OpenShift - A worthy orchestration layer
November 27, 2018

OpenShift - A worthy orchestration layer

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

FreeShift

Overall Satisfaction with OpenShift

We evaluated OpenShift as a docker platform for our company. While not chosen for non-technical reasons, OpenShift was a definite leader in the list of competitors. The intention was to use this platform across the company for development through production. Integration with our CI/CD pipeline was intended. Simply put, OpenShift solved the majority of our continuous development and deployment issues.
  • Built on top of Kubernetes giving it a solid base to work with.
  • Extensive API support allowing developers to extend the platform as needed.
  • Built for security. For instance, containers are expected to run as a non-root user inside the container. If this is not the case, OpenShift complains and requires an explicit override to allow the container to run.
  • There is a bit of a learning curve. Especially for how OpenShift expects code to be developed.
  • Not for small deployments. OpenShift runs on Kubernetes and with that comes a fairly hefty server count requirement.
  • We expected an increase in deployment rates for applications as the developer is empowered, via workflow, to deploy applications.
  • We expected that the added security of the system would help assist in ensuring that deployments were done correctly the first time.
Kubernetes is a part of OpenShift, but it can be deployed in a standalone state. On the plus side, it's significantly cheaper as there are no licensing costs. On the minus side, there's no simplified orchestrator. While Kubernetes is an orchestration platform itself, it's more concentrated on ensuring containers are deployed and running versus assisting developers to deploy systems. Kubernetes on its own needs a lot of extra tooling to make things run smoothly.
As with any solution, it depends on how and why you want to deploy it. OpenShift is excellent for medium to large deployments, but I would caution against smaller deployments unless you're planning on ramping up to a larger deployment in short order. It just doesn't make financial sense to deploy it in a small configuration.

Red Hat OpenShift Feature Ratings

Scalability
9
Platform management overhead
7
Workflow engine capability
9
Platform access control
9
Services-enabled integration
8
Development environment creation
9
Development environment replication
9
Issue recovery
7
Upgrades and platform fixes
7