Red Hat OpenShift Reviews

My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift is serving telco customers. A quick specific example of how I use Red Hat OpenShift for my telco customers involves different applications that reside in containers on those particular container platforms. This workload includes different parts such as AMF and UPF, which are the basic functions that I normally use as applications on Red Hat OpenShift.

Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted our organization by adding significantly to our revenues because what we were doing through other vendors shows that with vanilla Kubernetes, there are many features and extra advantages in Red Hat OpenShift. It has had a strong positive impact on our organization by standardizing how we build, deploy, and operate applications across environments. One of the biggest benefits is its operational consistency. It provides a uniform Kubernetes platform across both on-premises and cloud environments. From an availability and reliability perspective, Red Hat OpenShift's built-in lifecycle management and automated upgrades, along with self-healing capabilities, have improved overall system stability.

Currently, I am not equipped with specific outcomes or metrics that demonstrate this positive impact, but it has significantly improved all these parameters.

The best features Red Hat OpenShift offers include security, hybrid multi-cloud, and bare metal flexibility. The Operator framework and lifecycle automation are also part of it, along with improved CI/CD and GitOps pipelines, and strong security with compliance features.

In my day-to-day operations, I find lifecycle automation to be the most valuable feature. Additionally, Red Hat OpenShift provides developers with hands-on extra capabilities and experiences.

Red Hat OpenShift can be improved by reducing its complexity. We could also have better UX, especially for day two operations. There is always some scope for optimization that we can address.

I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for four years.

Red Hat OpenShift is stable and offers the most stability among all the competitors and enterprise-level solutions available.

The scalability of Red Hat OpenShift is great, with many options available to scale it according to your requirement or demand. The extent to which you can scale depends on the environment you are deploying it in.

The customer support is great, and we have many channels through which we can approach them.

We have previously used VMware and Wind River, and while we still use them for some of our customers, we switched to Red Hat OpenShift because we found the best features there.

I do not have any readily available data regarding return on investment metrics, but I can say that we see relevant improvements in money saved, time saved, and fewer employees needed.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing involves a different team that handles all these aspects, so as a SRE, I do not need to worry about these things.

Before choosing Red Hat OpenShift, we evaluated other options such as Mesos, but Red Hat OpenShift is more futuristic.

My advice for others looking into using Red Hat OpenShift is that you need to first get hands-on experience with the technology. It is based on vanilla Kubernetes, but they have added additional capabilities for which having basic knowledge is essential. You should go through their portals and lab environments available.

My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift is setting up a product for customers in a cluster which requires Kubernetes and redundancy.

A specific example of how I use Red Hat OpenShift to set up a product for customers is that it starts with determining how much a customer has to spend because when you're looking at clusters where you have actual control over the worker nodes, you have to determine what they are going to be. If you're doing something with an AWS cluster, then you need to work out what it's going to cost them on a monthly cycle.

The best features Red Hat OpenShift offers are scalability so you can scale to workload, as well as providing redundancy. It provides rollback capability so that if you're putting in a build, you can reverse out the build.

Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted my organization with its scalability, security, as well as the ability to control it effectively.

One of the improvements for Red Hat OpenShift which I have problems with is that the changes from version to version could be better.

I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for six years.

Usability in Red Hat OpenShift is simply complex.

When I'm doing a traditional deployment with Red Hat OpenShift and I want to implement a change, if the change fails, all I need to do is reverse out the build. One click reverses out all the changes after the operational ones are done. This capability to deploy easily, effectively, and with great change management, as well as very granular control over who can do what and what processes can be run, is valuable.

I give Red Hat OpenShift a rating of nine because there are always difficulties in implementation.

Red Hat OpenShift is deployed in my organization across public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, on-premises, as well as UAT. For our public cloud deployment, we use AWS. We purchased Red Hat OpenShift through the AWS Marketplace.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We use it for container orchestration. Some customers don't need to go with the coordinated open source as they need a more enterprise solution, so we use OpenShift. We mainly use it to host IBM CloudSec. We are working with CloudSec for integration, CloudSec for automation, and as a prerequisite for them, they need an OpenShift.

With OpenShift, it gives me the ability and capability to monitor all my microservices and all my containers using its integrated monitoring. Its horizontal pod scaling is more efficient than the one used in Kubernetes.

Most benefit from it, however, I work with Kubernetes, and installing Vanilla Kubernetes is easy. That said, it introduces many tools that need to be set up individually. OpenShift comes ready out of the box, with all tools installed and configured. Red Hat certifies and confirms that all the components are compatible with each other. 

OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes. The integrated DevOps capabilities, such as pipelines and the container registry, are extremely beneficial. 

Additionally, its capability to monitor microservices and containers with integrated tools like Prometheus is a major advantage. The horizontal pod scaling exceeds the scalability features I found in Kubernetes.

OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure. If I have a Kubernetes cluster with one master and three workers, to apply the same configuration in OpenShift, I need about three masters, three infra, and three workers. 

It uses around double the resources of vanilla Kubernetes. Also, learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware. These demands can deter people from learning OpenShift.

I have been working with Red Hat OpenShift for about four years now.

OpenShift is stable but comes at the cost of a very expensive infrastructure. It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.

OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.

We have dealt with many cases with Red Hat support, and while they eventually solve issues, it sometimes takes them a long time to reach a resolution, particularly with complex matters related to IBM Cloud. We have rated their support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I have used Vanilla Kubernetes, VMware Kubernetes, etc., before. OpenShift is the more powerful and supported solution between them.

The setup involves creating a configuration file called 'install-config.' After providing necessary parameters such as vCenter's URL, username, and password, an Ignition file is generated. A virtual machine is then created from an OVA file with attached parameters. 

Although the process is still somewhat complex due to user-provisioned infrastructure, OpenShift offers a simpler installer-provided infrastructure. We chose user-provided because it offers more control over our environment.

With OpenShift combined with IBM Cloud App integration, I can spin an integration server in a second as compared to traditional methods, which could take days or weeks.

The cost of OpenShift is very high, particularly with the OpenShift Plus package, which includes many products and services. While I know it's expensive, I do not have the specific numbers.

I have used Vanilla Kubernetes, VMware Kubernetes, etc., before. OpenShift has proven to be better.

I recommend having a solid understanding of Kubernetes before transitioning to OpenShift as it is based on Kubernetes. Without this knowledge, managing and maintaining OpenShift can be a nightmare. 

I rate OpenShift as a nine point nine out of ten. I suggest considering the necessary infrastructure and related costs before adopting OpenShift.

On-premises

I used OpenShift for the enterprise service cost system of a bank. We completed the migration of the bank's core banking system using OpenShift as the infrastructure. OpenShift acts as an orchestration platform and is used as our private cloud.

OpenShift is a spin-off of Kubernetes, built on top of Kubernetes. It has features that enhance security, ease of deployment, and service exposure compared to Kubernetes. It also provides good integration with GitOps and ArgoCD. 

Additionally, OpenShift offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface for cluster management, making it more accessible for administrators.

I had to frequently upgrade my cluster due to OpenShift's rolling updates every six months, which I found to be excessive. Making updates a yearly occurrence could be beneficial. In terms of self-service for developers, there is room for improvement. The removal of Grafana and HPA from monitoring caused some issues. Observability could be more robust.

I've been working with OpenShift for four years.

OpenShift is very stable. I've had my cluster running for over four years, with issues caused more by poor monitoring or user error rather than the product itself.

OpenShift is highly scalable, allowing us to manage thousands of pods effectively. We've implemented features like Horizontal Pod Autoscaling to adapt based on demand and integrated with F5 for high availability.

Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective. I had 50 to 59 support cases, many of which were resolved quickly depending on the urgency and expertise needed.

Neutral

We moved from a legacy system to OpenShift due to its stability and capabilities provided by being backed by Red Hat.

The initial setup was straightforward, especially on the cloud where it was set up quickly. The on-premises setup was more challenging due to additional configurations required.

We handled the implementation internally with our team, which consisted of three engineers managing the analytics environment.

Moving to OpenShift resulted in increased system stability and reduced downtime, which contributed to operational efficiency. Although it increased costs, it helped modernize our infrastructure.

The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400.

We did not evaluate any other options aside from our legacy system before choosing OpenShift.

If you have the skill and experience, Kubernetes can be used in production. OpenShift provides extra coverage in terms of security and management. Have a disaster recovery plan due to frequent updates. 

I rate OpenShift at nine out of ten.

On-premises

We are building an application that is a containerized application, and we are using Red Hat OpenShift for that application.

The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift. 

Our solutions can easily scale to any number of users or requests if we are running on the cloud. The cloud also supports the pay-as-you-go model, so scalability is the biggest benefit.

They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower.

It has been almost one and a half years, maybe a little more.

I would rate the stability somewhere around eight to nine out of ten. It is very stable.

It is easy to scale Red Hat OpenShift. The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.

I have been pretty happy in the past with getting support from Red Hat. We haven't had many cases regarding the support for OpenShift, however, we opened a couple of tickets, and they were satisfactorily answered.

Neutral

We have also used the VMware environment in our setup.

I would say the initial setup is not very complex, but moderately complex, similar to other containerized platforms like Kubernetes. Compared to what we are used to running, such as other virtualization platforms like VMware, it is moderately complex.

Red Hat can improve on the pricing part by making it more flexible and possibly on the lower side.

For the very basic features, I can compare it with VMware Tanzu as we are running a basic setup at the moment.

I rate Red Hat OpenShift somewhere around eight out of ten. 

AI integration sounds like a good idea as AI is the future, and a lot of products in the market are benefiting from AI integration.

On-premises

The main goal is the modernization of our applications. We have a few applications running on mainframes, which increase costs. We aim to modernize them on containers and microservices. We are shifting towards Kubernetes or Docker. As an enterprise client, the best solution is Red Hat OpenShift paired with support from Red Hat.

A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes. This automation impresses us and benefits us in managing loads on applications. 

Although we have just started the transition and are moving slowly, OpenShift has been helpful in modernizing our applications, and it is a positive step forward.

The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware. 

As we use both Red Hat virtualization and OpenShift together, differentiating between them becomes challenging. We should aim to include VMware-like capabilities to be competitive, especially considering cost factors.

I have been working with OpenShift for a year now.

Right now, I would rate the stability of OpenShift as eight out of ten. It performs well under load, providing the desired output.

Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten. It allows for scaling as much as needed, which is a significant advantage.

We are currently dealing with both local support and Red Hat support, and they have been amazing.

Positive

We were a VMware house for a long time, about ten to 15 years. However, the cost for VMware skyrocketed, making it hard to continue using it.

The initial setup is complex.

The cost is a crucial factor, particularly with licensing. As things evolve, companies increasingly focus on cost-effectiveness.

Kubernetes, as an open-source option, is a significant competitor, particularly for those dealing with cost concerns.

I would rate OpenShift nine out of ten overall. 

It is suitable for any company, regardless of size. Smaller companies may opt for open-source solutions like Kubernetes. However, OpenShift offers comprehensive support, which is appealing to enterprise clients.

Our primary use case for Red Hat OpenShift involves leveraging its container orchestration platform to enhance application modernization efforts. We host containerized applications and integrate GPU capabilities for optimized deployment of AI workloads.

Simplifies transitioning from legacy systems to containerized environments, enabling better scalability and flexibility.

Provides GPU integration and infrastructure that support the deployment and scaling of data-intensive AI workloads.

Accelerates delivery pipelines with robust CI/CD features, helping teams bring applications to market faster.

Scalability and High Availability: OpenShift makes it easy to scale applications horizontally or vertically based on demand. Its high-availability capabilities ensure reliability and minimize downtime.

Built-in Security Features: Enhanced security tools like role-based access control (RBAC), network segmentation, and image vulnerability scans protect containerized applications.

Operator Framework: This simplifies the management of Kubernetes applications, automating tasks like installation, upgrades, and maintenance.

Simplified Networking: While OpenShift has advanced networking features, simplifying configurations for complex setups could make it more accessible to users with varying expertise levels

Resource Management Visibility: Improving the display of limits and quotas issues can help developers better manage resources and avoid bottlenecks.

Availability and capacity reporting 

We have approximately two years of experience with Red Hat OpenShift.

Red Hat OpenShift is a stable solution.

I would rate the scalability of Red Hat OpenShift as an eight or nine out of ten. The platform has shown significant improvement with each new version, adding valuable features while making it easy to scale by adding or removing worker nodes and storage.

Red Hat's technical support is good, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Positive

We provide a range of services, acting as implementers, integrators, and partners with Red Hat OpenShift.

Red Hat OpenShift has a high price, and the licensing model can be prohibitive for smaller customers. Initially, licensing was per CPU, with a memory cap, but the price has doubled, making it difficult to justify for clients with smaller compute needs.

Not tested any other solution 

Overall, I would rate Red Hat OpenShift a nine out of ten. Despite the higher price and needed improvements, OpenShift is an enterprise-grade solution that meets most business needs. I would rate the overall solution a 9 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

We have deployed OpenShift on-premises on VMware and Azure, but not the managed platform. We manage the deployment ourselves, doing our own customizations.

When we look at traditional web development applications, we'll find that the typical release cycle is one and a half to two months. However, given that customers are now deploying new versions of their applications multiple times a day, OpenShift has improved the way our organization develops, tests, and deploys applications. OpenShift stimulates innovation.

OpenShift provides us with the flexibility and efficiency of cloud-native stacks while enabling us to meet regulatory constraints. No matter where we run our container clouds, as long as we use the right tooling such as Knative, we can run our applications everywhere. Red Hat's nicest feature is that it enables us to develop cloud native applications and put them anywhere. We don't have to run our application on OpenShift. We can also run it in a public cloud like AWS or Azure. We can develop on our primary platform (OpenShift) and build with the right tooling in Knative, using MQ streams, and Kafka, allowing us to connect it everywhere.

OpenShift's automated processes have reduced our development time and increased the quality of our end product. OpenShift has come a long way since its early days. While there were some bumps along the way, the last few years have seen major releases with few, if any, significant bugs. Today, OpenShift is a reliable platform that is easy to use. People act differently when they're listening to the community. If we have a feature request, the vendor works with us to make it happen. I've added multiple requests, especially web UI interfaces, and the team has been very helpful. If we have a feature we require and we work with the vendor, we can have it solved within three months.

Depending on the environment Dev Spaces can reduce project onboarding time. If we have to start over from scratch, Dev Spaces can help us set up our development environments quickly. But if we have a running organization with development teams already in place, it can be more difficult to give them Dev Spaces and have them start developing in that way.

When Dev Spaces are used we can bring up a complete OpenShift cluster in under two and a half hours. We have already automated the process.  We can launch on OpenShift in less than two and a half hours, completely reconfigured. Using Dev Spaces is definitely worth it if we only have to configure it once. We can have a complete working stack for more than 30 or 40 developers up and running in less than four hours. If we have to do it in the traditional way, it will take 1600 hours. That's 40 hours per application. In Dev Spaces, it takes one click to add a new user and we're done because we have a standard environment.

Dev Spaces helps reduce time to market because our developers can test their applications quickly and easily by developing them directly for Kubernetes or OpenShift.

With Dev Spaces a developer can run the test continuously and start the container test, drop the container, and repeat, saving around 75 percent of the time compared to the traditional way of testing.

I'm a rapid accelerator. I have a lot of contacts in the Netherlands, the USA, and England. It doesn't matter where I am, I can get help from my contacts at Red Hat. As a premium partner, we have sessions every other week to share ideas and knowledge. We are constantly updated about the latest changes that are going to happen in the near future. Our relationship with Red Hat is very good.

We work with Ansible, Satellite, and RHEL itself. We have co-workers and developers who are helping us with the entire Red Hat suite. The integration between the Red Hat solutions is very good. Many integrations are moving to OpenShift. If we look at OpenShift Fuse, it's a Middleware product of Red Hat. It's been running on virtual machines for the last few years. But they are moving to OpenShift. Directing services for maintaining user accounts is a critical part of the integration. The software will run on OpenShift, but not on virtual machines. There are still many integration possibilities. Red Hat develops OpenShift on top of Kubernetes, but also maintains its own applications there, Lenox and Middleware. So, Red Hat will keep it integrated.

OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes. With OpenShift, we get a complete ecosystem around the developer, which includes extras that aren't available with Kubernetes. If we build in a Kubernetes environment ourselves, we have to do a lot of work to get it on the same level as OpenShift. One of the nicest parts of OpenShift is the UI, which allows developers to log on and start building their applications very quickly. The integrations are essential to OpenShift, including pipelining and service mesh.

By default, OpenShift is very secure. Out of the box, our role access is in place. We can easily connect to our active directory or our open ID providers. The constraints in the platform are also secure by default. OpenShift is one of the most secure solutions out of the box.

OpenShift's security features for writing business-critical applications are okay. In addition to OpenShift, we use advanced security calls to help developers and application teams keep their applications and projects secure. This depends on a lot of factors, such as the type of application. We work to keep our deployments and applications secure on container versions and solutions, as well as within our applications. We help customers set up their baselines. We recommend not running the applications on the root and staying as close to Kubernetes or OpenShift as possible. This is all we need to do in order to be successful with baselines.

OpenShift has made a lot of strides in the last few months including moving the dashboards to an OpenShift UI making it much easier for a developer to track applications and they no longer need an extra portal to show the metrics or log off their applications.

There are many advantages of using multiple Red Hat products together starting with the integration. We have a one-stop shop for support and we can bundle the products for a huge discount.

The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations. 

What we see now is a move from traditional DevOps to GitOps. We use Argo CD for that, which provides a little more integration. It would be nice to have the same UI experience in the OpenShift console without having to log in on a third console.

I have been using OpenShift for seven years.

OpenShift is very stable. I have 11 OpenShift clusters up and running for one customer, and the only issue I've had is with VMware. It's not with OpenShift itself, but with the layer underneath OpenShift.

The solution is scalable. If our bid is high, OpenShift will work right out of the box. For example, if my work is at about 80% capacity, OpenShift can automatically scale a new worker. We can scale down our infrastructure also if needed.

The standard technical support is not great and I would give it a six out of ten. However, with the premium subscription, we get 24/7 support. I usually give support eight out of ten when I need help. This still leaves room for improvement, as almost every issue I have is a P1, which is the highest severity.

Positive

I work with all the Kubernetes platforms depending on the project. I might use OpenShift, Rancher, or even Q&E depending on the needs of the project. 

The initial setup is straightforward, if we follow the documentation and we download the OpenShift install, we can have a very small cluster up and running in less than an hour. However, we will have to do all the day two tasks ourselves. If we run an enterprise, we have a lot of complications. We need to have proxies, separate our infrastructure stack into different nodes, and move storage to storage nodes. This adds a lot of extra work.

The IPI will take about 45 minutes. The second part, if completely automated, will take about two and a half hours.

The first thing we need to know is that Kubernetes is free. However, if we need to maintain a Kubernetes environment, we need 10 people to build, maintain and keep Kubernetes secure and bring it to the same level as OpenShift. Then we have to pay evenly as subscriptions for OpenShift. It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Depending on how we deploy OpenStack it can be difficult to work with. If we have deployed OpenStack for a couple of years, we have to choose a different type of automation. If we're fully integrated, we have a lot of requirements to map making it hard to change everything to match the OpenShift standards, so we deploy in a user-based install.

We have written down a lot of knowledge about how to run a container platform. Depending on how many clusters and how many teams we have involved in the cluster, we manage 11 OpenShift clusters with people. That's only possible when we completely automate. If we do everything by hand, we require a lot of people. If we don't automate the complete infrastructure in OpenShift, we require 11 people, one person per cluster. Currently, we run  11 clusters with four people.

If you're starting a company and don't have a lot of knowledge in the industry, I would recommend using OpenShift. It will make your life much easier, as Red Hat is a big supporter of the platform and is willing to help build our infrastructure and applications.

On-premises