Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift

The Google Kubernetes Engine clusters are very good at being a managed cloud K8s platform - lots of documentation, features, and updates are available. It's also newbie-friendly - for both administrators and developers. Unfortunately, currently, it cannot reach true zero scale - thus, costs (rent for the service) are still involved even if you are barely using it. Thankfully, it's possible to have alternatives in Google Cloud:

• Your own K8s cluster on Compute Engine VMs - you manage it completely; it will have access to a lot of Google Cloud services.
• Cloud Run cluster - less documented but more flexible
• Anthos clusters - you can use this service for a lot of types of K8s clusters - Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, on-prem, AWS, Azure

Incentivized

I've seen multiple universities that have quite investments in Red Hat enterprise virtualization. They don't want to go with the VMware route due to the expense. So Red Hat OpenShift virtualization is a natural fit for them in that environment. I've also seen a lot of VMware customers that are not able financially to sustain the cost increases with the product. So they're looking for an alternative. And Red Hat OpenShift virtualization fills that need.

Incentivized

• Deployment of a new GKE cluster is really fast in comparison to other cloud providers.
• GCP is ahead other vendors and always provide the most up to date Kubernetes version.
• GKE automation for master upgrade and the worker nodes pool works really well.

Incentivized

• One thing is the way how it works with the GitHubs model on an enterprise business, how the hub and spoke topology works. Hub cluster topology works the way how there is a governance model to enforce policies. The R back models, the Red Hat OpenShift virtualization that supports the cube board and developer workspace is one big feature within. So yes, these are all some features I would call out.

Incentivized

• Not as intuitive as it could be
• Documentation could be better, especially for people using other Google Cloud tools
• Not the preferred Kubernetes Engine for many apps

Incentivized

• So I don't know that this is a specific disadvantage for Red Hat OpenShift. It's a challenge for anything that Kubernetes face is. There's an extremely large learning curve associated with it and once you get to the point where you're comfortable with it, it's really not bad. But beating that learning curve is a challenge. I've done a couple presentations on our implementation of Red Hat OpenShift at various conferences and one of the slides I always have in there is a tweet from years ago that said, "I tried to teach somebody Kubernetes once. Now neither of us knows what it is."

Incentivized

Leverage OpenShift Online constantly at both the free and paid tiers. While AWS is convenient, it often brings more administration than I want to deal with for a quick application (i.e. Drupal or Wordpress blog). OpenShift also simplifies the DNS registration and ability to share application environments with team members

Incentivized

• Google Kubernetes Engine has a good UI and documentation that facilitates setup and helps get projects moving along quickly
• Its built-in logging integrations with StackDriver make it easier to monitor the application and log issues quickly
• Automated orchestration, deployment, and scaling of nodes and networking are all easily configurable with yaml files

Incentivized

The virtualization part takes some getting used to it you are coming from a more traditional hypervisor. Customization options are not intuitive to these users. The process should be more clear. Perhaps a guide to Openshift Virtualization for users of RHV, VMware, etc. would ease this transition into the new platform

Incentivized

Openshift performance is based on the underlying infrastructure, the K8s design, and the applications' design. Cloud-native applications should have resilience baked in and should not depend on infrastructure resilience. Standard stateful apps may still depend on the underlying infrastructure. It depends on the approach.

Incentivized

Very good Kubernetes distribution with a reasonable total price. Integration with storage and load balancer for ingress and services speed up every process deployment.

Incentivized

Every time we need to get support all the Red Hat team move forward looking to solve the problem. Sometimes this was not easy and requires the scalation to product team, and we always get a response. Most of the minor issues were solved with the information from access.redhat.com

Incentivized

GKE spins up new nodes a LOT faster than AKS. GKE's auto scaler runs a lot smoother than AKS. GKE has a lot more Kubernetes features baked in natively.

Incentivized

Our developer community is using Red Hat OpenShift for years and they are familiar and comfortable with the product. Red Hat OpenShift UI makes it easier for new developers to adopt without knowing much of Kubernetes. Our platform team feels it’s easy to mange the cluster and upgrades. Other options has more operation overhead and less friendly to developers not have in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes.

Incentivized

It's easy to understand what are being billed and what's included in each type of subscription. Same with the support (Std or Premium) you know exactly what to expect when you need to use it. The "core" unit approach on the subscription made really simple to scale and carry the workloads from one site to another.

Incentivized

• When issues came up, we reached out to some folks at GCP and they seemed to be very prompt and attentive to our needs. They were always willing to help and provide additional details or recommendations or links to resources. This kind of support is very helpful as it allows us to navigate GKE with more confidence.

Incentivized

• Positive: Allowed us to start and produce working software regardless of our experience level.
• Positive: Integration with other Google Cloud services that we wanted to use anyway.
• Negative: It's kinda clunky, and some scenarios seem Google Kubernetes Engine-specific instead of being more integrated with other Google Cloud services or the web UI.

Incentivized

• Positive: Reduction in physical and virtual machine footprint
• Negative: Lack of native end to end o11y has caused a great deal of focus from our enterprise monitoring folks
• Positive: OCP has allowed developers to have a quick and easy space to experiment

Incentivized