Red Hat OpenShift Reviews

Usually, we use it as a test environment and to quickly develop the proof of concept for various projects. So, it's mainly for quick deployment and testing.

It's deployed on the cloud and on-premises.

The biggest benefit is the speed. When developing a new PoC, if we don't have a container-based environment, we would have to set up virtual machines. We would have to install different software to make sure that there are secure ways to do that, which would most likely need a couple of days, whereas, with a container-based platform, such as Kubernetes or OpenShift, we can do that in a matter of minutes or hours.

The security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is very good. It's a step-by-step procedure to obtain new software. It's very secure. We cannot have access without a safe, provisioned way. For troubleshooting a fault, I like the new oc debug feature where you spin up a new pod for debugging. You can spin up a new test pod for a complete copy of the problematic one. We are very happy with it security-wise. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of security features for running business-critical applications. That's only because I never give a ten.

It provides us with the flexibility and efficiency of cloud-native stacks while enabling us to meet regulatory constraints. We can automate these checks. For example, in the hybrid cloud model, we can check for different things, such as the accessibility of many different classes not only in the cloud but also on-premises. We can use the hybrid view to check many things very quickly. If someone comes into the company from a regulatory body whose job is to run a couple of scripts and check if certain rules apply to all servers, without having this kind of interface, we would have to give him a week to be able to connect to everything and check everything one by one, and of course, we would have to pay him for that. With OpenShift, from one panel, we can automatically run a script across several different servers or even connect manually to each of them, which is a big benefit. It saves a lot of time and money.

It can speed up the development time. There's only Jenkins, but I'm not so sure about that. Because the development and testing phases are sped up, the time to market can also be very good. However, it also depends on other factors, such as any back-and-forth changes, because we can have a lot of feedback. Overall, there is about a 10% improvement in the time to market.

The CodeReady Workspaces reduce project onboarding time. There is about a 20% reduction.

Its security is most valuable. It's by default secure, which is very important.

It's very easy to manage deployment across different environments. It doesn't matter if it's a private or a hybrid cloud. It's very well-suited for the type of work that we do, which is the deployment for our PoCs. It's very easy to start with small ideas and then gradually scale up. 

It's very easy to integrate with different systems and products, which is another plus point. 

It also has a very nice user interface. It's very self-explanatory, and that saves a lot of time from training new users. You can cut a lot of time to quickly familiarize yourself with the base.

OperatorHub is another big plus. It's very easy to use and very useful.

One thing that can be improved but is surely difficult to improve is the cost. We have a lot of customers who would prefer a Vanilla Kubernetes solution or another solution that combines Kubernetes with some cloud provider, especially if they are already using a specific cloud provider. When we try to work with them, some customers complain about it.

Another thing is that the installation and setup process is a little bit complex, but I must admit that it has improved a lot as compared to the older version. 

Autoscaling is a very unique feature, but it could be useful to have more options based on traffic statistics, for example, via Prometheus. So, there should be more ready solutions to autoscale based on specific applications.

I've been using this solution for about one and a half years.

It's a very stable solution. Usually, problems occur when there's an application error or someone does something wrong and there is a human factor. For example, once there was an application creating a lot of automatic snapshots. There were volumes of snapshots, which couldn't be deleted easily. So, occasionally, there may be some bugs, but generally, it's very stable.

Scalability is a big plus. There is scalability from nodes to machines and so on. However, I would prefer more options on scalability based on statistics. That would be very interesting and very nice to see in the future.

Currently, we have less than 100 users who use this solution. They are mostly developers. There are also some end-users, assessors, architects, administrators, and project managers. The end-user experience is quite self-explanatory, and it's very important.

Once I'm able to talk to a technician, the support is very good. They are very knowledgeable and polite. I'm very impressed, and I've only good things to say about their technical support even though there's a lot of bureaucracy until you reach the right department, which can take some time, but I understand that. All big organizations have a bit of a challenge. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

As a partner for helping us create the platform that we need, I would rate Red Hat a nine out of ten. They're helpful. Whenever I'm in contact with the technical team, they're knowledgeable and helpful.

Positive

I'm not sure because I wasn't involved in the installation. 

We never considered building our own container platform. I've only seen customers using Vanilla Kubernetes because OpenShift is a little bit expensive, and some specific organizations have chosen to invest in a strong team because they would need a strong team to build Vanilla Kubernetes. They are succeeding in maintaining that way of working. I have seen this a couple of times.

I wasn't involved in its initial setup, but I talked to a lot of the people who were involved. Compared to a simple or Vanilla Kubernetes, it requires lots more work and has a lot of default processes constantly running, but, in my opinion, it's something where OpenShift is getting better and better. It's getting quicker. It's going in the right direction.

The deployment took a few days.

I believe there is an ROI for organizations where security is very important, and because of privacy requirements, the public cloud cannot be an option. Especially in the banking sector, there's almost no competition. There is about 15% ROI.

It's expensive. It may be cheaper to invest in building Vanilla Kubernetes, especially if security is not the number one motivation or requirement. Of course, that's difficult, and in some business areas, such as banking, that's not something you can put as a second priority. In other situations, a Vanilla Kubernetes with a sufficiently strong team can be cheaper and almost as effective. In addition, people who are already working with a specific cloud provider tend to find cheaper solutions by combining Kubernetes on the specific cloud and choosing that over OpenShift.

It's important to build a team around this. So, invest in getting the correct training. There are a lot of options that Red Hat provides. Start small, scale up gradually, and involve people from different areas. In addition to the infrastructure team, also involve someone from development and the architecture team to be able to see its value from different perspectives.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. I'm very happy with the interface, security, and support.

Our service order management platform was cloud-native. We deployed its microservices on Red Hat OpenShift. When we did that, we were able to increase the capacity of order processing from 100,000 a day to at least 400,000 orders daily. That is the incremental capacity that OpenShift gave us.

The company had a product called device financing, where the company worked as a partner with Google. It allowed customers to take mobile phones on loan or via credit. When we migrated those services to OpenShift in February last year, we were able to sell over 100,000 devices in a single day, which was very good.

We deployed some microservices to handle Airtime Advance and Data Advance. This product from the consumer commercial team needed a throughput of around 2,500. They were able to get that from Red Hat OpenShift.

The self-healing of pods is a valuable feature. This feature goes a long way in helping us ensure our uptime for services, improving the performance of the system.

The solution provides us with the flexibility of cloud-native stacks while enabling us to meet regulatory constraints. Since most of our services were deployed on-premises, this allowed us not to get into data privacy issues for services with personally identifiable information belonging to customers. It is microservice-ready from a cloud-native perspective, which is a benefit.

With the automation that OpenShift gives you, you can automate as much as possible. This goes a long way in reducing time to market and errors due to human intervention. So, if an organization can do a lot of automation, e.g., automating deployments, that can go a very long way in reducing the time to market and the time required to fix issues that arise out of deployment.

The whole area around the hybrid cloud could be improved. I would like to deploy a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on-premise and on the cloud, then have Red Hat do the entire hybrid cloud management.

I was using this solution at my previous company. I left that company in October of last year.

We implemented the project mid-2019. We went live just before the pandemic in 2020.

It is very stable.

From some issues in production where some nodes went down, we just needed to improve in monitoring the Red Hat cluster. Then, we could know when there was degraded performance and repair it before it could cause an impact to the customer.

It is able to scale based on load.

The support is amazing. They stick to the SLA, and even go out of their way to research and assist customers to resolve issues. I would rate the support as nine out of 10.

Red Hat is amazing. With the proper leadership in place and proper partnership, you can do a lot more with Red Hat. There is a very active community where they share codes, information, and ideas.

Positive

Initially, we used to run Vanilla Kubernetes, which is open source. Then, we realized we were short on skill sets. Another organization had done a PoC of Red Hat OpenShift, and it passed. So, our organization was gracious enough to allow us to spend money on Red Hat OpenShift licenses. That was in 2019.

With Vanilla Kubernetes, we were not able to successfully implement service mesh. That comes already preconfigured for you with Red Hat OpenShift. 

In terms of traffic routing and firewall management, it was a nightmare managing that in Vanilla Kubernetes. However, with Red Hat OpenShift, you only add specific IPs in firewalls, as opposed to the nightmare that we used to see with Vanilla Kubernetes.

Red Hat's commitment to open source is one of the reasons that we went with it. We knew that we would get continuous updates. Also, the option of keeping our OpenShift cluster up-to-date with new services was a headache that we passed onto Red Hat. 

Initially, the deployment process was complex. However, with repeated use, it made more sense. Deploying TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition and optimizing it on Red Hat OpenShift is complex.

We teamed up with Red Hat's OEM to do the Red Hat OpenShift implementation. So, it was a small team. We just did a waterfall implementation, not agile.

We did see ROI.

The solution's CodeReady Workspaces reduced project onboarding time by over 50% and time to market by 70%.

The organization really wanted to go open source for a very long time to reduce its CapEx and OpEx costs.

We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO.

The pricing and licensing for OpenShift is okay.

At the time of our evaluation, our options were only OpenShift and Vanilla Kubernetes. Now, there is also VMware Tanzu, which wasn't as mature a product when we did the PoC in 2019.

I am currently implementing VMware Tanzu in my new role at another company. I have not seen any significant differences between Tanzu and OpenShift.

Go for this solution.

Red Hat does a good job of ensuring that their solutions are operable and you can take advantage of the features within a solution.

We also had Red Hat Ansible for automating server provisioning and some operational tasks.

We didn't get any security breaches from Red Hat OpenShift.

I would rate OpenShift as eight out of 10.

We use Red Hat OpenShift for runtime or application migration, transitioning from classic application servers and configuration restore machines.

The solution offers ease with which we can define how to run applications and configure them. It's much more convenient than creating a virtual machine and configuring application servers, making the process faster and simpler.

There are some features regarding English and communication. This refers to external communication points to and from the OpenShift cluster. However, there are limitations due to the cluster's setup.

There are configuration problem, but we managed to find a workaround. Now, we're waiting for Red Hat to address it as a patch. In the meantime, we're using the workaround and are somewhat satisfied. Dealing with just one issue was unexpected, but it did take longer.

The solution is highly scalable. This is a key feature that led us to transition from classic legacy applications to OpenShift because adding more nodes and scaling applications is straightforward. However, it's important to note that applications need to be designed to support this scalability. 

From an external perspective, it's accessible via the OpenShift Internet. Some services require authentication for users, while others are available to non-authenticated users. t can handle anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand users. I rate it a ten out of ten.

We don't have a huge number of ticket.

The initial setup is complex as you need to know the steps. You can design the configuration of the cluster because it comprises various nodes, including infrastructure nodes, control points, and workers. You need to understand how to set up these basic components of the cluster and address persistent volume challenges to ensure they function properly.

The product comes with annual subscription. I rate the solution’s pricing an eight out of ten.

The automation capabilities are straightforward. The tools are designed from the ground up to facilitate automation processes, making it increasingly comfortable to create CI/CD automation processes

One piece of advice is not to be stuck in old ways of thinking because you may need to transition to different types of work. Once you make this shift, you'll find that it's easier than it was in the past.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We're going to deploy the entire core banking of the bank on the platform.

It helps us through consolidation, ease of use, portability, and because I can use microservices. It's like a one-stop shop for most of my containerized applications that are going to be deployed.

The most valuable features are that 

• it's cloud agnostic
• the containerization and security features are outstanding.

The cloud-agnostic aspect means I can move to AWS, Google, or Azure. That means it is not a limitation. It gives me flexibility.

For running business-critical applications, on a scale of one to five, where five is the best, OpenShift is 4.8.

Room for improvement is around the offerings that come as a bundle with the container platform. The packaging of the platform should be done such that customers do not have to purchase additional licenses.

They should partner with Jenkins. It goes without saying that I need Jenkins for my CICD. If Jenkins comes with support, that's good. But if there is a licensed product, I need to secure that license and then I will get support. 

Although the bundling with OCP is better than that offered by others, they can work more on it.

We implemented OpenShift in January 2023, so about six months ago, but we have not fully used it. It's the first time that we've installed it, and we're yet to implement.

It's pretty scalable because of the architecture. I don't see any issues in terms of scaling up or across. During our design phase, we had to scale across and as far as the design was concerned, it was pretty easy.

We can also scale it back. We can reduce or expand as per our needs.

In the future, it will be used by our entire bank, with between 8,000 and 10,000 users. 

We intend to expand the usage but we have to wash our hands of the core banking system first, which itself is a huge system. Once we're done with that, we'll think about other applications.

The forums and services are perfect. Excellent.

Positive

We did not have a previous container platform solution. We did try to build our own but it failed, badly. Building a container platform is not an easy task.

The initial setup is in between straightforward and complex. It's not so easy but not that tough. But we do require a lot of training.

Our deployment took one month.

Red Hat did most of it. We just provided them with the bare metal and away they went. It was a very time-bound project, and the Red Hat team was there. Our teams also worked with them. It was a collaborative exercise. On our side, there were 10 to 15 people involved, but there were five key people.

The CodeReady Workspaces should help reduce time to market if I use the CICD pipelines. That's what we aim for, and that's what the container platform is built for. That's something that goes without saying.

We're using Red Hat Linux across the bank for servers. We will use quite a number of Red Hat products during our core banking deployment, including AMQ, Process Automation Manager, and a couple of other products that are bundled with OCP.

The integration is something that is out of the stack. It's more of a middleware conversation and the middleware for us is an IPaaS. It's less about the stack and more about the application. I don't think there are any issues communicating via APIs. And the access management is pretty adequate. I can plug in any IM or document archival solutions. It's pretty easy to integrate.

Red Hat, as a vendor, has shared ample information with us to help us make decisions. That is where a partner comes into play and we're pretty happy with Red Hat.

We use it for container management. It's our container management platform for our financial systems.

It provides flexibility and efficiency. It helps us to design and deliver applications efficiently. We can modify our application in a smaller scope. We don't need to change the whole application.

It makes development fast because we can separate applications into different parts. We can deliver applications in different phases. 

It has helped to improve the quality of our end products. It has reduced the project onboarding time by 20% to 25%.

I like OCP, and the management UI is better than the open-source ones.

The integration with 3scale is very good. We use that too.

The monitoring part could be better to monitor the performance. The automation part could also be better because we had a hard time integrating our application with OCP.

I've been using this solution for about two years.

It's stable.

It's scalable for one cluster. When it comes to multiple clusters, it could be better. 

We have about 100 users who use this solution.

Their enterprise support is okay, but sometimes, their response is slow. Their response is also not accurate sometimes. It's not right.

Neutral

I didn't use it, but my company used the PKS solution.

It's straightforward. The setup took two to three days.

Red Hat is quite okay as a partner for helping us create the platform that we need. They do help you. They also provide training.

We use Red Hat AMQ streams and 3scale, and its integration with other Red Hat solutions is okay. The advantage of using multiple products from the same vendor is that you can get help from one company. You don't have to go to multiple companies.

It gives me the security that I need, but I didn't evaluate the security much. There is another department that's responsible for that.

I would recommend this solution to others, and overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

OpenShift is a containerization platform.

OpenShift provides faster container orchestration without the need to know the guts of an already complex system. Kubernetes is complicated for an organization to do correctly on its own, so OpenShift streamlines that process and makes it easier to get up and running.

It allows flexible and efficient cloud-native stacks. You've got a lot of capabilities, such as build packs to automatically access development solutions or different languages like Spring Boot or .NET. Everything is in one place and addresses the developers and administrators.

Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes. OpenShift's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is pretty robust. Including advanced cluster security, OpenShift covers almost everything out of the box.

We are also using Linux Rail and Ansible, and all these Red Hat products have some awareness. However, it's hard to say because some of them previously existed as non-Red Hat products.

One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace. 

These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic. They shouldn't be linked together so that when you upgrade one, you must also upgrade the other. It doesn't make sense if they aren't related as operators.

I have been using OpenShift for three or four years.

OpenShift is mostly stable. It's designed so that you seldom notice if it's unstable. I have no complaints.

OpenShift is scalable. It automatically scales.

I rate OpenShift support seven out of 10. There is room for improvement. We sometimes find the answer before the vendor. You get bounced around to various people and must repeat the issue even though it's all documented.

Neutral

Setting up OpenShift is pretty straightforward, and you can do it in under 30 minutes if you know what to do. We have four admins who maintain it. It requires a lot of maintenance because the underlying platform moves quickly. Kubernetes moves quickly, so new versions are constantly coming out. Keeping current requires lots of maintenance. We do upgrades monthly.

Vendor support is one reason to go with OpenShift. It's an open-source product, but you can pay for support. 

We looked at all the options, including Upstream Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, GCP, and Rancher.

I rate OpenShift eight out of 10. Red Hart is a good partner for the most part. Like anything, it depends on who you work with. Some people will regurgitate the documentation, while others will bring their experiences from other locations.

We are using OpenShift as a microservice platform.

The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the containers.

OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network.

In a new release of OpenShift, they should add Kibana, Grafana, and Elasticsearch.

I have been using OpenShift for approximately two years.

OpenShift is stable. However, I feel it could be better but the local implementor is not giving us all the information.

We use OpenShift on a daily basis. We have one engineer for the operation and a pre-engineer for monitoring. Additionally, we have more than five to handle the daily work.

We are using a local vendor for the support. They can handle level one and two support when we have issues.

The initial setup of OpenShift is complex. We have two types we do, but active active does not work, only active passive does.

We used a local vendor to do the implementation and maintenance.

I rate OpenShift an eight out of ten.

OpenShift as a solution is quite broad depending on the industry you are applying it to. For example, telco companies use the entire breadth of applications that the client wants from the web to their middle tier up to the back end. 

OpenShift is a platform for ensuring that your apps are running reliably. 

OpenShift has 100% compatibility with Kubernetes. I find using kubectl, and kubectl commands to be valuable.

The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access. The solution is easily compatible with other solutions and the features are easily installed.

OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets. I currently mostly use Raspberry Pi, which will be over to use Kubernetes. As a platform, I am using Raspberry Pi rather than using a very large configuration computer. 

The solution requires eight or more cores of CPUs, multiplied over the number of nodes needed to make OpenShift reliable, making it susceptible to failures.

In the future, I would like to see a roadmap to have Wasm supported. If you have WebAssembly as an alternative to Docker, it would be great.

I have been learning how to use OpenShift for years, but actively using it for six months.

The solution is stable. We haven't experienced downtime. 

OpenShift is easy to scale. You just need to make sure you have the capacity to purchase and the number of nodes needed. Scalability only depends on your budget.

Currently, they are more than 10 users of OpenShift in the organization.

Technical support has been efficient, supportive, and communicative. They do not drop the ball. I would rate the customer service and support of OpenShift a five out of five. 

Positive

Previously, I had experience with VMware's Kubernetes version. VMware was very difficult to install. I could not understand the route they were taking and why there were so many steps. 

The initial setup of OpenShift is straightforward if you are an experienced platform engineer. Installing on AWS or Azure could be more complex. The product has a Terraform command to install everything.

If all of the tools that are needed and all the hardware is there, the implementation should be straightforward. I would rate the initial setup a four out of five overall.

Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it. OpenShift is more expensive than other solutions, however, I think it is worth it.

Anyone looking to implement OpenShift in their organization should start with the most minimal setup for configuration. There is an OpenShift version with just the single master with a built-in worker. You will only need a single CPU and you can start with at least three masters and a single worker and scale from there as the need arises, whether it is to add additional worker nodes or as your app grows.

There is no product that compares to OpenShift. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 overall.