Written by Jonathan Gazeley, Container Platform Consultant at Tier 2 Consulting.
The simplest answer is that Red Hat OpenShift is a distribution of Kubernetes with some extra features on top. Let me explain.
Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration system which was first invented by Google. On its own, it is not a finished product but rather a core component which relies on other building blocks to actually be useful.
Unless you really want to follow the Kubernetes The Hard Way guide, the best way to deploy Kubernetes is by using a distribution. A distribution is a package where somebody has taken the core Kubernetes system, customised it, added and tweaked bits, and released it with its own set of documentation, installers, and tools – so it can simply be installed and used by people.
Different distributions are designed for different purposes. For example, minikube is easy to set up and run on a laptop, and is often used by developers for local testing. MicroK8s is optimised for lightweight deployments on low-power platforms, and can run on a Raspberry Pi. And Red Hat OpenShift is targeted at the enterprise market, with a focus on stability and integration.
One of OpenShift’s key differentiators is the excellent GUI which really lowers the barrier to entry into the containerisation world.
Red Hat OpenShift is a non-free commercial product. However, it does have a free trial evaluation so you can try it out before committing. Some of the components that OpenShift is built from are free and open-source, and you can freely obtain and install them – for example the OKD Kubernetes distribution. However, some of the components that really differentiate OpenShift from other Kubernetes distributions are not free, such as Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management. The benefit of buying in the commercial OpenShift Container Platform is that you don’t have to spend time and effort integrating the components with each other and solving engineering problems – you can get up and running much faster.
OpenShift (or Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform to give it its full name – OCP for short) is more than just a Kubernetes distribution. As the “Platform” part of its name suggests, OCP is a complete set of components that work together – it can manage the infrastructure that it is running on top of (whether that is local VMs or a public cloud platform) and it includes a whole suite of software to complete the platform – including monitoring, CI/CD, and identity.
The integrations with your existing platforms and applications take OpenShift beyond being a mere Kubernetes distribution, and into being a private cloud platform. Developers can interact with an OpenShift Container Platform similarly to a public cloud.
Almost anything! Once you have an OpenShift platform, you have a platform that can provide compute, networking, storage, ingress, load-balancing and much more besides. Common use cases for OpenShift platforms are to run containerised internal business applications, APIs, and customer-facing websites.
There is a huge library of ready-made applications you can deploy from OperatorHub, either as apps in their own right, or as sub-components of your own apps. Writing an app that needs a database? Easy, grab a database operator and have OpenShift deploy a database with little or no input from you.
This accelerates your app development and deployment, minimising the time to market, and providing a solid and reliable foundation for your apps and services.
We hope this helped answer some of your burning questions around Red Hat OpenShift. If you have any further questions, please reach out – we would be happy to help!
Tier 2 are recognised technology leaders and trusted advisers on the OpenShift platform. We are one of a handful of Red Hat Premier Partners to earn Container Platform Specialist status, recognising our position as a technology leader, Red Hat expert, and trusted advisor working with the leading Container Platform in the market. Combined with our Premier Middleware status, this award cements our position as the Red Hat partner of choice for the delivery of cloud-native development, applications and integration services.
Tier 2 provides a team of OpenShift Consultants with accredited Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform skills to help organisations exploit containers, and agile and DevOps processes, to modernise their applications, develop new cloud-native applications, and accelerate application delivery.
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If you’re thinking of implementing a container cluster and would like to talk to a Red Hat Container Platform Specialist, please get in touch.
