Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS

I work for IBM Control, so I work with Red Hat and VMware, both technologies. I am working with OpenShift. I have not worked on Red Hat CloudForms, but I work with OpenShift. I am the integrator. We are creating automation for our customers using OpenShift, and we have implemented Ansible Tower Platform for automating all the system admin tasks.

We create what you call Ansible playbooks, which we execute for automation and deploy across all of our multi-customers within IBM and Control.

I find the resilient infrastructure feature of OpenShift very valuable, as it has no downtime at all.

I find OpenShift to be very scalable.

The initial setup of OpenShift is difficult; it takes a while to set it up. It is difficult to set up OpenShift because of the infrastructure requirements and the customization required to set up the software.

I would advise others looking into using OpenShift that it is a pretty product, widely accepted by customers, easily scalable, and highly reliable, but it should be more user-friendly. I think it should be more user-friendly because many people request assistance setting it up the first time.

I have been working with the solution for three and a half years.

OpenShift is stable. I would say the stability of OpenShift is nine out of ten.

I find OpenShift to be very scalable. I would rate the scalability of OpenShift a nine.

I think the technical support from Red Hat is good. I rate the technical support an eight. The reason for the rating of eight for technical support is that problems arise frequently, and they need to fix those issues, as it is open-source software requiring a lot of customizations.

We actually buy everything with maintenance; when we buy the software, we buy it with maintenance.

The initial setup of OpenShift is difficult; it takes a while to set it up. It is difficult to set up OpenShift because of the infrastructure requirements and the customization required to set up the software. I would rate the initial setup of OpenShift around five.

The initial setup of that solution took us weeks, but now the deployment is completed within days. It took one to ten days to set up OpenShift.

There are twenty-four to twenty-five people involved in the deployment. I think two to three people are architects, along with all the engineers involved.

I would advise others looking into using OpenShift that it is a pretty product, widely accepted by customers, easily scalable, and highly reliable, but it should be more user-friendly. I think it should be more user-friendly because many people request assistance setting it up the first time. I cannot think of any new features that could be added to make the solution better right now. My overall review rating for this solution is eight out of ten.

Our main use case for Red Hat OpenShift  is that our application, the CBMS application, is a microsite divided into multiple modules with multiple back-end modules built using Spring Boot  and Java and UI modules built using Vue.js and React.js. These individual modules are deployed in Red Hat OpenShift, and whenever we make any changes and push to a feature branch, that particular feature branch gets merged with the development branch, and then a build is triggered. Once a build is triggered and I log into Red Hat OpenShift client platform from IBM Cloud, I can see that a build is happening. If there is any compilation issue, the build fails, and if there is no issue, once the build completes, a deployment happens and the application is deployed.

Apart from that, we check config maps, secrets, and see logs in the pod. For example, we worked on another application named AL Lab where the client asked us to download the profile pictures of all the senior managers working in IBM. From that pod, we wrote an API to zip the profile pictures downloading from Box and then put that inside one container from which that application was running and downloaded it. There are many other use cases, and it is very difficult to remember each one of them, but when I am working and seeing the user interface of that application, they come to mind.

A specific example of when Red Hat OpenShift helped my team solve a problem is when I came into this project that got migrated from the Chinese team. I think they built most of the things, and we have a DevOps person in our team who has most of the controls. Now, coming to help, we can find out the config maps and the secrets from Red Hat OpenShift by going into the console. If we need to run the application locally, we can get the secrets and put them in our STS application YML to run the application. I do not have too much experience because I am not getting many opportunities to work on Red Hat OpenShift. My basic work is mainly writing code in this project, which may be Java code, Spring Boot  code, Python code, or React.js and Vue.js code, without being too much into the DevOps side, as there is a different person managing that. Whenever she faces any challenge, we work together to solve the problem.

We are mainly using Red Hat OpenShift as a deployment platform where we are pushing our changes. The image is built into the container registry, and when the build triggers, that particular image gets deployed into the containers and pod in Kubernetes . Once the application starts, it gets the secret config maps from specific locations, and the application starts and serves the client.

The best features that Red Hat OpenShift offers include the capabilities for deployment and build of our application. When we are deploying the application in the dev environment, there is a sorting feature based on the name and date, which is very helpful because we have multiple containers and deployments running inside dev, QA, stage, and prod environments. Once we are deploying in dev and have triggered a build, being inside that console, the sorting feature helps us understand whether the recent build has been triggered, which is very helpful.

Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted our organization by improving efficiency and collaboration, as this is the first time I am trying to use Red Hat OpenShift after previously working with AWS . In the earlier project at Prudential, I was using AWS  and before that, in Kroger, we were using IBM Cloud instead of Red Hat OpenShift. In comparison, Red Hat OpenShift seems to be better than IBM Cloud, as that is how I used it in Kroger. I cannot provide a comparison between AWS and Red Hat OpenShift at this juncture, as I was not very aware of what was happening in AWS, and a lot of time has passed since then.

At this particular point, I think it is very difficult for me to suggest how Red Hat OpenShift can be improved, as I need specific documentation outlining all features. Understanding Red Hat OpenShift UI is essential to provide feature improvement ideas, and I currently do not have the knowledge to do so. I do not have anything coming to my mind at this point regarding challenges or areas in which I think Red Hat OpenShift could be easier to use.

I have been using Red Hat OpenShift  on this client advantage project for approximately one and a half years.

In my experience, Red Hat OpenShift is stable.

Red Hat OpenShift's scalability is good. We have one application named Content Microservice, which has multiple containers running in production, specifically four containers. I do not think it needs any horizontal or vertical scaling because our user base is not that large, but I believe that in such a situation, Red Hat OpenShift will be able to horizontally or vertically scale itself.

I did not go to Red Hat OpenShift customer support, so I have not had any interactions or needed help.

Before Red Hat OpenShift, I used AWS, but I was working as a developer, so I was not too much aware of the DevOps aspects. In Kroger, I also used IBM Cloud, but I cannot remember much since it has been over two or three years. There, we were updating the IBM Cloud registry and seeing the logs in LogDNA  and checking the container registry, where we used to remove images and tag images, but that is all I can recall.

When I came into this project of client advantage microsite, they were already using Red Hat OpenShift, so I did not have the opportunity to evaluate it against other products as I was not in a position to make that decision.

My advice for others looking into using Red Hat OpenShift is to give it a try if someone wants to use a cloud platform. They can assess how much they gain and how much cost saving occurs, possibly giving it a try on a trial basis for one or two months. I truly suggest that any company wanting to move to the cloud should give Red Hat OpenShift a try. My overall rating for Red Hat OpenShift is eight out of ten.

My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift  is that in our organization, we are going into a modernization of our application where we are moving away from our traditional application approach. Now we are moving forward.

A specific example of how I'm using Red Hat OpenShift  in my organization is that we have around 18 clusters and for now, we are maintaining around 16 applications in Red Hat OpenShift.

Day-to-day, I'm using Red Hat OpenShift as we are moving into adding applications to containers, using it regularly on troubleshooting issues, whatever the customer encounters.

The best feature Red Hat OpenShift offers in my experience is the Service Mesh . The recent update of the Service Mesh  is a very good component of Red Hat.

Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted my organization as the main focus was to reduce the physical servers we have in our warehouse. That helped us a lot in moving into containerization and handling the application.

After moving to Red Hat OpenShift, I noticed we moved around 16 applications, and each application used to use around six to eight servers. So, roughly around 110-150 servers have been reduced right now.

Red Hat OpenShift can be improved as I commonly use the CLI console, but I have not explored much on the graphical console. I have been working on the command line mostly and not explored much on the console. I feel like it might be more advanced and useful for newcomers who are not familiar with the command line.

Further needed improvements in Red Hat OpenShift include that getting the providers will be a little bit tricky in the console. When I tried to add searching on providers, that was a little bit tricky.

I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for one year.

In my experience, Red Hat OpenShift is very stable.

Scalability-wise, Red Hat OpenShift is pretty much good, as it is one click where we can scale any of the applications.

The customer support of Red Hat OpenShift is good as I have reached out to them a couple of times. The customer support was easy. We have a premium membership with the Red Hat team, so it is very convenient and they get back to us as soon as we require. They are also knowledgeable.

Previously, we have not used any other solutions before Red Hat OpenShift as we directly moved to it.

Since deploying Red Hat OpenShift, I have seen a return on investment as it saved a lot. Once we deployed, there is very minimalistic time spent on troubleshooting issues. Everything is taken care of by the containers or the new pods we have deployed. Time was the major thing which saved a lot, and in terms of resources, it has reduced resource utilization so the remaining users can focus on other tasks.

Our company has a business relationship with Red Hat as we are a partner.

Since deploying Red Hat OpenShift, I have seen a return on investment as it saved a lot. Once we deployed, there is very minimalistic time spent on troubleshooting issues. Everything is taken care of by the containers or the new pods we have deployed. Time was the major thing which saved a lot, and in terms of resources, it has reduced resource utilization so the remaining users can focus on other tasks.

I may provide information about setup costs in another review at a later time.

Before choosing Red Hat OpenShift, we did not evaluate other options as this was an organization decision where we did not involve other tools.

I rate Red Hat OpenShift a nine out of ten.

I rated it a nine because it made a lot of work easy for me comparatively to handling servers, where I used to work in monolithic applications. This helped me a lot when I moved to Red Hat OpenShift. Kubernetes  was the part where I used to work on and when I moved to Red Hat OpenShift, it gave me a broader way where I can think or explore much on what is not there with Kubernetes . The functions and features all together in one place helped me a lot.

My advice for others looking into using Red Hat OpenShift is that I surely advise going with Red Hat OpenShift, which is a very convenient way to handle their applications and to reduce the cost of servers and whatever resources we spend. Those resources can be utilized much more efficiently with Red Hat OpenShift, and that is the very easiest way.

I have additional thoughts about Red Hat OpenShift in that I appreciate the documentation given by the Red Hat team. That helps us a lot from a learning perspective.

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.