Our use of RHEL has been orthogonal to our exploration of OpenShift and Kubernetes. We have experimented with using minimal footprint RHEL instances inside containers to minimize the total size of our containers.
K8s should be avoided - If your application works well without being converted into microservices-based architecture & fits correctly in a VM, needs less scaling, have a fixed traffic pattern then it is better to keep away from Kubernetes. Otherwise, the operational challenges & technical expertise will add a lot to the OPEX. Also, if you're the one who thinks that containers consume fewer resources as compared to VMs then this is not true. As soon as you convert your application to a microservice-based architecture, a lot of components will add up, shooting your resource consumption even higher than VMs so, please beware. Kubernetes is a good choice - When the application needs quick scaling, is already in microservice-based architecture, has no fixed traffic pattern, most of the employees already have desired skills.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very good at simple server and desktop workloads if much isn't expected out of the functionality provided out of the box, but relying just purely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) does not provide enough for broader use. It's common to rely on EPEL for this, but Red Hat doesn't offer support for EPEL.
Virtualization, like the operating system level task. I see this product is very good and it blends very well with the middleware components like all the JBoss and other things. And other than that, either you install it or a virtual machine or physical servers, it works seamlessly anywhere. And if you want to go further, like Red Hat OpenShift or those things also work very nice with it.
Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.
Price. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be cheaper for us to use. We pay a lot for these software packages.
Perpetual licensing. Buy it and forget it would be great, with support as an option. this would be a great option for products that can ship with the OS and will see little internet use.
The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.
It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself
In order to securely deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) it has to be installed without a user interface. Administrative tasks through a command line interface can be challenging. Looking up commands and testing them, documentation is often required in order to run the same commands in the future if the changes are infrequent and not practiced often by an administrator.
Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.
Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.
It's superior. I mean they're all Linux so it's all that code, but I find that the intangibles that you get with Red Hat, meaning the enterprise support, the lifecycle, that's what clearly makes it better than the rest of them.
