Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Reviews

Red Hat is acquired by IBM, there is still a separate entity, but we are more on the partner side.

I work with IBM, and most of our solutions are on the OpenShift platform. I work with our business partners to enable and help them with the technical pre-sales and setup role. So, I'm not involved in production engineering systems but rather in demos, first application implementations, and POCs.

The user experience and security are some of the key features. There are two key differentiators that you have certainly worked on from the customer's perspective.

It is actually very well laid out for a computer product. But maybe, since it has security built into it, it is sometimes very difficult for people to grasp.

It is much easier to work with Kubernetes than OpenShift. On the inside, all the security and other aspects are very much required by the container.

It has a difficult learning curve. Those are the areas where, from a customer perspective, OpenShift is a little challenging compared to other Kubernetes solutions.

I have been using it for five years. 

I would rate the stability of this solution a ten out of ten.  It is very stable.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It is a scalable solution. Our customers are mostly enterprise businesses for Red Hat OpenShift. 

The technical support is good. One challenge is that sometimes it may be difficult to find the answers to your questions if you are not a Red Hat customer. Many of the answers require you to log in to the Red Hat portal. Unless you are a customer, you cannot ask for a solution. On those lines, it is a little difficult. Otherwise, technical support is good.

Positive

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy and one being difficult. 

The initial setup is a little difficult because installing and configuring it is very involved. I don't see it as easy yet.

It's deployed on both the cloud or on-premises. On the cloud, it's much easier where it is managed OpenShift. If we go to managed offerings like Red Hat OpenShift on AWS, Azure OpenShift, or IBM Cloud, it is much easier to provision. But if it is self-managed, where you have to do everything yourself, it is difficult.

Red Hat OpenShift is self-managed, not from a cloud provider. If you are doing it on the cloud, then it is just a couple of hours. But if it is self-managed, then it will depend on the infrastructure, networking, and all that. It is still a team, but not yet a resource to have all that correctly set up.

It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications, like our AI and ML applications. We're not missing out on that capability.

The ROI is definitely much better because once it is set up and done, it is very easy to manage and have applications deployed. The user experience is very good. So once you have it in place, it's easy to do the day-to-day operations, and eventually, scalability and all those things become clear.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. It is a very good solution overall.

I would definitely recommend it to others.

We are moving as many applications as possible to a containerized environment. In terms of our environment, we have multiple data centers. One, of course, is for redundancy. Most of them are hot-warm. They're not hot-hot or hot-cold, depending on how you look at it, but pretty much everything that's important is fully redundant. That would be between our own private data centers and within Amazon across regions.

We have an on-premises and private cloud deployment. Amazon is the cloud provider. We've got some Azure out there too, but Amazon has been the primary focus.

Centralized control of container resources is most valuable.

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.

We've had a very difficult time going from version 3 to 4. We need to go to version 4 because of multiple network segments that may be running in a container and how we organize our applications. It's very difficult to have applications from different domains in the same container cluster. We've had a lot of problems with that. I find it to be an overcomplicated environment, and some of the other simpler containers may very well rise above this. 

It has probably been in use in the organization for about a year and a half.

It is fine. I've not heard anything negative about either the performance or the reliability.

Scalability is one of the primary reasons for going with a containerized environment like this. I have not heard that we've had any restrictions there, and I would be shocked and remarkably disappointed if we did. We have not hit any scalability issues yet.

I personally do not have any experience with them. I'm quite sure our low-level implementers do. 

They were just different JBoss containers. It really wasn't a containerized environment. We're looking at some of the AWS solutions.

I didn't do the initial setup. Some other people did that. We're all pretty uber geeks. So, I'm quite sure that we'd be able to figure it out naturally. Because it's a fully-featured and complex environment, you'd have to bone up on OpenShift to figure out how to install it properly, but I wouldn't expect it to be onerous.

Our implementation strategy was to start moving applications to be containerized and then implement them in the OpenShift. We were moving to OpenShift running on our own ECS on Amazon, but we have a lot of on-prem as well.

We're still working out the kinks. A part of that is our own dysfunction in terms of how we organize our apps, and then there is the problem with running apps from different domains in the same container. Some of those are our own self-imposed problems, but some of it is due to the OpenShift complexity.

We definitely hired different experts, but for the most part, we went out and hired people with the expertise, and now, they're employees. So, I'm quite sure there were consultants in there, but I don't know that offhand. 

We have not yet seen an ROI.

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.

Additional costs are difficult for me to articulate because ours is a highly-complex environment even outside of it.

Ensure that you need all of the features that it has because otherwise, it's not worth the investment. Be careful what version you're getting into because that can be problematic to change after you've already invested in both the training and the infrastructure.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. Considering some of the problems we've had, even though some of them are self-imposed, I would hope that a containerized environment would be flexible to be able to give us some options there. 

We use the solution to manage our digital assets like containers and applications.

Integrating the product into our existing infrastructure was easy. We did not face any issues.

The price must be improved.

I have been using the solution for six years.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

The product’s scalability is good. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We have around 15 users.

The support people help us whenever we require their assistance. A partner provides us with the first-level support. The support has been good, but it is not direct support. We have a problem that has not been fixed for a long time.

Positive

I rate the ease of setup a six out of ten. The project was ten months long. The deployment took a month.

I rate the pricing a four or five out of ten.

I have also used Docker and Kubernetes.

I will recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use the OpenShift Container Platform to deploy applications. It helps to deploy them from a monolithic to a microservices approach. 

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 for businesses. It also comes with features like OpenShift Virtualization. 

OpenShift Container Platform needs to work on integrations. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. We encountered certain bugs and issues, which were resolved once we raised them with Red Hat. 

I rate OpenShift Container Platform's scalability a ten out of ten. The autoscale feature is particularly beneficial for managing varying traffic loads on the platform. It automatically deploys additional VMs in response to high traffic and scales down when the traffic returns to normal levels. This feature is more powerful when deploying the OpenShift Container Platform on cloud platforms like AWS or Azure, where it adapts to the fluctuating traffic demands. My company has 15 customers who are mostly enterprise businesses. 

Red Hat offers good technical support. 

Positive

I rate the product's deployment an eight out of ten. It was a little complex. There are two to three types of initial configuration, including UBI. UBI is complex. Deployment takes around two hours to complete. 

The deployment process involves some complexity. We create configuration files and distribute these files to the platforms we work on, such as VMware or Nutanix. Subsequently, we initiate the initial deployment and configuration of OpenShift.

The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. There is a subscription called OpenShift Plus, which offers additional features and products the vendor provides to complement the OpenShift Container Platform. These include ACM, Red Hat Quay, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation.

I recommend studying the documentation thoroughly and preparing the infrastructure according to the guidelines. Following the documentation is crucial, and most issues reported were related to network problems. Therefore, I suggest becoming proficient in troubleshooting network issues to identify and resolve problems. I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case for this solution is, as an open system, to deploy containers on AWS or other platforms and then manage them.

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.

My impression is that this solution is pretty expensive so I think the pricing plan could improve.

I have been using this solution for about two years.

I would rate the stability a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the technical support of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Positive

I was not involved in the initial deployment but I heard that it's not too hard to set up with all the support available.

I would rate the pricing of this solution a four, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the most expensive and 10 being the least expensive.

I would advise other people looking into this solution – if they could afford their pricing plan – to go for it as it's a great product.

I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We can deploy microservices on the fly. The time to market has improved for our organization. If any issues are found or any incident is reported, fixes or hotfixes can be done within a fraction of a second. These KPIs are the improvements.

In terms of security, it supports user management. An authentication and authorization solution is embedded in that. There is also certificate management in terms of how it rotates the certificates and the kind of TLS mechanism it uses for the end-users as well as for the communication within a cluster. It also allows our images to be scanned before deployment.

OpenShift comes with a lot of marketplace operator-based solutions. It also allows any open-source operator-based solution. It could also be a Helm Chart-based solution for deploying any cloud-native application or workload.

OpenShift is much better than others as an upstream project for Kubernetes. It also has certain features that are not there in any other flavor of Kubernetes. For example, Source-to-Image (S2I) is a wonderful feature in OpenShift where your code can be in the source repository. It can be built and deployed with a click of a button. That helps the developers' community to deploy their code and see the results on the fly.

In OpenShift, there are a lot of things that are good as compared to any other Kubernetes flavor. The console or the GUI of OpenShift is awesome. You can do a lot of things from there. You can perform administration tasks as well as development tasks. 

The RBAC user management that comes packaged with OpenShift is not there in other Kubernetes. That's a very nice feature. 

The upgrade mechanism is also very good. The upgrades are pushed by Red Hat, and with just the click of a button, your OpenShift cluster gets upgraded. That is another very nice feature. These are a couple of things that I like.

A lot of improvements are required in OpenShift when it's deployed on a public cloud such as AWS, GCP, or AKS. 

OpenShift has certain restrictions in terms of managing the cluster when it's running on a public cloud. For example, identity and access management integration with the IM of AWS is quite difficult. It requires some open-source tools to integrate. This is one area where I always see room for improvement. 

In addition, the RBAC access is only controlled by the OpenShift internal mechanism, whereas the authorization part can be handled by any public cloud. We are already managing and maintaining users in the cloud environment. So, a repetitive or duplicate RBAC mechanism is not required. 

I have been working with this solution since 2018. It has been more than four years.

It's a stable solution. However, most organizations are lagging in upgrading the versions because of various reasons, such as business downtime and the risk involved behind that. If you don't upgrade it on time, then there will definitely be bugs. It normally doesn't create many issues, but we have had instances where when we go to the Red Hat product support team, they always mention going for the next upgrade or the next possible upgrade so that a bug is completely removed. However, it's not always possible to do that. So, stability-wise, it's quite stable, but no product can be perfect. In the version that we are running, there are a couple of bugs, and we have to live with them, unless and until we upgrade to the next version.

Because it's on a public cloud, it's very easy to scale up.

In terms of its users, we have close to 100 users. There are a couple of DevOps engineers in that, and then there are administrators who manage and maintain the cluster. The rest of them are developers. These are the primary users.

It's being used quite extensively, at least in two of our markets. I have no idea about plans to increase the usage of this product, but I also don't see any reduction in its usage in the near future.

Their support is very good. We have a premium subscription for our organization, and we get support whenever we need it. It's quite good. It's the backbone of this product. I would rate them a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the support professionals work from different geographical regions, and when there is a shift change, we lose some time. It happens rarely, but it has been a cause of concern a couple of times.

As a partner for helping us create the platform that we need, I would rate Red Hat an eight out of ten. In terms of support, they provide all the required commands, code pieces, or files required to troubleshoot the issue. They also provide support during any new installation or upgrade.

Positive

When I started working on this project, OpenShift was already there. I don't know if and what it was migrated from. In the accounts that I'm handling, we had OpenShift, and applications were containerized and migrated to OpenShift.

We use other Red Hat products. We use Red Hat OpenStack, and we also use GlusterFS storage from Red Hat, which comes as a part of OpenStack. Apart from that, most of the virtual machines are already using RHEL. OpenStack, for us, is on a private cloud. It's not as friendly as AWS public cloud. Integration-wise, it's seamless, but if we want auto-scaling at the OpenStack level, it's not possible for us. 

An advantage of using multiple Red Hat products together is in terms of the support we get from them. That's very good. If we consider any Kubernetes flavor running on any public cloud, getting support on the components we have deployed is difficult, but Red Hat supports that. Whatever we have deployed, they can provide support on that. The support provided by Red Hat is really great, and that's why they're asking for a premium cost for that.

It was already done before I came, but I know that it was done using Ansible stack and Ansible code. Its deployment is quite straightforward. The 4x versions of OpenShift are very easy to deploy. The older 3x versions were quite difficult to deploy, but in the latest versions, especially on a public cloud, it manages everything. It spins up your cloud virtual machines, installs OpenShift on them, and provides you the endpoint to access it.

If the Ansible code or scripts are available and ready, on a production system, it takes about one hour to one and a half hours. It also depends on how many virtual machines you require to install OpenShift.

Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay. 

I would recommend evaluating the product thoroughly for your requirements. That's because OpenShift comes with a lot of bells and whistles, and most organizations don't need that. It also comes with auto-managed components. If you are looking for less-managed components on a Kubernetes cluster, then Red Hat OpenShift is the only answer.

We didn't consider building our own container platform. There are different flavors available for Kubernetes. We use OpenShift, EKS, AKS, and GKE. Even OKE is coming up. It depends on what different markets of our organization prefer and what is cost-effective for them.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten because we are quite happy with it. There are a couple of restrictions in terms of managing clusters on a public cloud, but other than that, it has a lot of inbuilt components, which are helpful for managing the cluster better.

Our client deployed OpenShift on a bare-metal server, and they use it to offer their customers a platform-as-a-service solution with metered billing. It's pay-as-you-go. We are currently developing our own platform. For the most part, we have enough developers, but we'll go to Red Hat when we need support.

OpenShift is an improvement over legacy monolithic applications. With OpenShift, our clients can see the new features quickly, and developers can get any software they need from the Red Hat Marketplace. It has improved our product development and the existing workload on business material applications running on OpenShift. It has improved the performance of our company's IT department. 

OpenShift complies with the security center, where the CS image is hardened by default. OpenShift is very secure. When there are updates, OpenShift will update all the patches necessary throughout the entire cluster platform. It takes care of that easily, reducing many administrative tasks. Using this product improves our compliance code significantly.

The pipelines in OpenShift are handy for developers to build and automate things quickly. It's easy to bring things online. Options are helpful for the customized solutions we can do with this product. Overall, the automations are well aligned with OpenShift. That's what I see.

OpenShift's code-ready workspaces reduce project onboarding time by about 70-plus days while reducing time-to-market by around 50 percent. 

The operating system has a live update and is more secure than any other. It's made for Atomic OS, a lightweight OS new to the market. I also like the source-to-image capabilities. The customer can directly deploy their applications from the repository. It's a highly flexible and easy way to deploy into production. 

It's a simplified network for exposing their application to the outside world. Red Hat has good built-in oversight, where it monitors the cluster performance and records everything built inside the cluster besides OpenShift. Of course, Red Hat is a pioneer in this kind of auditing. 

Telecom clients can use OpenStack as their private cloud to access secure resources on demand. When they deploy to OpenShift, it's easier for them to have a cloud-like field on their own data center. OpenShift and OpenStack are integrated. It's an ideal combination. The infrastructure created in OpenStack is a robust private cloud solution. If the developer wants to consume resources within their organization per the utilization, OpenStack is the right platform for building their private cloud.

In terms of innovation, features, and functionality, a public cloud has much more than OpenStack by itself. I prefer OpenShift on AWS or Azure Cloud. That has made it easier for the customers to benefit because they don't need to worry about their managed solutions anymore. It's the customer's choice to manage services through OpenShift or on-prem. OpenShift can be run on all platforms, including VMware, public, private, etc. It's a great solution from a consumer choice perspective. 

The codes are customized and fixed only for their own environment, so it's more secure, but we cannot assure the client's security. However, the code is validated, and Red Hat support will address any vulnerabilities or security issues that arise.

The support costs are too high. 

I've used OpenShift for the last two years.

OpenShift is a highly stable product if you're using it as a managed service. 

OpenShift is scalable. 

I rate Red Hat support nine out of 10. 

Positive

Setting up OpenShift is fairly straightforward. It takes about a week to plan and another to deploy, so two weeks max. 

They can reduce prices because Kubernetes is open-source and freely available to customers. The license cost is for deploying on-prem, so it's costly to go to a client's location to deploy things compared to open source. If they reduce the cost, more customers will choose OpenShift.

I rate OpenShift Container Platform 10 out of 10. This is a great product. Red Hat has been in the field for more than 25 years. Each product they release is more innovative and cutting-edge. 

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform as a container of network functions for customer's telecom industry. 

One practical example of how OpenShift Container Platform helps us is in deploying security updates quickly, which is superior compared to other solutions like Coverness, Canonical, Kubernetes, Rancher, etc. However, there are areas for improvement in networking, architecture, and cloud aspects of the solution.

I find the security features and use of operators in OpenShift Container Platform highly valuable. The container update capabilities and OpenShift data foundation for storage are also important features.

I believe OpenShift Container Platform can improve in networking, architecture, and cloud areas by reducing deployment time, lowering costs, and streamlining engineer resources. Additionally, I would like to see more Azure I/O functions in the next release.

I have been using OpenShift Container Platform for four years.

The platform is stable and capable, covering various customer needs.

The scalability of OpenShift Container Platform is excellent. It allows for quick scale-outs with new workers, making it very efficient and is used by eighteen engineers for telecom purposes, impacting business significantly.

Technical support from OpenShift is decent but could be improved in some locations.

I find the initial setup of OpenShift Container Platform to be moderately complex. The deployment involves steps like installation, configuration, and deploying common services on-premises. Deployment typically takes around four hours and involves a team of two to four people. I'm not involved in maintenance. 

I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it.

My advice for new users is to explore the platform thoroughly as it's complex yet reliable. I would rate their customer service a seven out of ten. Overall, I rate OpenShift Container Platform a nine as it's a good product with room for improvement.