Containers are highly efficient vehicles for developing and deploying apps.
As container usage ramps up, the complexity of managing containers across the totality of your IT infrastructure rises exponentially — making a container management platform essential at the enterprise level.
Containers can be deployed in far higher numbers than virtual machines, managing provisioning, deployment, tracking, and repairs of multiple containers across your IT architecture can be extremely challenging.
What exactly is OpenShift ?
OpenShift is a cloud-enabled application Platform as a Service (PaaS). It’s an open source technology which helps organizations move their traditional application infrastructure and platform from physical, virtual mediums to the cloud.
OpenShift supports a very large variety of applications, which can be easily developed and deployed on OpenShift cloud platform. OpenShift basically supports three kinds of platforms for the developers and users.
OpenShift also combats many of the challenges that containerization can orchestrate, including:
- Difficulty deploying containers across various frameworks, languages, or databases
- Issues with ramping container resource usage up and down in response to container use
- Issues with tracking dependencies
- Difficulty tracking and monitoring container deployment on a systemic level to avoid bottlenecks and maximize productivity
- Excessive time required to manage overall container usage across your system architecture
- Difficulty and time involved in provisioning containers and performing health management checks
- Issues with scaling applications
- Inability to run both stateful applications and cloud-native stateless applications simultaneously
- Excessively complicated container provisioning procedures
OpenShift allows you to address the above issues by using an open source architecture that enables you to run applications across physical, virtual, public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Any applications originating on OpenShift can run on any environment supporting Docker-formatted containers.
Our on-demand consulting is designed for organizations that want to make a bigger impact with their OpenShift implementation — better integration, more internal use, and increased efficiency.
Here are the benefits of the service:
Get access to expert knowledge on OpenShift via a “Bucket of Hours”
Troubleshooting tough problems with our experienced team
“Ask me Anything” sessions with our certified and experienced Red Hat OpenShift engineers and administrators
Carry out a assessment and review of your Kubernetes and OpenShift implementation
Red Hat OpenShift is available in four models:
- OpenShift Container Platform
- OpenShift Online
- OpenShift Dedicated
- OpenShift.io
Why use Red Hat OpenShift ??
As container use increases in app development and production, services such as OpenShift offer ways to manage and automate a large amount of containers. Doing so frees up developers from the manual management of containers.
Also, OpenShift can help IT organizations bridge legacy servers supporting traditional applications and modern, microservices-based work. These features feed into a mobile-first approach for companies that want to produce smartphone and tablet apps quickly.
Finally, OpenShift’s options promote continuous app development and common tools for development and operations teams. This approach is a cornerstone of DevOps efforts.
How Red Hat OpenShift works ?
According to Red Hat, the key to OpenShift lies in the combination of Docker containers and Kubernetes orchestration, both built on RHEL.
By using Docker at its model, OpenShift enables any app created with it to run anywhere else that Docker containers are supported.
After developers push code to OpenShift either through software version control or continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) systems, OpenShift orchestrates how and when the apps run. It also enables dev teams to fix, fine tune and scale those apps as quickly as needed.
Containers associated with OpenShift can serve as web frameworks or stateful services, according to Red Hat.
In addition to enabling developers to create their own containers, OpenShift provides an online container catalog with contributions from Red Hat and third parties. Some popular categories include container management, mobile application development, operating systems, programming languages, logging and monitoring, and database management.
OpenShift provides different kind of service level agreement when it comes to service plans.
Free − This plan is limited to three years with 1GB space for each.
Bronze − This plan includes 3 years and expands up to 16 years with 1GB space per year.
Sliver − This is 16-year plan of bronze, however, has a storage capacity of 6GB with no additional cost.
Applications
OpenShift provides better efficiency and utilization with tools like a descheduler.
This new release has multithreading, improved security, and a low response time for applications. There has also been a reduction in the time it takes to produce ACL unique-id allocations. The allocated time has been decreased from several minutes to a few seconds.
For Developers, the new developer console revolutionized how developers approach and manage their respective codes. Moreover, some new metrics are launched to enhance visibility into the performance characteristics of their workloads.
Case Study of Openshift
“Ford Motor Company adopted Red Hat OpenShift”
With OpenShift, we have a common framework that can be reused for deploying an application or service, because every major cloud provider has Kubernetes compatibility. We can now deliver features in a more secure, reliable manner.”
Jason Presnell
CaaS Product Service Owner,
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company seeks to provide mobility solutions at accessible prices to its customers, including dealerships and parts distributors who sell to a variety of retail and commercial consumers. To speed delivery and simplify maintenance, the company sought to create a container-based application platform to modernize its legacy stateful applications and optimize its hardware use. With this platform, based on Red Hat OpenShift and supported by Red Hat and Sysdig technology, Ford has improved developer productivity, enhanced its security and compliance approach, and optimized its hardware use to improve operating costs. Now, the company can focus on exploring new ways to innovate, from big data to machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Benefits
Enhanced security and compliance with enterprise container and monitoring technology
Companies in the automotive industry must comply with various security standards and regulations, such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and personal data protection standards. When creating its new container platform, Ford sought to balance providing access to partners and developers with ensuring vulnerabilities and updates were addressed and working toward future adoption of a DevSecOps approach.
Sysdig Secure and Sysdig Monitor help Ford enhance this protection with improved, data-based insight into container infrastructure to run OpenShift in a compliant way.
Significantly increased developer productivity
Using OpenShift Container Platform, Ford has accelerated time to market by centralizing and standardizing its application development environment and compliance analysis for a consistent multicloud experience. For example, OpenShift’s automation capabilities help Ford deploy new clusters more rapidly.
Significantly reduced hardware costs
Shifting to a container-based approach requires less initial hardware investment — and ongoing savings as Ford continues to modernize and migrate its legacy applications. The company has improved the efficiency of its hardware footprint by running OpenShift on bare metal and using its existing hardware more effectively.
Successful adoption of OpenShift and DevOps creates foundation for new opportunities to innovate
Ford is already experiencing significant growth in demand for its OpenShift-based applications and services. It aims to achieve migration of most of its on-premise, legacy deployments within the next few years.
The company is also looking for ways to use its container platform environment to address opportunities like big data, mobility, machine learning, and AI to continue delivering high-quality, timely services to its customers worldwide.
“Kubernetes and OpenShift have really forced us to think differently about our problems, because we can’t solve new business challenges with traditional approaches. Innovation and constantly exploring and questioning are the only way we can move forward,” said Puranam. “It’s a journey, but one that we have a good start on. Thanks to having the right set of partners, with both Red Hat and Sysdig, we’re well-situated for future success.”
“I hope you got an idea on importance of openshift”
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