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 Kubernetes Engine
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External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Hybrid cloud platform has standardized telecom workloads and delivers consistent operations
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is stable and offers the most stability among all the competitors and enterprise-level solutions available.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is great, and we have many channels through which we can approach them.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Red Hat OpenShift, we evaluated other options such as Mesos, but Red Hat OpenShift is more futuristic.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Secure integration has become standard as I run complex platforms with streamlined operations
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift is to set up the TIBCO platform on OpenShift, run applications on OpenShift using the TIBCO platform's data plane, and also being a platform engineer and a Kubernetes expert, I also tune Red Hat OpenShift to the most secure platform.
A quick specific example of how I use Red Hat OpenShift with the TIBCO platform involves the TIBCO platform's control plane and data plane that runs on Kubernetes. TIBCO is a vendor company which provides a lot of integration and messaging products along with various integration capabilities with almost any technology, and all of this makes it easier when the TIBCO platform runs on a Kubernetes platform. Everything is API-based, AI-ready, and everything works seamlessly on top of a Kubernetes platform.
What is most valuable?
The features of Red Hat OpenShift that I have configured include Red Hat OpenShift Security Context Constraints to cater to environments where everything is locked down and everything is monitored. In today's world, where people are trying to hack into the system, these things are quite important for any infrastructure or platform engineer or also a solution architect. Along with various other features of Red Hat OpenShift, it is quite important for me to design this easily and make it more secure.
The features of Red Hat OpenShift that stand out to me include the router configuration, the DNS integration, and many other small features, especially the UI which is out-of-the-box and the API support behind the scenes. All of this is quite handy and useful for many people who are using Red Hat OpenShift.
Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted my organization by making many things easier to run securely, especially for a vendor company like TIBCO and their customers to run their application securely along with the TIBCO platform on Red Hat OpenShift.
Red Hat OpenShift offers very comprehensive security standards, everything is designed based on a zero-trust security framework, and I appreciate that about it. Most of the monitoring and observability part has been already taken by Red Hat OpenShift, along with the high availability aspects. Even when I am setting up Red Hat OpenShift on Azure or on-prem, it has various options and it is quite a mature platform compared to setting up my own Kubernetes.
What needs improvement?
There are a couple of sections related to security context constraints which can be improved in Red Hat OpenShift, wherein I am creating multiple Security Context Constraints for the same service account in Kubernetes. That can be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for almost two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is stable. It creates multiple master nodes as a design, so I have a good experience with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not tested Red Hat OpenShift's scalability, but I have checked the configuration, and it seems it is quite scalable and configurable.
How are customer service and support?
I have never had to use customer support in my case.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have previously used AKS, and I still use AKS. I did not switch, but for new clusters, I have been using Red Hat OpenShift.
How was the initial setup?
My overall impression is that a lot of time is saved while setting up Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes. It definitely has a big ROI in terms of maintenance, having to hire many people to set up Kubernetes in a right way.
What about the implementation team?
Not me, but for customers, they purchased Red Hat OpenShift through the AWS Marketplace.
What was our ROI?
My overall impression is that a lot of time is saved while setting up Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes. It definitely has a big ROI in terms of maintenance, having to hire many people to set up Kubernetes in a right way.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that Red Hat OpenShift comes out as an expensive solution compared to having AKS, GKE, or EKS.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have evaluated AKS, GKE, EKS, and setting up my own Kubernetes platform, especially using Red Hat OpenShift itself.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Red Hat OpenShift is to go into the details and set up Red Hat OpenShift in the right way. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Cloud migrations have improved security workflows but documentation and support still need work
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift involves two cases: the first case is about the migration of QRadar and Red Hat OpenShift for the cloud, which relates to the process of antivirus, XDR, and SOAR and SIEM. The second case is the use for the migration in ARO, Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, for the migration of OpenCTI from on-premise to the cloud.
A quick specific example of how I used Red Hat OpenShift for one of those migrations is the particular process of the migration about the OpenCTI. The OpenCTI migration involved a process where we used Docker for the OpenCTI to function correctly when implemented, which was the main challenge.
I do not have anything else to add about my main use case or the migration processes with Red Hat OpenShift.
What is most valuable?
In my experience, the best feature Red Hat OpenShift offers is that the environment is easy to use. When I say environment needs, I mean that it is easy for the configuration and the management in the different environments. For example, when I use the API key, the configuration and connector, the environment provides easy visibility and allows me to watch the reports for the leadership in the company.
Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted my organization, and now we use it more in the QRadar SIEM environment. However, in this case, IBM sold QRadar to Palo Alto, and our client changed the SIEM, so Red Hat OpenShift is not functional at this moment for QRadar.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat OpenShift can be improved by addressing any features, performance, or usability issues. In my view, the performance is very good, and the automatization of the new environment and new machine is fantastic because it is easier for my job in the company. My colleagues display information and the Docker functionality is good.
There are two small things I would suggest about the SOAR: the connection for the SOAR to send email and send communication to our colleagues and people in the company.
If I could change or improve one thing about Red Hat OpenShift, it would be to provide more information on the web because the information is limited and I need to explore more. I would change this about Red Hat OpenShift because I have known this all year and need more investigation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for about one year, more than one year ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In my view, Red Hat OpenShift's scalability is good, although I do not know for certain.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Red Hat OpenShift is bad because the support does not respond.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution before Red Hat OpenShift. However, before it, we used VMware.
How was the initial setup?
Before choosing Red Hat OpenShift, we evaluated other options, specifically VMware.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment from using Red Hat OpenShift because I save money since I do not need the server in my data center on-premise, and I save money in monthly payments for availability and accessibility in the data center.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I cannot respond to the question about my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing because the cost is another area, specifically the area of accounting and finance.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Red Hat OpenShift, we evaluated other options, specifically VMware.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Red Hat OpenShift is to explore the tools, understand how Red Hat OpenShift migration to the cloud works, and recognize that the response and return on metric is efficient for good operation.
That is all I would like to add about the features of Red Hat OpenShift. I choose seven out of ten because my use is not total. Perhaps it is interesting for the use, but our environment in the company is easier to use with VMware. I rate this product seven out of ten overall.
I do not have any additional thoughts about Red Hat OpenShift.
Platform has transformed our cloud into a secure, unified home for diverse modern applications
What is our primary use case?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for more than six years.
I implement Red Hat OpenShift for our customers as we are a service provider, and we implement it in our cloud. We provide it as a service for our customers, and we deploy some of the applications that we have implemented in our company and for my personal use.
I deployed and developed an audit application which runs all the compliance requirements for a company, including multiple platforms and multiple standards such as ISO and others, and NCA for Saudi Arabia, and any other standard can work on it. This is one example. I also created a personal application for a t-shirt integrated with AI where we can create an image and print it on a shirt and ship it to the customer. I implemented another application for waste management, which was totally developed and deployed by myself for my personal use and the waste management for one of our customers. Additionally, I had another application deployed for one of our customers, where my role was to deploy Red Hat OpenShift and to make sure their application is deployed and available. This is for bill invoicing and financial operations. For one of the hospitals, our customer, I deployed the application for monitoring diabetes patients. My role there was to deploy it and to make the application available, providing all the requirements, ingress, configuration, storage, and other things. These are examples of what I have done.
Red Hat OpenShift by default is secure, more than native Kubernetes, as it has a limitation for the run as. The container by default does not run as root; this is one of the examples. The integration with ACS allows centralized policy deployment and enforcement, alongside great observability and monitoring. Red Hat OpenShift is actually enterprise-grade Kubernetes with all the accessories and main features.
What is most valuable?
One of the best features of Red Hat OpenShift is that it has the catalog, the application catalog, and the operator hub, which allows us to deploy things easily and straightforward without going into a lot of hassles. This is one of the main things, in addition to having integration with ACM and ACS, where we can have the ability to manage multiple clusters and to secure them, deploy them, manage them, run GitOps and day-two operations, as well as upgrades and other functionality which is made easy using these tools. Red Hat OpenShift also provides virtualization capabilities, and I am currently working with Zain to make a project where we will convert F5 appliances to virtual machines and to manage them through Red Hat virtualization, OVE. Red Hat OpenShift is a unique platform because it provides the features for both worlds, containerization, and VMs at the same time, requiring you to learn one skillset in order to manage all of this at the same time.
In the beginning, our cloud depended only on virtual machines, so I introduced this to our management to start to work with microservices and with containerization. This was adapted in our cloud, providing us the capability to sell more of these features and to reduce the hardware requirement by about thirty percent, following the trends of using containerization for all modern applications. In addition, it reduced the time to develop and to deploy a new application; all we need is using Jenkins for CI/CD. Once we commit any code, it gets triggered, and it will implement the new container in a very flexible and easy way, within seconds. This decreased the time to market and increased agility, allowing us to capture new opportunities very fast.
What needs improvement?
There is perhaps one thing about the deployment of Red Hat OpenShift. Currently, there are two new ways to deploy Red Hat OpenShift, which are easier with assisted deployment and agent-based deployment. However, previously it needed a lot of requirements on the infrastructure side if we are using UPI, user-provided infrastructure. If the deployment of Red Hat OpenShift itself can be easier and more flexible, it would be great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for more than six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is stable.
It is great. Red Hat OpenShift can scale to thousands of nodes, allowing multiple clusters to be managed in different geolocations and managed by centralized advanced cluster management, ACM.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, Red Hat OpenShift has a lot of scalability capability, including about two thousand machines in one cluster and multiple cluster management, centralized management through ACM and ACS, which provides a very secure way to manage centrally all the features and to enforce policies.
In the beginning, our cloud depended only on virtual machines, so I introduced this to our management to start to work with microservices and with containerization. This was adapted in our cloud, providing us the capability to sell more of these features and to reduce the hardware requirement by about thirty percent, following the trends of using containerization for all modern applications.
How are customer service and support?
The response time for customer support is excellent, and they go deep and can resolve things easily.
The documentation and support that we get from Red Hat are very sufficient, and this differentiates between enterprise-grade Kubernetes and native Kubernetes or perhaps Kubernetes from other vendors.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used native Kubernetes before Red Hat OpenShift, actually, deploying it through kubeadm. The issue with Kubernetes is that it is just the engine; Red Hat has all the requirements to give you a complete solution. Red Hat OpenShift provides the complete ecosystem, all the integrations, and the tools which I mentioned before, which are already integrated and easy to be used. You do not need to grab open-source solutions for storage or other things, and you do not have to do a lot of customization, needing to comply with each version. Red Hat OpenShift is tested and vetted, making things easier to be deployed, supported, and managed, and it is more trustworthy.
How was the initial setup?
There is perhaps one thing about the deployment of Red Hat OpenShift. Currently, there are two new ways to deploy Red Hat OpenShift, which are easier with assisted deployment and agent-based deployment.
What about the implementation team?
We are a partner with Red Hat; we sell their services and licenses, and we do the implementation ourselves.
What was our ROI?
We did not measure our return on investment in a very accurate way, but as I mentioned, we could decrease the time needed to deploy any application, enabling us to capture new opportunities faster, go to market faster, and maintain the availability and security of all our applications.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We work with Red Hat or our distributor in Saudi Arabia. We send our requirements as part of the RFP describing what we need, and we get the pricing from our distributor. There is an easy way to price the subscription of the support per CPU, per VM, so it is easy to be priced, but we depend on an official quote usually from our distributor.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Red Hat OpenShift by default is secure, more than native Kubernetes, as it has a limitation for the run as. The container by default does not run as root; this is one of the examples. The integration with ACS allows centralized policy deployment and enforcement, alongside great observability and monitoring. Red Hat OpenShift is actually enterprise-grade Kubernetes with all the accessories and main features.
What other advice do I have?
Our go-to-market and our deployment for any application, the time is reduced perhaps by eight times. It is very fast because you have consistency for all deployed containers; it is not like a virtual machine where you have to deploy individually for each virtual machine or you have to copy code here and there. It takes seconds because the containers spin out very fast; they are very lightweight. The things that we used to do in days, now take a couple of minutes to be done. So, that is approximately the number—mostly it is reduced by eight.
We are providing our cloud to our customers, so we are a service provider. We deploy Red Hat OpenShift in our cloud and host customers' applications through it. Some of our customers prefer Red Hat OpenShift on Azure or on AWS, so we deploy it there when needed, but our main deliverable is through our cloud.
We have our own cloud provided by our company, making us a local cloud provider. We are not a hyper integrator, nor a hyper-scaler. We provide it through our cloud and deployed a couple of customers on Azure; this is what I recall.
I would advise others looking into using Red Hat OpenShift to take the step and to go fast into it because it will save them a lot of money and provide them with all the features, flexibility, security, and others. I give this product a rating of ten out of ten.
Private AI agents have been deployed securely and integrate smoothly with observability tools
What is our primary use case?
I'm changing to AI, so I'm implementing platforms for agents, specifically for artificial intelligence and agentic platforms.
It is to deploy agents in a sovereign and private tenant. Basically, when customers don't like to share their information with any cloud provider, they prefer to keep the information local. So they deploy their own private cloud, and most of them are using Red Hat OpenShift.
What is most valuable?
I find support for Kubernetes and security are the most useful features in Red Hat OpenShift.
What I appreciate from Red Hat OpenShift is the capacity to provide an integrated and secure environment that is more or less better than creating the environment from scratch or based on standard Kubernetes. Red Hat OpenShift provides a lot of features that help us to operate the platform in a very professional and efficient way, instead of using low-level tools provided with the open-source capacities. For us, it is a very practical environment in which we can quickly develop features—not using directly AI capacities from Red Hat OpenShift, but our own capacities, in a very integrated way.
The main benefits Red Hat OpenShift provides for me as a final user include the capacity to integrate third-party tools and also the integration between observability, security, and monitoring capacities.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat OpenShift is very expensive. I am starting to evaluate the capacities specifically related to artificial intelligence. The suite also integrates a lot of open source, which is more or less aligned with my strategy that always tries to use open source. However, as far as I know, it's not so flexible using the components by themselves, but I don't really have firsthand experience. That's what I've been told by the people working with them. It's not so flexible, but you win in integration and lose a little in the capacity of flexibility or making your platform more flexible.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with Red Hat OpenShift for maybe one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Red Hat OpenShift as quite robust. I'm satisfied with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
From one to ten, I would rate the ability to scale as nine.
How are customer service and support?
I would also rate the technical support from Red Hat as nine.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I no longer use VMware and Tanzu data solutions because I changed my profile and my department.
How was the initial setup?
For us, the initial setup for Red Hat OpenShift is complex. It's complex, but also powerful.
What about the implementation team?
In my case, I directly work with Red Hat for purchasing the license.
What was our ROI?
Overall, I would give Red Hat OpenShift a final mark of nine.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
As a competitor to Red Hat OpenShift, I think Rancher may be a possibility, but it's very, very far from what Red Hat OpenShift provides. I don't really know any other commercial distribution of Kubernetes. The alternative would be to create the cluster by yourself, using the components or the open-source components, but it would be really, really complicated. Also, alternatives in cloud exist, using the Kubernetes services from cloud providers like Fargate or AKS. But I would rather prefer to create Red Hat OpenShift on top of the cloud instead of using it. It's more expensive, obviously, but we have good experiences.
What other advice do I have?
In terms of functionality, I'm working with Red Hat OpenShift in terms of infrastructure and monitoring, so in these capacities, we are very satisfied.
I can recommend it to other users. Overall, I would give Red Hat OpenShift a final mark of nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Modernization to secure microservices has improved uptime and observability for critical apps
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift is that we had several security tools that we deployed to Red Hat OpenShift platform, specifically when we were migrating our applications from monolithic architecture to microservices, and our OpenShift platform was using some of the AWS VMs as master and worker nodes, so it was completely on AWS, and we actually set it up from scratch, setting up those projects to be used for our applications and then deploying them with Red Hat OpenShift version 4, which we started using five years back, as it was the latest at that point in time, and then we continued to operate and run our applications there.
A quick, specific example of an application I deployed on Red Hat OpenShift is a banking-based application which we moved from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture, and we completely deployed it end-to-end, split into 10 plus microservices, and then it was deployed to Red Hat OpenShift platform 4.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Red Hat OpenShift offers in my experience include being a pre-assembled product where Red Hat actually makes choices for you, which for example, as a CloudOps Engineer, means I don't have to explicitly go into CLI because the web-based UI is simple and helpful for debugging, and they've integrated the logging of the application within Red Hat OpenShift. I really appreciate the automated updates, built-in observability comes with pre-configured Prometheus and Grafana stack for monitoring our cluster health, and the native tooling it has such as Red Hat OpenShift GitOps, which is a Red Hat supported Argo CD, and the integration into clusters are based on role-based access control with security by default, where Red Hat OpenShift is quite secure out of the box, having those strict permissions and using Security Context Constraints, and especially the immutable OS and Red Hat OpenShift virtualization, which is something that is really helpful.
Red Hat OpenShift has positively impacted my organization primarily through observability, as for us, application uptime matters a lot when providing public-facing products consumed by customers, and hence, we're using that to keep refining our application and products through observability metrics and keeping pace with market trends, as we promised 99.99% uptime to our customers, and the observability in Red Hat OpenShift is really helping us a lot with that.
What needs improvement?
Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially when those licensing agreements are done, and I think Red Hat OpenShift is quite resource-heavy because the control plane and default monitoring stack consume significant resources, meaning for small clusters, a large percentage of compute goes just to running Red Hat OpenShift itself, not our apps.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat OpenShift for close to six years across those different organizations.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift's scalability is really good.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is really good because so far in our case, we have always received a prompt response, and they have been really helpful to us. I would rate the customer support a 10 out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use any other solution before Red Hat OpenShift.
How was the initial setup?
Red Hat OpenShift is deployed in my organization on AWS.
What was our ROI?
We have saved a lot of time with Red Hat OpenShift.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing would suggest that it was more into a high cost, but then again, I'm an engineer, so this is taken care of by the higher management, and I don't have any definitive answer.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate any other solution before choosing Red Hat OpenShift because we wanted to use a licensed product for Kubernetes that has enterprise support.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Red Hat OpenShift a 9 out of 10 overall. I choose a nine for Red Hat OpenShift because for such kind of tools, there is always room for improvement, as I already mentioned the things that can be improved in my previous answer. I would suggest that it's quite better if you're using Red Hat OpenShift for an enterprise solution, as it's really better to have the enterprise support which Red Hat OpenShift offers, and it's easy to use for Kubernetes-based applications.
Has supported container-based service hosting while slower support impacts resolution time
What is our primary use case?
Red Hat OpenShift is used to host all services running on containers on specific ports for both production and non-production environments.
Red Hat OpenShift is utilized in the healthcare sector.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat OpenShift provides good value as a cloud service, comparable to other public clouds such as AWS and Azure, but it functions as a private cloud rather than a public one.
A smaller cloud running on containers enables easy deployment with the ability to scale up and scale down, and it can host multiple services on the same platform.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat OpenShift is currently running with VMware, and there are some issues on the storage side that are still being addressed.
The support from Red Hat is rated around a six or seven in those kinds of cases.
Support could improve with faster response times, as responses are currently quite slow.
For how long have I used the solution?
The team has been working with Red Hat OpenShift for over five years.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup for Red Hat OpenShift is easy to deploy.
What about the implementation team?
There are approximately two resources working on the Red Hat OpenShift cluster for deployment.
The DevOps engineer and the Red Hat OpenShift Linux engineer are the job roles required for deployment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There is no free open-source version available; a license must be purchased for Red Hat OpenShift.
The pricing for Red Hat OpenShift is considered quite high.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Red Hat OpenShift cannot be compared with other options for PaaS clouds because other private services have never been used.
There is no current knowledge of other available options.
What other advice do I have?
I am not familiar with the mobile app platform for Android.
I don't have experience with VMware or AWS products at this time, although a team member may be working on the technical side.
My focus is on the management side rather than the technical side.
Microsoft tools are not being used.
The team is focused on the Linux side for the private cloud for Red Hat OpenShift.
I have minimal familiarity with Red Hat OpenShift. I don't have experience with Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation. The technical side of Red Hat OpenShift is handled by a team member. Management tools, help desk software, or ITSMs are not being used. The overall review rating for Red Hat OpenShift is seven out of ten.
Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management
What is our primary use case?
We already were having that microservices architecture, so there was not much change from that perspective. We had small services, so here we had to create multiple pod IDs. Even today, we are using a hybrid microservices architecture. Our DB still has two or three services that hit the same database. From that perspective, there was not much change that we did in our case.
What is most valuable?
We have certain applications on-prem on physical servers. We had some on Windows and some on Linux. There we had requirements where every time we had to manage extra load, we had to spawn a new Tomcat node. Scaling was one of the issues we were facing, and every time we had to scale up, it was a challenge. Plus, we had to procure infrastructure and do a lot of configuration and setup for the new instance being launched.
Once we set that up, scaling down was a challenge as we did not always bring that down when not needed. When we did not have too much traffic, we still had a lot of infrastructure lying idle. At the same time, when we had high load, we were not able to scale up quickly.
There was too much patching that happened, and every time we had to patch something it became a challenge. There were versioning issues with operating systems versus Java and other technologies we were using. That is why we moved to containerization, where we defined what operating system we need, what Java version we need, and what steps we want to do. Containerization helped us create that one unit we wanted to deploy. Red Hat OpenShift helped us with managing scaling up and scaling down.
Because it was centrally managed in our company, many metrics that we had to write code for were available out of the box, including utilization, CPU utilization, memory, and similar metrics. We performed multiple transformations from physical servers to Red Hat OpenShift, and some from virtual servers to Red Hat OpenShift.
The OC utility tool is something we use very often for replication, replica sets, and config maps for managing all environments and secrets. This is very useful for us. Routing is another beneficial feature we get, so we do not need to manage or do too many things for load balancing.
What needs improvement?
Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively.
We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge.
Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift.
Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. For the use cases we dealt with, we have not seen much challenge with AWS. It has been better for us, but due to our requirement of being on private cloud for some applications, we are using Red Hat OpenShift.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We do not have any AI products at this time.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have certain applications on-prem on physical servers, some on Windows and some on Linux. We had requirements where every time we had to manage extra load, we had to spawn a new Tomcat node. Scaling was one of the issues we were facing, and every time we had to scale up, it was a challenge. We had to procure infrastructure and do extensive configuration and setup for new instance launches. Once set up, scaling down was also a challenge as we did not always reduce capacity when not needed. When we did not have much traffic, we still had substantial infrastructure sitting idle. Simultaneously, during high load periods, we were not able to scale up quickly.
How are customer service and support?
We have support available, but we never had to use it because we have our own internal teams who provide support. We have not encountered any issue where we had to reach out to Red Hat.
How was the initial setup?
It is not difficult to onboard onto Red Hat OpenShift. Once you understand deployment configs, configs, replica sets, the basic components, routes and all, it is straightforward to onboard an application there. This applies mainly to services. Beyond that, it becomes challenging. We have not tried too many things because we struggled with batches. Getting things up and running in AWS, such as Kafka and Elasticsearch, is much easier than doing it on Red Hat OpenShift.
What was our ROI?
It is cost-effective. The only consideration is that you have to use it wisely. Use only what you need because it is not very difficult to add resources. It is always advisable to get the bare minimum that you need, and then add more when necessary. When you do not need the services, bring them down so you are not unnecessarily using compute resources. If you use it efficiently, then it is beneficial, which is applicable to any cloud platform.
What other advice do I have?
If you are dealing with services and need private cloud, go for Red Hat OpenShift. Regarding cost, if you compare to public cloud platforms, it is cheaper. If you are mostly on the services side and need private cloud, Red Hat OpenShift should be the solution. The overall rating is six out of ten, as it is not seen as a complete solution, but rather as a solution only for services. For other requirements such as integrations or batches, other cloud providers might be more suitable.
Enables seamless workload management and supports enterprise-grade integration
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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
For how long have I used the solution?
We have approximately two years of experience with Red Hat OpenShift.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Red Hat OpenShift is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the 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.
How are customer service and support?
Red Hat's technical support is good, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.
What about the implementation team?
We provide a range of services, acting as implementers, integrators, and partners with Red Hat OpenShift.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Not tested any other solution
What other advice do I have?
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.
Migration success with improved security and integration features
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with OpenShift for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We moved from a legacy system to OpenShift due to its stability and capabilities provided by being backed by Red Hat.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the implementation internally with our team, which consisted of three engineers managing the analytics environment.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate any other options aside from our legacy system before choosing OpenShift.
What other advice do I have?
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.