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Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Kubernetes
Ranking in Container Management
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 4.9%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 24.2%, up from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Venu Boddu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage infrastructure automation and smooth application deployment with robust auto-scaling capabilities
Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods. This feature is essential for infrastructure automation and application deployment. Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down. Additionally, Kubernetes supports load balancing to distribute traffic efficiently across multiple pods.
Vlado Velkovski - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime
OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's scalable."
"The scalability seems quite good."
"The most valuable feature is the Zero Touch Operations, which involves a new way of performing operations and support. We do not have to do maintenance, the operations are very simple."
"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is automation. It is the best tool for automation."
"It is a very good solution for deploying microservices in an application. It has a lot of freedom in it, which makes it very interesting. It is also web-enabled. You can run services in other virtual applications and virtual machines."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the scalability."
"Offers a crucial feedback process"
"Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration solution, known for its simplicity and ease of use. Being open-source, it benefits from large community support, including enterprise support. Many companies offer their own version of Kubernetes, making it widely adopted and supported in the industry."
"The platform is easy to scale as it supports Windows worker node."
"OpenShift provides tools that tell me everything I have on a container, and I can make it on-premise or on a cloud infrastructure."
"The solution's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is very reliable. When it was on-prem, it was by default secured by our company firewalls and security tools, and now it's in the cloud, which has its security and systems in place. This provides stability to our infrastructure."
"The architecture is the best. The solution is scalable if you are on a container-based solution."
"Everything is packaged into OpenShift Container Platform."
"Some of the primary features we leverage in the platform have to do with how we manage the cluster configurations, the properties, and the auto-scalability. These are the features that definitely provide value in terms of reducing overhead for the developers."
"The most valuable feature for me in the OpenShift Container Platform is the option to manage different containers and environments and also being able to switch among them."
"On OpenShift, it's easy to scale applications. We can easily scale up or scale down."
 

Cons

"It's complex to manage and requires specialists."
"There are several areas where Kubernetes could improve."
"Kubernetes can be complicated to understand."
"I'm a beginner, and I recently started working with Kubernetes. As of now, I don't see any bugs. However, it would be better if it could be deployed without coding."
"Lacks some scalability and more user-friendly operability."
"The virtual machines should be GUI-based"
"Currently has a very minimal UI for certain things."
"The dashboard, monitoring, and login need improvements."
"Metrics monitoring feature needs improvement."
"There should be a simplification of the overall cluster environment. It should require fewer resources. Just to run a simple Hello World app, it requires about seven servers, and that's just crazy. I understand that it is fully redundant, but it's prohibitively expensive to get something simple going."
"It is difficult to deploy the OpenShift cluster in a bare-metal environment."
"One challenge is that sometimes it may be difficult to find the answers to your questions if you are not a Red Hat customer."
"The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing."
"Container Platform could be improved if we could aggregate logs out of the box instead of having to do it through integrations with other products."
"The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform. When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high."
"The product's interface is a bit buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"The solution requires a license to use it."
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
"Microsoft provides reasonable costs for Kubernetes."
"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."
"The solution is affordable."
"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs associated with its use."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"The product is expensive."
"The price is slightly on the higher side. It is something that can be worked on because most of the businesses now have margins."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
"We have to pay for the license."
"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."
"We currently have an annual license renewal."
"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper p...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores.
 

Also Known As

K8
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.