Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Reviews

I work in a bank and we develop new microservices based on mainframe legacy systems. They want to start developing new microservices to reduce the calls to the mainframe. DevOps in Bank Hapoalim uses OpenShift as a platform and all the services are deployed automatically to avoid the problem of services being unavailable. So the main use case is to modernize the existing legacy systems. All the big projects of the bank are going through this modernization, with a new architecture and deploying stuff through microservices.

It makes our work much easier. Everything works automatically: the pods, memory, and CPU grow automatically. We had so many systems on the old technologies and it's very hard to modernize them. But this tool, OpenShift Container Platform, helps a lot. If we want to keep up with the market and be a strong organization, we have to support modernization. We can't see all the banks making changes and still go with the old systems.

Also, the department that's in charge of it, DevOps, has given us more dashboards so that we can see more details, exactly what's going on in terms of timing and everything. They give us all the details we need to see about the microservices.

It's an easy platform to use.

I'm not sure if this is an issue with OCP, but it takes time to deploy. I'm not sure because we have pipelines and Jenkins jobs that deploy the microservice so it takes time. It can take 10 to 15 minutes to deploy a microservice. The CI/CD process takes a long time, and if it's because of OCP, that is something that can be changed.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform for about two years.

Overall it's stable. Sometimes I see problems with the stability, but I'm not sure that the problem is with OCP. There are things that we need to explore more deeply, but I would say it's stable.

It scales microservices automatically.

We have about 1,000 internal users of OCP and about a quarter of them use it daily.

We did not use any other container management software.

There were several other departments involved in the setup. 

It was done in-house.

It's a very cool product. You can trust it. We have plenty of complicated microservices systems deployed through this platform, and it does the job. We see the results. I only have good feedback about it.

It's nice to see technology getting better and better, doing things automatically. The platform can fit every organization, with the right configuration. It can do whatever you need it to do. It's very impressive to see how the technology of this platform does it.

I am the platform engineer, and the platform serves a function for end users by allowing them to deploy their apps based on their application use cases.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability on demand, which allows for potentially lower costs, and Built-in resiliency. Those are the three most important ones that spring to mind.

In my experience, the issues are not always simply technical. They do stem from technical challenges, but they struggle with the topic of adoption. When you encounter all of the customer pull, there are normally several tiers of your client pop that can adopt either the fundamental features or a little more advanced ones.

The majority of the time, the challenge is determining how to drive adoption, how to sell the product to the customer, and how much time they can spend to really utilize those advanced features. If we get into much more detail, but this is from my perspective as the platform engineer and not the end customer, the ability of the end user to be able to debug potential issues with their application That is arguably the most important, let's say, work throughput in my area.

I have been working with the OpenShift Container Platform for two months.

We use version 4.9, and our legacy version is 3.9.

OpenShift Container Platform is quite stable.

OpenShift Container Platform is highly scalable.

I have more data regarding the number of net spaces and the number of apps that are tied to it, rather than how many individuals are on the receiving end of such applications which would be considerably more difficult. I would say more than three persons for each application, which is definitely driving the number near 500. This would be an approximate number.

I would rate the technical support a 10 or 11 because, in my personal experience, they are always going above and beyond to deliver the solution.

They are very caring about their customers.

Because the platform I'm working with was inherited, I wouldn't know how that procedure works here. I have, however, performed a few deployments in a considerably smaller context. 

You have at least three distinct techniques to perform that deployment using OpenShift, as well as a few of IPIs and UPIs. 

When I approached that scenario, I was thinking in terms of UPI, which stands for user-provided infrastructure in a non-homogenous, domestic cloud environment, a tiny simulated cloud environment. 

It wasn't simple, and it took a few tries to get a functional cluster structure with various control planes and many worker nodes. 

It's a difficult response to a hard subject, in my opinion, but, it is not an extremely simple or out-of-the-box solution.

The deployment took about two hours if we count the successful attempt once I had my preexisting issue sorted out. 

The upgrade would depend on the scale of the cluster. It can take a couple of minutes per node, so it would depend on the number of nodes.

In terms of the cluster that has workloads that are on production, you need to make sure that the workloads are not experiencing any issues.

I have a vague understanding of it but keep in mind that enterprise pricing differs from, I don't know, people or smaller businesses approaching them.

It largely depends on how much money they earn from the application being deployed; you don't normally deploy an app just for the purpose of having it. 

You must constantly look into your revenue and how much you spend every container, minute, or hour of how much it is working.

I wouldn't have access to that information within my company, therefore I'd assume it's in plus.

As far as I understand the situation, while this solution was inherited, the outstanding technical support is one of the main reasons it was chosen over other solutions.

I would definitely recommend having the vanilla experience because, contrary to popular belief, OpenShift is not Kubernetes; it's actually written on top of Kubernetes and adds an extra value of authentication, auditing, and logging on top of that, but it does require a familiarity with Kubernetes to properly utilize its capabilities. 

After being acquainted with Kubernetes, I believe it is worthwhile to dip their fingers and brains into the distinctions that OpenShift provides in contrast to other basic Kubernetes implementations.

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

It is really expensive. That is not something you would employ unless you had a strong business case for your application. That is, not in terms of the enterprise version.

You may use our OKD, which is a community version we provide, which is less expensive. However, it is not a supported version of OpenShift; it is only supported within the community. However, because the OKD community is small, there is a low likelihood that someone would respond to your inquiry if you run into problems and need to locate answers elsewhere.

We have been developing telco cloud-native applications that need to run on Kubernetes. In our deployments, we've used both, Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift.

The primary benefits we've observed primarily revolve around the security aspects.

In comparison to Kubernetes, OpenShift offers additional features, essentially making it an extended version with enhanced capabilities. It performs better, offering approximately thirty percent more than Kubernetes.

The most valuable are security features, particularly when operating in the cloud. It is considered a necessity, especially in our industry, given the critical nature of the infrastructure.

We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments. For example, an application that runs smoothly on standard Kubernetes might face compatibility issues when ported to OpenShift. This variation has posed some challenges for us, and it's something we're actively addressing. I think it's important to create a plan to ensure seamless compatibility between applications running on vanilla Kubernetes and those on OpenShift. This involves delineating features unique to each platform, such as those specific to vanilla Kubernetes and the additional capabilities offered by OpenShift. The goal is to make it feasible for an application designed for a more basic Kubernetes environment to run smoothly, providing valuable flexibility.

The introduction of OpenShift slowed down our development life cycle due to compatibility issues.

I have been working with it for four years.

We transitioned from Kubernetes to OpenShift because our customers specifically requested it.

Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is, as an open system, to deploy containers on AWS or other platforms and then manage them.

The most valuable feature for me in the OpenShift Container Platform is the option to manage different containers and environments and also being able to switch among them.

My impression is that this solution is pretty expensive so I think the pricing plan could improve.

I have been using this solution for about two years.

I would rate the stability a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the technical support of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Positive

I was not involved in the initial deployment but I heard that it's not too hard to set up with all the support available.

I would rate the pricing of this solution a four, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the most expensive and 10 being the least expensive.

I would advise other people looking into this solution – if they could afford their pricing plan – to go for it as it's a great product.

I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We primarily use the platform to deploy microservices for all kinds of stacks and to deploy databases. Some of our databases are cached, and we can containerize them. Our entire infrastructure relies on OpenShift because we deploy all our applications to it.

The automatic scaling of applications has been a great feature for us. The solution also provides flexibility; we can deploy small or paid digital microservices with many features.

Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required.

The tool's console looks fantastic, and the UI is intuitive; we can easily check port health, locks, deployments, and services.

Another great feature is monitoring, as we can integrate and monitor logs.

We use the product's CodeReady Workspaces, and they reduce project onboarding time. We have automated templates and use those scripts to create projects and clusters within OpenShift.   

One area for improvement is that we can't currently run Docker inside a container, as it clashes with security consents. It would be good if we could change that.

The stability of the console could be improved. 

We've been using the solution for three years. 

We faced stability issues with the console; a problem we often see is the UI will freeze, and only the command line will work.

The scalability is as expected because it works according to the conditions we set; we can impose limitations on the ECP to stay within the budget if necessary. We have over 100 developers using OpenShift, and 500-700 deployed microservices.

I have yet to contact tech support; a different team in our organization deals with them.

We previously used Kubernetes and installed it on our Compliant Centers, but the infrastructure was complicated to manage as we had so many. So we moved to cloud-based Kubernetes and then to OpenShift because the latter provides more features like a one-console UI, user-friendly installations, and better support, security, and networking.

The initial setup was not particularly complex, but it wasn't easy either. There are good guidelines available to make the deployment steps more straightforward, and setting up clusters is where it gets tricky.

As there is no on-prem infrastructure to set up, the deployment is very quick, and we can put up a cluster in minutes.

We deployed primarily with the assistance of a consultant. 

I'm unfamiliar with the product's price or how it compares to the competitors.

We evaluated Kubernetes and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Those and other platforms on the market are not up to the same standard as OpenShift; they have different installations, UIs, and limited security features.

I rate the solution nine out of ten.

Regarding automation, we don't build up any pipelines in OpenShift; we have our own tools to automate build processes and then deploy them to the platform.

We didn't consider building our own container platform as it would be difficult. 

My advice to those considering OpenShift is that it's user-friendly, flexible, has robust security, and features are frequently updated. Red Hat provides good documentation, so the solution is easy to learn and adapt to your use cases.

Our primary use case is to deploy Java and Angler UI codes into the platform's containers. We will soon migrate our product infrastructure to OpenShift. 

The most significant improvement has been in the microservices area, as the solution simplifies the deployment of microservices. We don't have to spend much time on the infrastructure and CI/CD pipeline, so OpenShift saves us a lot of time.

OpenShift eliminates distractions, allowing our teams to focus on innovation, features, and functionality. For example, the elementary deployment and the platform makes dealing with infrastructure very straightforward, allowing us to focus on other tasks. OpenShift taking care of infrastructure-related issues, in particular, takes a weight off us, and it feels good to focus on innovation, discovery, etc.   

The solution's CodeReady Workspaces reduce project onboarding time, and Red Hat can create a Workspace for us within two weeks. We place a request, and they start working on it; it's pretty fast because we're migrating most of the bank's processes over to OpenShift.  

The CodeReady Workspaces reduce our time to market by around 20%.   

The product is stable, reliable, and easy to use, from a well-known company, has a large volume handling capacity, and more and more organizations are moving to OpenShift.

The scale-up and scale-down functions of the product's UI are excellent.

The deployment is elementary and seamless.

We use the product on the vendor's OpenStack Platform, and in terms of speed and ease with which it enables us to create infrastructure on the OpenStack Platform, it's the best and most straightforward approach. OpenShift is excellent compared to other vendors like Google Kubernetes Engine and Azure Kubernetes Service; it's easier to use, more reliable and handles volume better. 

The solution is very good at creating infrastructure that can be flexibly sized to meet specific needs on the OpenStack Platform; there are options to increase and reduce the size to meet volume demands. 

The tool's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is excellent; we are a large bank, so security is a top priority.  

OpenShift's security features are highly capable of running business-critical applications. The solution is exciting, and I'm looking forward to getting more hands-on experience. 

The solution's automated processes are excellent, and OpenShift has good integration potential with GitHub and Tangible, allowing a lot of code deployment automation. Plugins are also available for other CI/CD pipeline tools like Jenkins Pipeline, reducing our development time.  

The UI could be more user-friendly to drive tasks more effectively through the interface.

We used the trial version of the solution for one to two months to get hands-on experience in preparation for IBM Industry 4.0. 

OpenShift is a stable product.

The scalability is excellent; it allows for a very high transaction volume. 

OpenShift's technical support is outstanding, and I rate them highly.

Positive

I previously used Google Kubernetes Engine, and many of the bank's teams started switching to the OpenShift Container Platform. Once I got my hands on the product, I saw it was very good. The general trend in our organization is one of migrating to OCP.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup of the product, but it took around 30 minutes and I know it to be elementary. 

I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform.

We evaluated GKE and found OCP much more lightweight and easier to use. I tried with GKE but was never successful with it. However, with no background in OCP, I watched some YouTube tutorials and successfully deployed a sample project. This ease of use is essential for us, as we don't need to spend time dealing with infrastructure and can focus on the development and functional aspects.

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

We didn't consider building our own container platform because it's too big a job. We're a bank, and most banks focus more on developing functionality than building a container platform and instead look for the best available tool.

We also use Red Hat Linux and chose it because it's very stable and reliable.  

The biggest lesson I've learned from using the solution is how easy and simple it is to deploy, how little we need to focus on infrastructure, and how it allows us to prioritize functionality.  

We can deploy microservices on the fly. The time to market has improved for our organization. If any issues are found or any incident is reported, fixes or hotfixes can be done within a fraction of a second. These KPIs are the improvements.

In terms of security, it supports user management. An authentication and authorization solution is embedded in that. There is also certificate management in terms of how it rotates the certificates and the kind of TLS mechanism it uses for the end-users as well as for the communication within a cluster. It also allows our images to be scanned before deployment.

OpenShift comes with a lot of marketplace operator-based solutions. It also allows any open-source operator-based solution. It could also be a Helm Chart-based solution for deploying any cloud-native application or workload.

OpenShift is much better than others as an upstream project for Kubernetes. It also has certain features that are not there in any other flavor of Kubernetes. For example, Source-to-Image (S2I) is a wonderful feature in OpenShift where your code can be in the source repository. It can be built and deployed with a click of a button. That helps the developers' community to deploy their code and see the results on the fly.

In OpenShift, there are a lot of things that are good as compared to any other Kubernetes flavor. The console or the GUI of OpenShift is awesome. You can do a lot of things from there. You can perform administration tasks as well as development tasks. 

The RBAC user management that comes packaged with OpenShift is not there in other Kubernetes. That's a very nice feature. 

The upgrade mechanism is also very good. The upgrades are pushed by Red Hat, and with just the click of a button, your OpenShift cluster gets upgraded. That is another very nice feature. These are a couple of things that I like.

A lot of improvements are required in OpenShift when it's deployed on a public cloud such as AWS, GCP, or AKS. 

OpenShift has certain restrictions in terms of managing the cluster when it's running on a public cloud. For example, identity and access management integration with the IM of AWS is quite difficult. It requires some open-source tools to integrate. This is one area where I always see room for improvement. 

In addition, the RBAC access is only controlled by the OpenShift internal mechanism, whereas the authorization part can be handled by any public cloud. We are already managing and maintaining users in the cloud environment. So, a repetitive or duplicate RBAC mechanism is not required. 

I have been working with this solution since 2018. It has been more than four years.

It's a stable solution. However, most organizations are lagging in upgrading the versions because of various reasons, such as business downtime and the risk involved behind that. If you don't upgrade it on time, then there will definitely be bugs. It normally doesn't create many issues, but we have had instances where when we go to the Red Hat product support team, they always mention going for the next upgrade or the next possible upgrade so that a bug is completely removed. However, it's not always possible to do that. So, stability-wise, it's quite stable, but no product can be perfect. In the version that we are running, there are a couple of bugs, and we have to live with them, unless and until we upgrade to the next version.

Because it's on a public cloud, it's very easy to scale up.

In terms of its users, we have close to 100 users. There are a couple of DevOps engineers in that, and then there are administrators who manage and maintain the cluster. The rest of them are developers. These are the primary users.

It's being used quite extensively, at least in two of our markets. I have no idea about plans to increase the usage of this product, but I also don't see any reduction in its usage in the near future.

Their support is very good. We have a premium subscription for our organization, and we get support whenever we need it. It's quite good. It's the backbone of this product. I would rate them a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the support professionals work from different geographical regions, and when there is a shift change, we lose some time. It happens rarely, but it has been a cause of concern a couple of times.

As a partner for helping us create the platform that we need, I would rate Red Hat an eight out of ten. In terms of support, they provide all the required commands, code pieces, or files required to troubleshoot the issue. They also provide support during any new installation or upgrade.

Positive

When I started working on this project, OpenShift was already there. I don't know if and what it was migrated from. In the accounts that I'm handling, we had OpenShift, and applications were containerized and migrated to OpenShift.

We use other Red Hat products. We use Red Hat OpenStack, and we also use GlusterFS storage from Red Hat, which comes as a part of OpenStack. Apart from that, most of the virtual machines are already using RHEL. OpenStack, for us, is on a private cloud. It's not as friendly as AWS public cloud. Integration-wise, it's seamless, but if we want auto-scaling at the OpenStack level, it's not possible for us. 

An advantage of using multiple Red Hat products together is in terms of the support we get from them. That's very good. If we consider any Kubernetes flavor running on any public cloud, getting support on the components we have deployed is difficult, but Red Hat supports that. Whatever we have deployed, they can provide support on that. The support provided by Red Hat is really great, and that's why they're asking for a premium cost for that.

It was already done before I came, but I know that it was done using Ansible stack and Ansible code. Its deployment is quite straightforward. The 4x versions of OpenShift are very easy to deploy. The older 3x versions were quite difficult to deploy, but in the latest versions, especially on a public cloud, it manages everything. It spins up your cloud virtual machines, installs OpenShift on them, and provides you the endpoint to access it.

If the Ansible code or scripts are available and ready, on a production system, it takes about one hour to one and a half hours. It also depends on how many virtual machines you require to install OpenShift.

Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay. 

I would recommend evaluating the product thoroughly for your requirements. That's because OpenShift comes with a lot of bells and whistles, and most organizations don't need that. It also comes with auto-managed components. If you are looking for less-managed components on a Kubernetes cluster, then Red Hat OpenShift is the only answer.

We didn't consider building our own container platform. There are different flavors available for Kubernetes. We use OpenShift, EKS, AKS, and GKE. Even OKE is coming up. It depends on what different markets of our organization prefer and what is cost-effective for them.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten because we are quite happy with it. There are a couple of restrictions in terms of managing clusters on a public cloud, but other than that, it has a lot of inbuilt components, which are helpful for managing the cluster better.

Our client deployed OpenShift on a bare-metal server, and they use it to offer their customers a platform-as-a-service solution with metered billing. It's pay-as-you-go. We are currently developing our own platform. For the most part, we have enough developers, but we'll go to Red Hat when we need support.

OpenShift is an improvement over legacy monolithic applications. With OpenShift, our clients can see the new features quickly, and developers can get any software they need from the Red Hat Marketplace. It has improved our product development and the existing workload on business material applications running on OpenShift. It has improved the performance of our company's IT department. 

OpenShift complies with the security center, where the CS image is hardened by default. OpenShift is very secure. When there are updates, OpenShift will update all the patches necessary throughout the entire cluster platform. It takes care of that easily, reducing many administrative tasks. Using this product improves our compliance code significantly.

The pipelines in OpenShift are handy for developers to build and automate things quickly. It's easy to bring things online. Options are helpful for the customized solutions we can do with this product. Overall, the automations are well aligned with OpenShift. That's what I see.

OpenShift's code-ready workspaces reduce project onboarding time by about 70-plus days while reducing time-to-market by around 50 percent. 

The operating system has a live update and is more secure than any other. It's made for Atomic OS, a lightweight OS new to the market. I also like the source-to-image capabilities. The customer can directly deploy their applications from the repository. It's a highly flexible and easy way to deploy into production. 

It's a simplified network for exposing their application to the outside world. Red Hat has good built-in oversight, where it monitors the cluster performance and records everything built inside the cluster besides OpenShift. Of course, Red Hat is a pioneer in this kind of auditing. 

Telecom clients can use OpenStack as their private cloud to access secure resources on demand. When they deploy to OpenShift, it's easier for them to have a cloud-like field on their own data center. OpenShift and OpenStack are integrated. It's an ideal combination. The infrastructure created in OpenStack is a robust private cloud solution. If the developer wants to consume resources within their organization per the utilization, OpenStack is the right platform for building their private cloud.

In terms of innovation, features, and functionality, a public cloud has much more than OpenStack by itself. I prefer OpenShift on AWS or Azure Cloud. That has made it easier for the customers to benefit because they don't need to worry about their managed solutions anymore. It's the customer's choice to manage services through OpenShift or on-prem. OpenShift can be run on all platforms, including VMware, public, private, etc. It's a great solution from a consumer choice perspective. 

The codes are customized and fixed only for their own environment, so it's more secure, but we cannot assure the client's security. However, the code is validated, and Red Hat support will address any vulnerabilities or security issues that arise.

The support costs are too high. 

I've used OpenShift for the last two years.

OpenShift is a highly stable product if you're using it as a managed service. 

OpenShift is scalable. 

I rate Red Hat support nine out of 10. 

Positive

Setting up OpenShift is fairly straightforward. It takes about a week to plan and another to deploy, so two weeks max. 

They can reduce prices because Kubernetes is open-source and freely available to customers. The license cost is for deploying on-prem, so it's costly to go to a client's location to deploy things compared to open source. If they reduce the cost, more customers will choose OpenShift.

I rate OpenShift Container Platform 10 out of 10. This is a great product. Red Hat has been in the field for more than 25 years. Each product they release is more innovative and cutting-edge.