its integrated image scanner, Clair. The service automatically scans container images for known vulnerabilities and security issues, providing developers with valuable insights into potential risks and suggesting remediation steps.

Quay.io excels in automation, and supports integration with popular Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) tools and platforms, enabling seamless automation of the container build and deployment processes. As a result, developers can streamline their workflows, significantly reducing manual intervention and improving overall development efficiency.

Quay.io caters to the needs of both large and small-scale deployments. Its robust architecture and support for high availability ensures that organizations can rely on it for mission-critical applications. The platform can handle significant container image traffic and offers efficient replication and distribution mechanisms to deliver container images to various geographical locations.

Quay.io has established itself as an active hub for container enthusiasts. Developers can discover a vast collection of pre-built, public container images shared by other users, making it easier to find useful tools, applications, and services for their projects. This open sharing ecosystem fosters collaboration and accelerates software development within the container community.

As containerization continues to gain momentum in the software development landscape, Quay.io remains at the forefront, continually improving and expanding its services. The platform’s commitment to security, ease of use, automation, and community engagement has solidified its position as a preferred container registry service for both individual developers and large organizations alike.

As technology evolves, it is crucial to verify the latest features and updates on the Quay.io platform through its official website or other reliable sources. Whether you are an individual developer, part of a team, or representing an enterprise, Quay.io can enhance your containerization experience and streamline your journey towards building and deploying modern applications with ease.

Technical support is a crucial aspect of the Quay.io container registry service, providing assistance not only in managing container images but also ensuring the functionality and availability of the hosted platform.

To help users with functionality-related issues, Red Hat offers Quay.io customers access to several resources. The Red Hat Knowledgebase contains valuable content to maximize the potential of Red Hat’s products and technologies. Users can find articles, product documentation, and videos that outline best practices for installing, configuring, and utilizing Red Hat products. It also serves as a hub for solutions to known issues, providing concise root cause descriptions and remedial steps.

Additionally, Quay.io customers can count on the technical support team to address questions, troubleshoot problems, and provide solutions for an optimized experience with the platform. Whether it involves understanding specific features, customizing configurations, or resolving container image build issues, the support team is dedicated to guiding users through each step with clarity and expertise.

For incidents related to service disruptions or performance issues not listed on the Quay.io status page, which includes availability and functionality concerns, paying customers can raise a technical support ticket using the Red Hat Customer Portal. A service incident is defined as an unplanned interruption of service or reduction in service quality, affecting multiple users of the platform.

With this comprehensive technical support system in place, Quay.io ensures that users can confidently manage their container images, optimize their platform experience, and overcome any challenges that might arise.

Clair v4 (Clair) is an open source application that leverages static code analyses for parsing image content and reporting vulnerabilities affecting the content. Clair is packaged with Quay.io, is automatically enabled, and is managed by the Project Quay development team.

For Quay.io users, images are automatically indexed after they are pushed to your repository. Reports are then fetched from Clair, which matches images against its CVE’s database to report security information. This process happens automatically on Quay.io, and manual recans are not required.

The user interface (UI) of Quay.io is a fundamental component that serves as the user’s gateway to managing and interacting with container images within the platform’s ecosystem. Quay.io’s UI is designed to provide an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for users of all skill levels to navigate and harness Quay.io’s features and functionalities.

This documentation section aims to introduce users to the key elements and functionalities of Quay.io’s UI. It will cover essential aspects such as the UI’s layout, navigation, and key features, providing a solid foundation for users to explore and make the most of Quay.io’s container registry service.

Throughout this documentation, step-by-step instructions, visual aids, and practical examples are provided on the following topics:

Collectively, this document ensures that users can quickly grasp the UI’s nuances and successfully navigate their containerization journey with Quay.io.

Before creating repositories to contain your container images in Quay.io, you should consider how these repositories will be structured. With Quay.io, each repository requires a connection with either an Organization or a User. This affiliation defines ownership and access control for the repositories.

An image tag refers to a label or identifier assigned to a specific version or variant of a container image. Container images are typically composed of multiple layers that represent different parts of the image. Image tags are used to differentiate between different versions of an image or to provide additional information about the image.

Image tags have the following benefits:

Overall, image tags provide a structured way to manage and organize container images, enabling efficient development, deployment, and maintenance workflows.

Activity logs are gathered for all repositories and namespace in Quay.io.

Viewing usage logs of Quay.io. can provide valuable insights and benefits for both operational and security purposes. Usage logs might reveal the following information:

There are multiple ways of accessing log files:

To access logs, you must have administrative privileges for the selected repository or namespace.

Building container images involves creating a blueprint for a containerized application. Blueprints rely on base images from other public repositories that define how the application should be installed and configured.

Quay.io supports the ability to build Docker and Podman container images. This functionality is valuable for developers and organizations who rely on container and container orchestration.

On Quay.io, this feature works the same across both free, and paid, tier plans.

Quay.io supports adding notifications to a repository for various events that occur in the repository’s lifecycle.

Container registries were originally designed to support container images in the Docker image format. To promote the use of additional runtimes apart from Docker, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) was created to provide a standardization surrounding container runtimes and image formats. Most container registries support the OCI standardization as it is based on the Docker image manifest V2, Schema 2 format.

In addition to container images, a variety of artifacts have emerged that support not just individual applications, but also the Kubernetes platform as a whole. These range from Open Policy Agent (OPA) policies for security and governance to Helm charts and Operators that aid in application deployment.

Quay.io is a private container registry that not only stores container images, but also supports an entire ecosystem of tooling to aid in the management of containers. Quay.io strives to be as compatible as possible with the OCI 1.0 Image and Distribution specifications, and supports common media types like Helm charts (as long as they pushed with a version of Helm that supports OCI) and a variety of arbitrary media types within the manifest or layer components of container images. Support for such novel media types differs from previous iterations of Quay.io, when the registry was more strict about accepted media types. Because Quay.io now works with a wider array of media types, including those that were previously outside the scope of its support, it is now more versatile accommodating not only standard container image formats but also emerging or unconventional types.

In addition to its expanded support for novel media types, Quay.io ensures compatibility with Docker images, including V2_2 and V2_1 formats. This compatibility with Docker V2_2 and V2_1 images demonstrates Quay.io’s commitment to providing a seamless experience for Docker users. Moreover, Quay.io continues to extend its support for Docker V1 pulls, catering to users who might still rely on this earlier version of Docker images.

Support for OCI artifacts are enabled by default.