OpenShift Container Platform Reviews

We use OpenShift Container Platform for load balancing, scaling, self-healing, and distributed key database features. It helps us monitor cluster configuration.

The product has a CentOS operating system providing a stable and compatible foundation for hosting Red Hat OpenShift clusters. It helps in creating an architecture framework automatically. It makes it possible to control the CentOS API server and Kubernetes console.

We encounter difficulties while accessing the environment and managing the cluster. This particular area needs improvement.

We have been using OpenShift Container Platform as a partner for seven to eight months.

The product's stability is manageable.

The product is scalable. It is suitable for medium and enterprise businesses.

The technical technical support services need updating with changing times.

Positive

We have used SAP before. We switched to OpenShift Container Platform for better support facilities. We are their gold partner. However, the support services have needed improvement in the last six to seven months.

The initial setup process is easy. We have a dedicated team for data installation. It takes around three months to complete. The product is easy to maintain as well. We have a team of 35 to 40 executives to work on it.

I advise others to learn about the tool, including certification, warning alerts, security, and monitoring features. It isn't easy to manage the cluster using it.

I rate OpenShift Container PlatformOpen an eight out of ten.

We are using OpenShift Container Platform to build microserivces which are financial business logics, such as payments, transfers, KYC etc. These serve as the defacto logic consumed by any channel. We are also leveraging the networking and securing capabilities of OCP which serves to secure and control on granular level.

First and foremost we have benefited vastly in cost reduction.

The abstraction provided by OpenShift of the underlying infrastructure gives us the ability to extend the application across data centers (on-prem or cloud) that gurantees the uptime by 50%.

The ability to push new changes without hampering the current version given us almost 100% business continuity and zero downtime deployments.

OCP gives the ability to use the resource effectively which has helped in maximizing the use of underlying infra and it further has the intel to scale up the  the running app in case it is running out of resources thus auto-scalablility is inherent when apps are ran on OCP.

It would be unjust to not mention the automation capability introduced by OCP makes the whole development and deployment seamless and almost eradicates the operational overhead of running this platform.

The auto scalability feature, which is based on smart agendas, determined from pre-prepared rules is the most valuable feature. You can also create different routes for deployment. Deployment types can be provided with an identifier, such as AB deployment. This really helped in rolling out releases without disrupting services for the end-users.

Secondly, there is the ability to control at a granular level. For example, they can release two versions of the same service and control the traffic towards it to a specific percentage.  Other organizations don't seem to use this feature in the same way we did. Additional rules can be specified to determine individual versions of a service, and rules for governing users access to such services.

Marketing can also make use of OpenShift by analyzing logs to provide useable data. This is one of the features that I really like about OpenShift. It is also a secure environment, with user access configurable at a very granular level. Depending on the API and the ecosystem, it is possible to completely plug and integrate. You control how the deployment works and the testing process.

With OCP 4.x the capability of configuring and controlling your ingress controller has also introduced an immense ability to provide an experience which is pertinent to a particular app. With this we can introduce app specific compliance and security without enforcing similar requirements on all services, which was the case with earlier versions.

From a networking perspective, the routing capability can be matured further. OpenShift doesn't handle restrictions on what kind of IPs are allowed, who can access them, and who cannot access them. So it is a simple matter of just using it with adequate network access, at the network level.

It should be possible to whitelist IPs so that you can allow and restrict access to the API. That would be a fantastic feature. OpenShift would then encapsulate the entire security and access. This is one improvement that I would seriously want our client to have, and for that reason, I have joined the OpenShift community, and it is a project I could probably work on myself. 

The second thing is that deployment is more of a strategy rather than a feature in OpenShift. Although you can create different routes, and it works fine, it is not an innate feature of OpenShift that it understands that you want to run specific versions of the same service as needed. Though you can define routes to serve different versions.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform for almost four years.

It is very stable when it's running. So far, I haven't found any issues. We went through operating system upgrades. We did need to perform some patching, so there was some vulnerability and there were many tasks we had to undertake to assist with stability. In fact, we use two clusters. One of them is used for non-production purposes. It is a developer's structure and is a very stable solution.

Further by the design OCP will keep running the cluster is left with only one node, which makes it very robust and reliable platform.

The auto-scalability feature, which is based on smart agendas, can be determined from pre-prepared rules. You can also create different routes for deployment. Deployment types can be provided with an identifier.

This is very flexible and saves resources when you don't need them, and scales up when you do. This is a very powerful feature.

We used the Redhat TAM service. They assign a technical application manager to you, and we have used that. The support is very, very responsive. They respond very quickly. What I like about them is that they have a very precise, clear and rationale way of working they will ask guide you to take a decision towards one single solution you require. That's it. They will come back to you and provide pinpoint in-depth guidance into the problem that you have.
Unlike most support companies, you usually obtain a workable solution in a good time frame.

Positive

We were using 3.x and now we have swtiched to managed OCP 4.x on cloud. This has given us helped in reducing cost and given the ability to expand and configure OCP without involving infra team, what was a months process has reduced down to minutes.

3.x was a complex setup but with 4.x this has been addressed drastically and now it comes with a setup engine which handles 90% of the setup itself. Though it still does gives you the ability to do it 3.x way but it still less complex than 3.x.

This was an in-house implementation.

Costs reduced by 70%, this includes infra and operation costs.

It is a costly solution but then again, it's intended for enterprise-level business, and the license has to reflect that. It is appreciated what the GPU's processing power requirements will be higher. The licensing is very flexible. The license is related to the processing power you need, and the infrastructure of any clusters which go with that. If your current application, internally, has more then 5 workflows that have significant resources requirement I will suggest to consider using OCP. Anything below would be more costly on OCP in terms of license and infra setup.

We had a comparison between OpenShift, Azure Kubernetes Services and Elastic Kubernetes Services (AWS) but OpenShift is more mature, it has understands the corporate more especially from security and compliance perspective. We also have the leverage to be multi-tenant with OCP over IaaS that lets us leverage the best of all infra flavours out there.

A common mistake is to assume that the solution can change the architecture type. e.g. some people think by using this solution they can change their application architecture into a microservices architecture. OpenShift is an orchestration platform. These types of solutions are not intended to be run as a microservices architecture. Very often, the two become synonymous which leads to decisions which incur huge costs. Especially the conventional thought process kicks in and OCP looks more like an application server rather than a platform.

As the cost of this product is expensive it should only be considered for large enterprises. There will also be a need to hire technical people, and this may also involve a training cost.

There has to be a cost-benefit. It can be done as a single solution, but the solution itself has to be huge. 

You also need to make the best use of the solution. If you are processing millions of transactions, that would describe an adequate use. You need to calculate the solution costs against the work it is designed to do, otherwise, it becomes a cost overhead. Certainly, for a single application, it would be a waste of money.

I would rate OpenShift Container Platform a nine out of ten.

Last but not the least, considering running multiple application on OCP to maximize the cost of licenses and it the budgeting of OCP should not reside with an application team where it will hard for them to budget and run the platform and would innately require other application teams to have a separate cluster which dissolves the whole purpose of OCP.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

Our company supports most of the banks in India. We use four kinds of solutions broadly categorized as UPI and IPI deployed on AWS called ROSA and on Azure called ARO.

The most valuable features of OpenShift are the advanced cluster manager and advanced cluster security with the StackRox.

OpenShift needs to improve their container storage. In the next release of OpenShift I would also like to see simplification of Calico BGP with the container network and integration with MinIO, Portworx, and Rubrix.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform since 2016.

OpenShift is a stable solution.

The platform is easy to scale as it supports Windows worker node.

Technical support at Red Hat is good.

Positive

The initial setup of OpenShift is straightforward.

When I compare the platform's deployment to other solutions like Kubernetes, OpenShift is good. When comparing with Rancher or VMware Tanzu, OpenShift is better than both. Specifically, the support and documentation of OpenShift is better than VMware.

I would rate OpenShift an 8 out of 10 overall.

Hybrid Cloud

We use OpenShift Container Platform for on-premises services.

More tools are available in OpenShift Container Platform to maintain and manage the clusters.

OpenShift Container Platform is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform for four to five years.

OpenShift Container Platform is a stable solution.

I rate OpenShift Container Platform a nine out of ten for scalability. There are many users using it in our organization.

The initial setup of OpenShift Container Platform was straightforward.

OpenShift Container Platform’s deployment takes a couple of minutes.

We have seen a return on investment with OpenShift Container Platform. The solution is worth the money.

OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced. Besides the license fee, you must have a dedicated set of resources to maintain and manage OpenShift Container Platform.

Overall, I rate OpenShift Container Platform a nine out of ten.

On-premises

It's a Kubernetes container orchestration solution. Ideally, we will deploy it in the cloud, but it is on-premises for now. We also use Red Hat Linux servers. Some of our operating systems are also Red Hat Linux. All the Red Hat products work well together, and people at my company are familiar with the platform. 

The main goal of adopting OpenShift is to overcome the current challenges of integrating with App Connect. One of the objectives is to make our containers more scalable. The other goals involve the benefits we can get from packaging and more.

I don't have a lot of use cases right now, but when we start using it in production, OpenShift will make things like machine workflows easier. It will enable us to control or orchestrate containers better and provide a tool to demo other aspects of development, deployment, and monitoring on the same platform.

We expect OpenShift to help us with regulatory compliance. Entities like banks require approval of decisions through these kinds of ledgers. Sometimes, it's virtually impossible to do this. OpenShift makes meeting these standards easier.

We still do not see the benefits in terms of development time and quality of the final product because we're still in the evaluation phase, but we'll soon have a better understanding of what we can achieve with the tool. At the same time, we've seen examples of other players that already use OpenShift and recognize the benefits they get from using it. 

OpenShift provides tools that tell me everything I have on a container, and I can make it on-premise or on a cloud infrastructure.

We have been evaluating OpenShift for a couple of months. After we finish the evaluation, we will start testing it. We started looking at OpenShift as a possibility last year. 

OpenShift is a stable product overall.

OpenShift is scalable. Once we fully deploy it, many people will use it. 

I rate Red Hat support an eight out of ten. 

Positive

We used vanilla kubernetes containers.

Setting up OpenShift isn't easy. I rate it three out of ten for ease of setup. We're deploying it in three phases. They're in the second phase now. The total deployment time will be five months. We expect to complete the deployment this March. There are 13 people on three teams working on this deployment.

We are using a third-party consultant. They work to ensure we understand the process.

I rate OpenShift a nine out of ten. I think it's the way to go. Lots of companies are adopting it.

On-premises

I mainly use Container Platform for hosting and orchestrating our internal application.

The best feature is the management for the port life cycle, which automatically recycles, pulls, and scales up and down based on needs and requests.

Container Platform could be improved if we could aggregate logs out of the box instead of having to do it through integrations with other products.

I've been using OpenShift Container Platform for a year.

Container Platform is scalable. 

The initial setup was easy, and deployment on the cloud took around an hour.

We implemented using a vendor team.

The pricing is a bit more expensive than expected - it's moderately expensive.

We also evaluated open-source Kubernetes, VMware Tanzu, and VMware.

I would advise anybody thinking of implementing OpenShift Container Platform to get trained before using it because there are some tricks you need to learn hands-on. I would rate this solution seven out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

It's a good tool and a very comprehensive tool. There are a lot of things to explore. I'm still exploring, I'm not done with it yet.

The UI is good.

It’s user-friendly.

The product offers good customization.

There will be things that can improve, however, at this stage I cannot give a point or two. Maybe after a few months, I can give more details.

One improvement I can suggest is for the people who are not very competent with technology, for the product to give some tips on the screen, to make it easier for them. Things are there and the documentation is there, however, there still needs to be quick guides available. Then it will be easier for people to adapt and learn. Rather than going to big documentation, if there is some quick help or quick guide available and then it would help people to quickly adapt and learn.

It still has to improve compatibility with a couple of more platforms. It works with many however we are still trying to improvise more on a couple of other platforms. Integration seems to take a little bit of time. It would be nice if it was expanded and simplified a bit.

I’ve been using the solution for the last five or six months.

The solution is stable. It works for me. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn’t crash or freeze.

It is a scalable product. So far, we are not using it in production, so we currently have below 50 users. When it will be in production then there will be more.

If the testing goes well we do plan to increase usage.

I’m getting good support so far. I am happy with them.

We did previously use a different solution. Both are good products. They each have their own benefits.

I don’t have a license. I don’t deal with licensing directly.

I’d rate the solution seven out of ten. We haven’t used it too long. It’s still in production. After six months, we’ll likely have a better idea of how it is going.

OpenShift is a user-friendly container platform with a solid GUI that helps you follow what is going on and gives you an overview of all your clusters. It's more user-friendly than the Kubernetes itself. The interface helps you learn the platform and provides access to some features or specific comments.

OpenShift's documentation could be better. It's difficult to document everything you need in a specific use case. You have to seek some support or spend a few minutes trying to figure out what's going on.

Another thing that bugs me is that they removed the software in NFS storage. I don't understand why because this is a common type of storage. I am having problems with that, so I wish they would put it back. 

I've been dealing with the OpenShift Container Platform for about two years. I am not an end-user, but I develop solutions with it. I test, make proofs of concept, and design solutions that run on top of it, like Cloud Pak.

OpenShift has great technicians who work with developers. It's nice to have access to real product developers when you contact tech support.

I rate OpenShift Container Platform eight out of 10. It's an excellent solution. It might be a bit more difficult to maintain than some solutions, but it brings you a lot of value. 

Hybrid Cloud