What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift is that we had several security tools that we deployed to Red Hat OpenShift platform, specifically when we were migrating our applications from monolithic architecture to microservices, and our OpenShift platform was using some of the AWS VMs as master and worker nodes, so it was completely on AWS, and we actually set it up from scratch, setting up those projects to be used for our applications and then deploying them with Red Hat OpenShift version 4, which we started using five years back, as it was the latest at that point in time, and then we continued to operate and run our applications there.
A quick, specific example of an application I deployed on Red Hat OpenShift is a banking-based application which we moved from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture, and we completely deployed it end-to-end, split into 10 plus microservices, and then it was deployed to Red Hat OpenShift platform 4.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Red Hat OpenShift offers in my experience include being a pre-assembled product where Red Hat actually makes choices for you, which for example, as a CloudOps Engineer, means I don't have to explicitly go into CLI because the web-based UI is simple and helpful for debugging, and they've integrated the logging of the application within Red Hat OpenShift. I really appreciate the automated updates, built-in observability comes with pre-configured Prometheus and Grafana stack for monitoring our cluster health, and the native tooling it has such as Red Hat OpenShift GitOps, which is a Red Hat supported Argo CD, and the integration into clusters are based on role-based access control with security by default, where Red Hat OpenShift is quite secure out of the box, having those strict permissions and using Security Context Constraints, and especially the immutable OS and Red Hat OpenShift virtualization, which is something that is really helpful.
Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted my organization primarily through observability, as for us, application uptime matters a lot when providing public-facing products consumed by customers, and hence, we're using that to keep refining our application and products through observability metrics and keeping pace with market trends, as we promised 99.99% uptime to our customers, and the observability in Red Hat OpenShift is really helping us a lot with that.
What needs improvement?
Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially when those licensing agreements are done, and I think Red Hat OpenShift is quite resource-heavy because the control plane and default monitoring stack consume significant resources, meaning for small clusters, a large percentage of compute goes just to running Red Hat OpenShift itself, not our apps.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for close to six years across those different organizations.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift's scalability is really good.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is really good because so far in our case, we have always received a prompt response, and they have been really helpful to us. I would rate the customer support a 10 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use any other solution before Red Hat OpenShift.
How was the initial setup?
Red Hat OpenShift is deployed in my organization on AWS.
What was our ROI?
We have saved a lot of time with Red Hat OpenShift.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing would suggest that it was more into a high cost, but then again, I'm an engineer, so this is taken care of by the higher management, and I don't have any definitive answer.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate any other solution before choosing Red Hat OpenShift because we wanted to use a licensed product for Kubernetes that has enterprise support.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Red Hat OpenShift a 9 out of 10 overall. I choose a nine for Red Hat OpenShift because for such kind of tools, there is always room for improvement, as I already mentioned the things that can be improved in my previous answer. I would suggest that it's quite better if you're using Red Hat OpenShift for an enterprise solution, as it's really better to have the enterprise support which Red Hat OpenShift offers, and it's easy to use for Kubernetes-based applications.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
