Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Reviews

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

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 are using it for a payment system.

We run business-critical applications on OpenShift. It is very good.

Since we had limited time for our project, this solution was very helpful in getting us into production within a short time frame.

The management console is easy to use. You can easily install some components with OpenShift Operator. 

Red Hat's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is good. It is a lightweight operating system. You don't have to worry about the security patches on the system. You can update the entire environment with security patches, which is a nice feature.

It has an option to install OpenShift without connecting it to the Internet. We tried this, but it was very hard. We couldn't manage to use that option. We wanted to use it offline for installations, updates, upgrades, etc., but we didn't find the offline installation and updates easy. This could be better.

We have been using it for two months, since December, with an important project.

I find the platform stable.

It is scalable. The problem is the license.

It is used not only with our company, but with some banks.

New banks or another organization may come to use the product going forward. 

We use the technical support, but not much. Some of my friends use it more in-depth. I think it is not so great, but useful. By starting at Level 1 to Level 2 to Level 3, accessing the right person sometimes takes us time.

We were previously using a container platform with Onsite, but we were using it for different applications, like servers.

We went with OpenShift because we knew that we already had Linux systems running on Red Hat and were getting support from Red Hat, e.g., we are using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system.

The initial setup was not complicated. It has many documents. Since we bought in a company, they had some predefined documents, which was helpful for us. 

It took two to three weeks to do the initial five online installations, then we installed three different clusters in one week.

We had a step-by-step plan that we followed to implement this solution. We installed the machine, then the images on the machine. We ran them after the cluster was up, then we installed the Operators.

We worked with a local company during installation. Those guys did the installation. They did not have in-depth product knowledge, but they were helpful. I think the company was a partner of Red Hat.

Take some time to understand and learn the product before starting it.

Our Red Hat products integrate well in our company. 

My company has a background with Red Hat. The people from our company had established relationships with Red Hat.

I would rate this product as an eight out of 10.

On-premises

The way our consultancy works is we have a number of internal products which we use, such as testing systems. We deploy our applications in scientific products and take advantage of automation. We are focusing on automation development for our customers. 

Previously we were using different automation methods. This product, however, is great. With OpenShift, you're able to achieve significantly higher deployments. There are more deployments per month on OpenShift. At the same time, it's all the tower application availability issues on offer that are great. Now, OpenShift follows us to make sure that all our applications are always highly available.

Openshift is a very developer-friendly product. 

The self-service allows us to deliver applications fast to production.

The functionality is quite good, even though we may only use 30% of it.

The solution has pretty good features overall. I can't recall if there are any that are lacking.

The pricing is quite high. It would be nice if they could make it more competitive.

The solution needs to introduce open ID connect integration for role-based access control.

I've been using the solution for maybe four years at this point.

This is a rather new product. It's only been on the market for 1.5 years, and therefore has a lot of growing to do. While the earlier versions were not as stable, we find version four to be very good and much improved.

You can scale the solution, however, we don't have that much money and therefore we aren't really scaling it.

We have architects, engineers, DevOps, and developers on the solution. We're a pretty small company of about 50, and maybe 40 users are using Openshift internally.

If anything, we would have to go to Red Hat to get technical support, however, we've been able to solve our own problems internally. Therefore, we've never really used technical support. I can't speak to their level of responsiveness or knowledge.

While it's completely different, we did use Ansible as a way of automation and to deploy applications, for example, on top of just using Linux and additional layers of stuff. Openshift is just a better product and more geared towards what we need.

We started to use an Openshift a long time ago. Right now, it's difficult to say if it's straightforward or complex as every version is completely different. Once we were with Openshft version three, it was pretty easy to install. As was version four.

However, then it will be installed inside your infrastructure on the public clouds of endpoints.

The solution is very costly. However, you do get good value for the price, and therefore we're willing to pay even if the cost is high.

We are a Red Hat partner. We're a consultancy firm.

We started using OpenShift version two, then we migrated to OpenShift's version three and now we are on a complete version four.

We tend to use all deployment models - on-premises, public and private clouds, and hybrid options.

If a company is considering the solution, I would advise that they maybe start working with some guys who have experience with the product. It will be much more work otherwise, and you can save time by avoiding POCs. 

Overall, I would rate the solution ten out of ten. Even though the pricing is high, I knew what I was getting into, and for me, for the value we get from the product, it's worth the cost.

Hybrid Cloud

The platform's most valuable features are its regulatory compliance and enterprise support. It does not offer significantly unique features compared to Kubernetes or Docker. The primary advantage is its extensive support and integration with Red Hat's solutions.

The product's setup process could be easier. 

We have been using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for approximately one year.

The product is quite stable and reliable, offering robust performance compared to other solutions.

We are currently working with a multi-cluster environment, and the product scalability and response time are impressive, with nodes performing optimally.

Compared to IBM support, Red Hat's support team is more responsive.

The setup process is considerably more complex than that of Docker or Kubernetes. Its multi-node cluster setup involves a more intricate and time-consuming method.

OpenShift's core-based licensing model provides significant benefits regarding enterprise support and scalability. Despite its high cost, it offers valuable features and support that justify the investment.

The product is expensive. 

I rate the platform an eight. 

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