Red Hat OpenShift Review

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Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise-ready commercial cloud development platform as a service (PaaS) that is very helpful in developing cloud-enabled services. The family of containerization software products is built for an open hybrid cloud strategy and provides a consistent application platform to support and manage hybrid cloud, multicloud, and edge deployments.

OpenShift was initially released on May 4, 2011, and developed by Red Hat. The hybrid cloud PaaS is built around Linux containers orchestrated and managed by Kubernetes on a foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. OpenShift allows developers to develop and deploy different types of applications on cloud infrastructure.

OpenShift and the Container Orchestration Market

The global container orchestration market value was estimated to be at $454 million in 2021, and it is expected to reach $1.78 billion by 2027, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.62% from 2022 to 2027.

OpenShift is playing an important role in the container orchestration market. The Fortune “Global 500” is embracing Red Hat OpenShift, including 100% of government and military companies, 80% of media and technology companies, 80% of commercial banks, 80% of telecom companies, and 61% of services companies.

OpenShift Key Features

Flexibility and Scalability

OpenShift simplifies deployment and management of hybrid infrastructure by delivering a flexible self-managed or fully managed service. Flexible authentication options allow configuring authentication to the cluster using LDAP, OpenID connects, GitHub, and others. The applications running on it can scale to thousands of instances across hundreds of nodes in seconds. OpenShift pod autoscaling feature allows scale and sink, per specifications.

Availability and Expert Support

Red Hat OpenShift aims to be a highly available commercial cloud development PaaS provider. There are multiple masters and infrastructure nodes to ensure the cluster has no single point of failure. OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) delivers cloud-native storage, data management, and data protection for applications running with the OpenShift Container Platform. The services are engineered, operated, and supported by Red Hat site reliability engineering (SRE) with a 99.95% uptime SLA and 24/7 coverage.

Open-Source Standards and Portability

OpenShift incorporates Open Container Initiative (OCI) containers and Cloud Native Computing Foundation-certified Kubernetes for container orchestration and several open-source technologies. Red Hat OpenShift container platform delivers on-premises private PaaS products. The container images are built on the OCI industry standard that ensures portability between developer workstations and OpenShift production environments.

OpenShift Use Cases

Red Hat OpenShift is a widely used software platform that delivers container orchestration to different types of users across organizations of all sizes:

“We are using OpenShift as a hybrid cloud Kubernetes platform, and it enables us to build applications using any programming languages or frameworks. Our production environment is running about 4,000 docker images with reliability and high scalability. Red Hat OpenShift is perfect if you need to use Kubernetes on-prem; for cloud, it could be costly and less effective than managed providers. If your on-premises environment is big and you don’t want to pay for virtualization, it is possible to deploy OpenShift on bare metal.” -Kadu Barral, tech lead, SulAmérica

“With Red Hat open-source software, we are able to innovate and scale up quickly to provide a fast and responsive customer experience. It empowers us to achieve our business goals with value-added propositions that benefit our customers. The Red Hat OpenShift platform enables the bank to embrace the agile principles of delivering value and speed to both our external and internal stakeholders.” -Ken Yong, head of group transformation office, Alliance Bank

“I would definitely recommend OpenShift or give it a trial period. I think it gives a developer much more freedom in terms of code deployment, build process and even having log file access using RHC commands. One of its strengths is scaling, and you can easily configure it using their tools for each application.” -Sonam Samdupkhangsar, senior software engineer, Intermountain Healthcare

OpenShift Differentiators

OpenShift allows users to run applications where it makes the most sense, without creating different operational models. Some of the key areas of differentiation for Red Hat OpenShift are below:

Advanced sSecurity

OpenShift has stricter security policies and offers a secure-by-default option to enhance security. It offers several core security capabilities, including access controls, networking, and an enterprise registry with a built-in scanner. Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes also enhances capabilities, such as run-time threat detection, full life cycle vulnerability management, and risk profiling.

Edge Architecture

OpenShift supports smaller-footprint topologies in edge scenarios, such as 3-node clusters, single-node Red Hat OpenShift, and remote worker nodes, which better map to varying physical size, connectivity, and availability requirements of different edge sites. The edge architecture is used for further enhancement with support for OpenShift clusters on ARM architecture and low-power consumption devices.

Automation

Red Hat OpenStack supports streamlined and automated container and application builds, deployments, scaling, health management, and the services used from the OperatorHub can be deployed fully configured and are upgradeable with one click. Automated installation and over-the-air platform upgrades are supported in the cloud with AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure as well as on-premises, using vSphere, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat Virtualization, or bare metal.

User Reviews of OpenShift

OpenShift receives mostly positive reviews and recommendations from several user review sites. According to G2, users rate OpenShift at 4.4 out of 5, and users at TrustRadius rate OpenShift at 8.3 out of 10.

In addition, users at Gartner Peer Insights rate OpenShift at 4.1 out of 5, with 81% willing to recommend it. Moreover, Gartner Peer Insights user reviews rate customer experience for:

  • Evaluation and Contracting 4.2 out of 5
  • Integration and Deployment 4.1 out of 5
  • Service and Support 4.0 out of 5
  • Product Capabilities 4.3 out of 5

Based on the Gartner Peer Insights user reviews, ratings for product features include:

  • Provide run time environment 4.4 out of 5
  • Application life cycle management 4.3 out of 5
  • Ensure viability of application logic 4.2 out of 5
  • Support application deployments 4.5 out of 5
  • Support cloud-style operations 4.4 out of 5

OpenShift Pricing

Red Hat OpenShift pricing has two editions: cloud services and self-managed. Red Hat OpenShift cloud services editions reserved instances are available for as low as $0.076 per hour. The pricing is based on the 4vCPU, three-year contract with minimum worker node configuration required.

Red Hat OpenShift Self-managed editions pricing varies based on sizing and subscription choices; there are three pricing models, including entry-level, standard, and flagship. Several companies are offering Red OpenShift-based platforms, such as Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, and Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud.

Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated pricing is based on several variables, including application node sizing, single versus multiple availability zones, and standard versus bring-your-own-cloud configuration. Users can choose OpenShift services, per their requirements, with hourly, one-year, and three-year pricing.

Conclusions

When searching for a container orchestration provider, users should understand what type of containerization features they need for their organization and how much they want to pay for them. That said, OpenShift is a widely accepted commercial service provider for container orchestration platforms that delivers a consistent application platform and reliable services, which help with the management of existing, modernized, and cloud-native applications.

OpenShift gives teams a consistent user experience and a single platform on which to deploy and scale digital products and services across the hybrid cloud. It offers higher security, scalability, higher performance, and low operational costs. It has some useful tools and is easy to deploy containerized applications that can work in large development teams. Red Hat OpenShift can be a good option for any enterprise.

Al Mahmud Al Mamun
Al Mahmud Al Mamun
Al Mahmud Al Mamun is a writer for TechnologyAdvice. He earned his B.S. in computer science and engineering from Prime University, Bangladesh. He attained more than 25 diploma courses and 100 certificate courses. His expertise and research interests include artificial intelligence (AI), artificial neural networks, and convolutional neural networks.

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