OPENSHIFT- A COMPLETE TOOL
Hola! amazing people here comes a new blog on an awesome and complete tool- OpenShift. Why amazing and complete? Amazing because this one tool has the capability to integrate and handle the multiple technologies at one time and more over deployment in this becomes so easy and fast. This is also called a complete tool because in this tool one will be getting almost every technology, from maintaining the high end Kubernetes clusters with its resources to the management of Containers and monitoring has now became so easy and fast. It has an awesome Graphical User Interface which individually I liked a lot.
Today we are going to talk about the OpenShift, its Use Cases and how it is helping Industry day to day challenges. But first let us read something about the Containers and Kubernetes.
Containers
Containers are a form of operating system virtualization. A single container might be used to run anything from a small microservice or software process to a larger application. Inside a container are all the necessary executables, binary code, libraries, and configuration files. Compared to server or machine virtualization approaches, however, containers do not contain operating system images. This makes them more lightweight and portable, with significantly less overhead. In larger application deployments, multiple containers may be deployed as one or more container clusters. Such clusters might be managed by a container orchestrator such as Kubernetes. One can launch a container in just a second with an Container Image.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open source system for managing clusters of containers. To do this, it provides tools for deploying applications, scaling those application as needed, managing changes to existing containerized applications, and helps you optimize the use of the underlying hardware beneath your containers. Kubernetes is designed to be extensible and fault-tolerant by allowing application components to restart and move across systems as needed.
Kubernetes is itself not a Platform as a Service (PaaS) tool, but it serves as more of a basic framework, allowing users to choose the types of application frameworks, languages, monitoring and logging tools, and other tools of their choice.
OpenShift
OpenShift is a layered system wherein each layer is tightly bound with the other layer using Kubernetes and Docker cluster. In this model, Docker helps in creation of lightweight Linux-based containers and Kubernetes supports the task of orchestrating and managing containers on multiple hosts.
Models Of OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is available in four models:
- OpenShift Container Platform
- OpenShift Online
- OpenShift Dedicated
- OpenShift.io
1. OpenShift Container Platform
OpenShift Container Platform is a private platform as a service (PaaS) for organizations that deploy and manage OpenShift on their own on-premises hardware or on the infrastructure of a certified cloud provider.
OpenShift Container Platform is implemented as an assemblage of Docker-based application containers managed via Kubernetes orchestration, all running on an operating system foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
2. OpenShift Online
OpenShift Online is implemented as an on-demand consumption model hosted on public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS). It provides a container-based platform that developers can access from any web browser, IDE and command line.
It also provides support for local development, enabling programmers to deploy a functional OpenShift cluster on their local workstations, and it supports port forwarding, which enables developers to use remote services as if they were running locally.
3. OpenShift Dedicated
OpenShift Dedicated offers organizations the ability to run a single-tenant OpenShift environment on a public cloud managed by Red Hat while incorporating Docker and Kubernetes orchestration technologies.
At the time of its launch in December 2015, OpenShift Dedicated ran only on AWS. Support for Google Cloud Platform was added in December 2016. As of July 2017, support for Microsoft Azure is not offered.
4. OpenShift.io
OpenShift.io is a free, open source supplement to OpenShift Online. Together, they offer an integrated approach to DevOps that incorporates tools for development teams to create and deploy microservices-based applications.
OpenShift.io also provides a Linux container environment and a machine learning system that assist developers with design decisions. OpenShift.io encompasses several open source development technologies, including fabric8, Eclipse Chef, Jenkins, OpenJDK, Performance Co-Pilot, WildFly Swarm, Eclipse Vert.x and Spring Boot.
Benefits Of OpenShift
1. Innovate and Go To Market Fast
OpenShift enables your development team to focus on doing what they do best in designing and testing applications. When they are freed from spending excessive time managing and deploying containers, they can speed up the development process and get products to market more rapidly.
2. Accelerate application development
Accelerated application development is especially valuable in enterprises where a company’s IT system must accommodate rapidly evolving functions. An example of this is the cybersecurity industry. Companies in this industry face an arms race against hackers, who are continually looking for software flaws to exploit. When an exploit is found, cybersecurity firms are expected to respond with fixes as rapidly as possible often in days.
3. Enterprise-grade, container-based platform
A company’s IT needs can vary greatly from one period to the next. Selecting a proprietary container management platform subjects you to the possibility that your vendor won’t be able to provide an acceptable solution if your company’s IT focus changes. In such cases, the expense and time involved in moving from a proprietary vendor to a new platform can be considerable.
4. Enable DevOps and department-wide collaboration
One industry that can benefit from OpenShift’s enablement of enhanced DevOps processes is the webhosting and development field. Companies competing in this industry are constantly racing to offer their customers enhanced functionality. For instance, as web commerce increases by leaps and bounds, companies and individuals progressively look to sell their products over the web. They can do this by adding web sales functionality to their own sites via widgets designed for this purpose, or by purchasing sites with built-in sales functionality.
5. Self-service provisioning
This self-service provisioning helps improve developer productivity by allowing your development team to work with the tools they are most comfortable using speeding up the development process by enabling faster creation and deployment of applications. At the same time, OpenShift allows your operations staff to retain control over the environment as a whole.
Company’s Use Cases for OpenShift
Porsche Informatik, IT service provider for the Volkswagen Automotive Group, needed to speed application development and delivery to stay competitive in a fast-paced global market. The organization used Red Hat OpenShift to create a private cloud container environment.
Porsche Informatik’s developers can now take advantage of self-service capabilities, and teams across the organization can work together more effectively with a DevOps approach supporting continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) workflows. As a result, Porsche Informatik has cut development time from weeks to hours and created a solid foundation to stay ahead of competition.
Benefits
- Reduced development times from 5–6 weeks to hours with self-service provisioning
- Established DevOps community for more engaged teamwork
- Gained support for early adoption of Kubernetes and container technology to outpace competition
“Our old approach involved several teams and lots of round of approvals, and we’d need sometimes as long as six weeks to develop an application. Today, with Red Hat OpenShift, we can have a prototype available within hours.”
Simon Waldner,
System Engineer, Porsche Informatik