Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Reviews

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 use case is primarily to do with DataPower. We wanted to configure DataPower and move away from appliances to a software-based solution, which is CP4I. DataPower is an IBM product, and we were using their firmware machine. We wanted to move from hardware or firmware to software, and CP4I is a software-based solution for DataPower, and that works primarily for any Kubernetes, but IBM had both. So we moved to Kubernetes, and on top of that, we had CP4I.

We did the implementation for one organization. It was widely used, and there was a huge customer base. It was primarily in the telecom domain. Those APIs were used, and we were getting a lot of incoming traffic and outgoing traffic through DataPower.

This solution is deployed on our private cloud.

The architecture is the best. The solution is scalable if you are on a container-based solution. I can easily spin a new container or create another image, so that was the benefit. It was scalable, and I could easily ramp up and ramp down the services based on the need.

OpenShift is not very old. They have built an entire layer on top of Kubernetes. Getting the solution quickly and troubleshooting quickly are both areas where I think it needs some work. 

It wasn't very problematic for us because we were getting the solution. They also needed to do some experiments in their own lab, because our use case was a little different, and we were one of the few who were implementing it for the first time with Cloud Pak.

I have been using this solution for about two and a half years.

It wasn't stable while we were testing it, but now it's really stable.

I would rate technical support 4 out of 5. 

The deployment was very easy, which is another benefit. The orchestration and management were also very user-friendly and easy.

We used our own technical team for deployment. The team, including support and everything, was around five to six people. They were working on services also, like creating and deploying the APIs. We had the infrastructure team who were managing the clusters.

It also depends on the size and how many master nodes there are, how many worker nodes you have, and the mechanism you're using for logging. I was using Prometheus and Grafana. It all depends on how huge your architecture, how huge your infrastructure is.

We definitely did the ROI on this new implementation, and we found that in the long run, it was going to save a lot.

We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that.

It was not very cheap, but it was affordable for the organization. They had the enterprise ELA, which means they had the enterprise licensing agreement with IBM. So it worked for them, and it wasn't very expensive.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform as a container of network functions for customer's telecom industry. 

One practical example of how OpenShift Container Platform helps us is in deploying security updates quickly, which is superior compared to other solutions like Coverness, Canonical, Kubernetes, Rancher, etc. However, there are areas for improvement in networking, architecture, and cloud aspects of the solution.

I find the security features and use of operators in OpenShift Container Platform highly valuable. The container update capabilities and OpenShift data foundation for storage are also important features.

I believe OpenShift Container Platform can improve in networking, architecture, and cloud areas by reducing deployment time, lowering costs, and streamlining engineer resources. Additionally, I would like to see more Azure I/O functions in the next release.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform for four years.

The platform is stable and capable, covering various customer needs.

The scalability of OpenShift Container Platform is excellent. It allows for quick scale-outs with new workers, making it very efficient and is used by eighteen engineers for telecom purposes, impacting business significantly.

Technical support from OpenShift is decent but could be improved in some locations.

I find the initial setup of OpenShift Container Platform to be moderately complex. The deployment involves steps like installation, configuration, and deploying common services on-premises. Deployment typically takes around four hours and involves a team of two to four people. I'm not involved in maintenance. 

I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it.

My advice for new users is to explore the platform thoroughly as it's complex yet reliable. I would rate their customer service a seven out of ten. Overall, I rate OpenShift Container Platform a nine as it's a good product with room for improvement.

The principal use case of the platform is the transition and migration to the cloud. The second one is the modernization of our integration platforms.

The usability and the developer experience. The platform has a centralized consultant that is easy to use for our development, operations and security teams.

The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform.

When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform for five years. We started with OpenShift Container Platform and now we have OpenShift Container Platform tools. 

I would rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution is difficult to set up because of the limitations of the premises. 

Overall, I would rate the product a nine out of ten.