OpenShift & Its Industry Use Cases
What is OpenShift ?
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is a set of modular components and services built on top of Red Hat CoreOS and Kubernetes. RHOCP adds PaaS capabilities such as remote management, increased security, monitoring and auditing, application life-cycle management, and self-service interfaces for developers.
An OpenShift cluster is a Kubernetes cluster that can be managed the same way, but using the management tools provided by OpenShift, such as the command-line interface or the web console. This allows for more productive workflows and makes common tasks much easier.
It is also RedHat’s open-source, cloud-enabled Platform as a Service offering. It helps enterprises shift their traditional application infrastructure and platform from physical, virtual mediums to the cloud environment. It is convenient in developing cloud-enabled services at a faster rate. Hence, there are numerous OpenShift use cases that benefit the IT industry and all other industries such as automobiles, telecom, fashion designing, manufacturing, etc.
Various terminologies associated with OpenShift
Infra Node: A node server containing infrastructure services like monitoring, logging, or external routing.
Console: It is a web UI provided by the RHOCP cluster that allows developers and administrators to interact with cluster resources.
Project : OpenShift’s extension of Kubernetes’ namespaces. It allows the definition of user access control (UAC) to resources
Various versions and platforms available
- OpenShift Container Platform: Red Hat’s private, on-premise cloud application deployment and hosting platform.
- OpenShift Dedicated: Red Hat’s managed public cloud application deployment and hosting service
- Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS: It is a fully-managed OpenShift service, jointly managed and supported by Red Hat and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- OpenShift on IBM Cloud: With Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, you can deploy apps on highly available OpenShift clusters.
- Azure Red Hat OpenShift: It provides single-tenant, high-availability Kubernetes clusters on Azure, supported by Red Hat and Microsoft.
- Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes :An enterprise-ready, Kubernetes-native container security solution that enables you to securely build, deploy, and run cloud-native applications anywhere.
- OpenShift Online : Red Hat’s public cloud application deployment and hosting platform.
- OpenShift Kubernetes Engine : The OpenShift Kubernetes Engine is the core of the OpenShift Container Platform. Use OpenShift Container Platform docs links for OpenShift Kubernetes Engine documentation.
Networking
Each container deployed in a Kubernetes cluster has an IP address assigned from an internal network that is accessible only from the node running the container. Because of the container’s ephemeral nature, IP addresses are constantly assigned and released.
Kubernetes provides a software-defined network (SDN) that spawns the internal container networks from multiple nodes and allows containers from any pod, inside any host, to access pods from other hosts. Access to the SDN only works from inside the same Kubernetes cluster.
Containers inside Kubernetes pods should not connect to each other’s dynamic IP address directly. Services resolves this problem by linking more stable IP addresses from the SDN to the pods. If pods are restarted, replicated, or rescheduled to different nodes, services are updated, providing scalability and fault tolerance.
External access to containers is more complicated. Kubernetes services can specify a NodePort attribute, which is a network port redirected by all the cluster nodes to the SDN. Then, the containers in the node can redirect a port to the node’s port. Unfortunately, none of these approaches scale well.
OpenShift makes external access to containers both scalable and simpler by defining route resources. A route defines external-facing DNS names and ports for a service. A router (ingress controller) forwards HTTP and TLS requests to the service addresses inside the Kubernetes SDN. The only requirement is that the desired DNS names are mapped to the IP addresses of the RHOCP router nodes.
Benefits
OpenShift offers a common platform for companies and organizations to host applications on the cloud, independent of operating systems. It offers a user-friendly interface and seamless functionalities. Let’s discuss the benefits of OpenShift.
- OpenShift offers a self-service platform for developers to develop and deploy applications on-demand with just a few clicks. Applications developed in OpenShift are packaged up in a container that makes applications extraordinarily portable and lightweight.
- OpenShift has made it possible to work together with Dev and Ops without interfering with their individual concerns.
- It brings consensus to IT organizations. It means organizations can deliver applications in the market with proper strategies while maintaining the scalability and stability of the app.
- Enterprises always require those vendors who can provide the entire service stack. Therefore OpenShift provides Platform as a Service clubbed with Infrastructure as a Service and middleware services for better agility and interoperability.
- It also offers Rest API support, Built-in Database services, IDE Integration, remote debugging of applications etc.
- OpenShift also makes applications hyper scalable because of the containers.
Getting Started
- Preparing to Install Minishift
- Setting Up the Virtualization Environment
- Installing Minishift
- Minishift Quickstart
- Updating Minishift
- Uninstalling Minishift
For Basic Understanding of Minishift Architecture
Case Study
As a leading bank serving private, corporate, and fiduciary clients, Deutsche Bank has embraced digital transformation. The bank wanted to improve the experience of both its banking customers and users of its back-end technology, including employees and external providers and developers who use the platform to build and run applications. Using Red Hat® solutions, Deutsche Bank built an open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to simplify DevOps collaboration, optimize capacity, and increase efficiency, cutting end-to-end application development time from 6–9 months to 2–3 weeks.
Challenge: Streamline platform for efficient development
Deutsche Bank wanted to shorten development cycles to get products to market faster. But its restrictive infrastructure made integration difficult and application development slow. Managing thousands of servers and databases hindered growth and the adoption of emerging technology. The bank also wanted to replace its traditional waterfall processes with a DevOps approach. To meet these needs, Deutsche Bank sought to establish a PaaS that would streamline development and management, reduce risk, and scale easily to support more agile work across its business.
Solution: Build new platform with open source technology
Deutsche Bank chose Red Hat to help build Fabric, a containerized, microservices-based application development platform. Fabric hosts systems and tools and offers on-demand compute for every application development team at the bank.
Results: Gain efficiency, save time and money
Fabric provided faster resource access, helping developers work more efficiently and speeding time to market. Instead of 6–9 months, applications now go from proof of concept to production in 2–3 weeks. In addition, Deutsche Bank simplified DevOps collaboration with flexible integration and an agile approach. The bank also streamlined resource access, optimizing its use of datacenter and cloud capacity, saving time, money, and resources. They were also able to run a global platform that’s supported thousands of applications with a single operating model and a large number of workloads on a small portion of infrastructure. Which resulted in making it both efficient from both a utilization and cost point of view.
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