OPENSHIFT

Aditya Kumar
9 min readMar 13, 2021

OpenShift is a family of containerization software products developed by Red Hat. Its flagship product is the OpenShift Container Platform — an on-premises platform as a service built around Docker containers orchestrated and managed by Kubernetes on a foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The family’s other products provide this platform through different environments: OKD serves as the community-driven upstream (akin to the way that Fedora is upstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux), OpenShift Online is the platform offered as software as a service, and Openshift Dedicated is the platform offered as a managed service.

THERE ARE TOO MANY WAYS TO DEFINE THIS FABULOUS TOOL OF REDHAT NAMED OPENSHIFT .

  1. OpenShift is a family of containerization software products developed by Red Hat. Its flagship product is the OpenShift Container Platform — an on-premises platform as a service built around Docker containers orchestrated and managed by Kubernetes on a foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

OR

2. OpenShift is a cloud development Platform as a Service (PaaS) developed by Red Hat. It is an open source development platform, which enables the developers to develop and deploy their applications on cloud infrastructure. It is very helpful in developing cloud-enabled services.

OR

3. OpenShift enables efficient container orchestration, allowing rapid container provisioning, deploying, scaling, and management. The tool enhances the DevOps process by streamlining and automating the container management process.

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.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) :

In this format, the service provider provides hardware level virtual machines with some pre-defined virtual hardware configuration. There are multiple competitors in this space starting from AWS Google cloud, Rackspace, and many more.

The main drawback of having IaaS after a long procedure of setup and investment is that, one is still responsible for installing and maintaining the operating system and server packages, managing the network of infrastructure, and taking care of the basic system administration.

Software as a Service (SaaS) :

With SaaS, one has the least worry about the underlying infrastructure. It is as simple as plug and play, wherein the user just has to sign up for the services and start using it. The main drawback with this setup is, one can only perform minimal amount of customization, which is allowed by the service provider. One of the most common example of SaaS is Gmail, where the user just needs to login and start using it. The user can also make some minor modifications to his account. However, it is not very useful from the developer’s point of view.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) :

It can be considered as a middle layer between SaaS and IaaS. The primary target of PaaS evaluation is for developers in which the development environment can be spin up with a few commands. These environments are designed in such a way that they can satisfy all the development needs, right from having a web application server with a database. To do this, you just require a single command and the service provider does the stuff for you.

Why Use OpenShift?

OpenShift provides a common platform for enterprise units to host their applications on cloud without worrying about the underlying operating system. This makes it very easy to use, develop, and deploy applications on cloud. One of the key features is, it provides managed hardware and network resources for all kinds of development and testing. With OpenShift, PaaS developer has the freedom to design their required environment with specifications.

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.

Other than the above features, OpenShift also offers on-premises version known as OpenShift Enterprise. In OpenShift, developers have the leverage to design scalable and non-scalable applications and these designs are implemented using HAproxy servers.

Features :

There are multiple features supported by OpenShift. Few of them are −

  • Multiple Language Support
  • Multiple Database Support
  • Extensible Cartridge System
  • Source Code Version Management
  • One-Click Deployment
  • Multi Environment Support
  • Standardized Developers’ workflow
  • Dependency and Build Management
  • Automatic Application Scaling
  • Responsive Web Console
  • Rich Command-line Toolset
  • Remote SSH Login to Applications
  • Rest API Support
  • Self-service On Demand Application Stack
  • Built-in Database Services
  • Continuous Integration and Release Management
  • IDE Integration
  • Remote Debugging of Applications

Now let’s move towards the use case of Openshift..

Companies using Red Hat OpenShift

We have data on 6,448 companies that use Red Hat OpenShift. The companies using Red Hat OpenShift are most often found in United States and in the Computer Software industry. Red Hat OpenShift is most often used by companies with 50–200 employees and 1M-10M dollars in revenue. Our data for Red Hat OpenShift usage goes back as far as 5 years and 1 months.

If you’re interested in the companies that use Red Hat OpenShift, you may want to check out Kubernetes and VMware vCenter as well.

Red Hat OpenShift Market Share and Competitors in Virtualization Management Software

We use the best indexing techniques combined with advanced data science to monitor the market share of over 12,500 technology products, including Virtualization Management Software. By scanning billions of public documents, we are able to collect deep insights on every company, with over 100 data fields per company at an average. In the Virtualization Management Software category, Red Hat OpenShift has a market share of about 6.2%. Other major and competing products in this category include:

Top Industries that use Red Hat OpenShift

  • Lufthansa Technik : Lufthansa Technik, one of the world’s leading providers of maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for commercial airlines, created a digital platform to support digital products for its end users in development and operations — helping them better predict events and, as a result, save time and money. The solution AVIATAR includes Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, running on Microsoft Azure, to support the team’s DevOps and continuous improvement approaches, as well as to build, deploy, run, and integrate new infrastructure components. Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage provides scalable storage for the platform and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) provides a back-end for Lufthansa Technik’s AVIATAR Java applications.
  • Macquarie Bank : To transform its digital banking infrastructure, Macquarie moved to a cloud-based solution using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The company is using OpenShift to iteratively modernize legacy applications and deploy microservices in containers to streamline and automate their lifecycles.
  • Porsche Informatik GmbH : The automobile industry is undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its 100-plus year history. As a service provider, Porsche Informatik’s answer to the digital transformation of a worldwide automotive trade network is agility by design. It is using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage to orchestrate the end-customer applications and support a portable development process. With OpenShift, new applications that once took over a week are up and running after just a few hours. With help from its Red Hat-based solution, the team’s goal is to reduce time-to-market by 90% — from weeks to days.
  • X by Orange : X By Orange, a subsidiary of Orange Spain focused on business-to-business (B2B) digital services, selected Red Hat as a core technology partner to help create its software-defined strategy. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform helps it more quickly create and release new services and give it a “provider agnostic” Kubernetes platform on top of multicloud infrastructure.

Lenovo :

Lenovo, a multinational technology manufacturer, wanted to transform digitally to meet business demand and gain competitive advantage. The company needed agile and cloud capabilities to launch applications more efficiently. Using a Red Hat® Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution, Lenovo decreased system deployment time and improved productivity through greater automation and increased support for collaborative DevOps work.

Challenge: Accelerate change to transform digitally

Lenovo wanted to achieve a rapid digital transformation to improve its capabilities and meet businesses demands faster. However, this transformation required frequent updates and changes to the company’s entire IT environment, and some legacy systems could not keep up. As a result, the team faced major challenges in quickly developing and delivering resources. Lenovo needed a comprehensive solution that could support agile application delivery, increase productivity, and improve internal support for DevOps.

Solution: Move to cloud computing with a PaaS solution

To meet its requirements, Lenovo decided to implement cloud computing with a PaaS solution. “We chose PaaS as the preferred solution to gain efficient and agile support for our business team,” said Zhenyu Yao, executive director, Integrated Technology Service at Lenovo. Building on its strong relationship with Red Hat, Lenovo chose Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as its PaaS solution.

Results: Increase automation and DevOps collaboration for greater productivity

With its new solution, Lenovo has fully automated its development and production processes, helping developers become more efficient and productive. Its unified PaaS environment lets developers and operations staff collaborate, leading to faster deployment time and increased competitive advantage. IT staff can now build a new IT infrastructure in minutes instead of a week. “With a PaaS built on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, along with our automated management tools, we can provide efficient and agile cloud services internally and externally,” said Yao.

Cisco :

To keep pace with customer demand, Cisco, a leading provider of networking solutions, must quickly deliver new IT products and solutions. The challenge is to keep its IT team engaged and productive to fuel innovation. With help from Red Hat, Cisco built its Lightweight Application Environment (LAE), which runs on Red Hat® OpenShift Container Platform, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology formerly known as OpenShift Enterprise by Red Hat. Now provisioning times have gone from months to minutes, and the Cisco IT team can focus on strategic initiatives.

Cisco enhances software and product development with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Cisco created a modern, on-premise PaaS environment where 1,000+ of its developers can easily design and build apps.

Challenge: Improve productivity and speed to market

Cisco’s success depends on its ability to quickly deliver innovative IT products and solutions to customers. Delays can cost the company business. To encourage speed to market and improve satisfaction, Cisco needed to keep its 1,000+ developers fully engaged in designing and building applications and guard against high employee turnover, low productivity, and slow response times.

Solution: Build a 1-stop shopping catalog

Cisco turned to Red Hat to design and build its LAE, a PaaS deployment that supports hundreds of apps that power a variety of business functions. The solution gives developers a self-service portal they can use to order the IT resources they need to develop apps, eliminating manual provisioning. “It’s a 1-stop shopping catalog … making the ordering process seamless and easier for developers to use,” said Sudha Agrahara, IT manager at Cisco.

Results: Move from months to minutes for faster innovation

Cisco developers used to wait as long as 3 months for projects to be provisioned. “[Now] the developers push a button and the service is delivered within a matter of … minutes,” said Agrahara. More productivity means customers get innovative products and services faster. The solution reduces demands on limited IT resources and gives developers more time to focus on creative projects, increasing employee satisfaction. “Having a strategic, forward-thinking partner like Red Hat that aligns with all of our priorities is a key part of Cisco’s success,” said Michael White, IT architect at Cisco. “We’re thankful to have Red Hat as our partner.”

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Aditya Kumar
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Full Stack Web Developer | Linux System Administrator | Ansible | Kubernetes | Django | AWS | Coder