Research On Use cases: What is Openshift, How Openshift Works, Why To Use It and Where to Use It.
Detailed Information about Openshift with its Case Study and Use Cases
What is OpenShift ?
OpenShift is a cloud development Platform as a Service (PaaS) developed by Red Hat. It is an open source development platform, which enables the developers to develop and deploy their applications on cloud infrastructure. It is very helpful in developing cloud-enabled services.
OpenShift is a family of containerization software products developed by Red Hat. Its flagship product is the OpenShift Container Platform — an on-premises platform as a service built around Docker containers orchestrated and managed by Kubernetes on a foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
The family’s other products provide this platform through different environments:
OKD serves as the community-driven upstream (akin to the way that Fedora is upstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux), OpenShift Online is the platform offered as software as a service, and Openshift Dedicated is the platform offered as a managed service.
How Openshift Works ?
OpenShift is a layered system wherein each layer is tightly bound with the other layer using Kubernetes and Docker cluster. The architecture of OpenShift is designed in such a way that it can support and manage Docker containers, which are hosted on top of all the layers using Kubernetes.
Unlike the earlier version of OpenShift V2, the new version of OpenShift V3 supports containerized infrastructure. In this model, Docker helps in creation of lightweight Linux-based containers and Kubernetes supports the task of orchestrating and managing containers on multiple hosts.
Components of OpenShift
One of the key components of OpenShift architecture is to manage containerized infrastructure in Kubernetes. Kubernetes is responsible for Deployment and Management of infrastructure. In any Kubernetes cluster, we can have more than one master and multiple nodes, which ensures there is no point of failure in the setup.
Kubernetes Master Machine Components
Etcd −
It stores the configuration information, which can be used by each of the nodes in the cluster. It is a high availability key value store that can be distributed among multiple nodes. It should only be accessible by Kubernetes API server as it may have sensitive information. It is a distributed key value Store which is accessible to all.
API Server −
Kubernetes is an API server which provides all the operation on cluster using the API. API server implements an interface which means different tools and libraries can readily communicate with it. A kubeconfig is a package along with the server side tools that can be used for communication. It exposes Kubernetes API”.
Controller Manager −
This component is responsible for most of the collectors that regulate the state of the cluster and perform a task. It can be considered as a daemon which runs in a non-terminating loop and is responsible for collecting and sending information to API server. It works towards getting the shared state of the cluster and then make changes to bring the current status of the server to a desired state. The key controllers are replication controller, endpoint controller, namespace controller, and service account controller. The controller manager runs different kind of controllers to handle nodes, endpoint, etc.
Scheduler −
It is a key component of Kubernetes master. It is a service in master which is responsible for distributing the workload. It is responsible for tracking the utilization of working load on cluster nodes and then placing the workload on which resources are available and accepting the workload. In other words, this is the mechanism responsible for allocating pods to available nodes. The scheduler is responsible for workload utilization and allocating a pod to a new node.
Kubernetes Node Components
Following are the key components of the Node server, which are necessary to communicate with the Kubernetes master.
Docker − The first requirement of each node is Docker which helps in running the encapsulated application containers in a relatively isolated but lightweight operating environment.
Kubelet Service − This is a small service in each node, which is responsible for relaying information to and from the control plane service. It interacts with etcd store to read the configuration details and Wright values. This communicates with the master component to receive commands and work. The kubelet process then assumes responsibility for maintaining the state of work and the node server. It manages network rules, port forwarding, etc.
Kubernetes Proxy Service − This is a proxy service which runs on each node and helps in making the services available to the external host. It helps in forwarding the request to correct containers. Kubernetes Proxy Service is capable of carrying out primitive load balancing. It makes sure that the networking environment is predictable and accessible but at the same time it is isolated as well. It manages pods on node, volumes, secrets, creating new containers health checkup, etc.
Integrated OpenShift Container Registry
OpenShift container registry is an inbuilt storage unit of Red Hat, which is used for storing Docker images. With the latest integrated version of OpenShift, it has come up with a user interface to view images in OpenShift internal storage. These registries are capable of holding images with specified tags, which are later used to build containers out of it.
Why We Use Openshift ?
OpenShift accelerates application development by including the tools that companies need to be agile and efficient. With OpenShift, your business can deploy applications quickly, become less siloed, be more interactive, and increase collaboration. You’ll be able to go from concept to production faster and ahead of your competition.
Speed
With OpenShift, developers have access to a self-service platform that allows them to create, modify, and deploy applications on demand with the click of a button. These new applications are packaged up in containers which makes them extremely lightweight and portable. Plus, applications on OpenShift can be created in virtually any language/framework/DB and best of all, run at that same operational cost.
Organizational Consensus
OpenShift allows both Dev and Ops to work together without having to sacrifice their individual concerns. We’ve already gone over how developers can create, modify, and deploy applications on demand and use the languages they prefer, but Operations needs to be able to maintain those applications easily and have them run at the appropriate scale.
OpenShift brings consensus to your IT organization. Meaning that your organization can be more strategic as well as nimble and can deliver applications to market while maintaining them over their lifecycle with the scalability and stability necessary to win.
Holistic Solution
IT organizations need a vendor that can enable them through the entire stack, not just one aspect of it. Having a PaaS environment that’s coupled together with supported IaaS services and middleware services, means better agility and interoperability. With our solution, you can incorporate OpenStack, JBoss Middleware, Red Hat Mobile, and others. All of which is backed and supported by Red Hat, whose products and solutions power 50% of the world’s trading volume.
Scale
Being able to deliver that next big idea is one thing, being able to run it at scale is another. OpenShift leverages the power of containers and a incredibly powerful orchestration engine to make that happen. Containers make sure that applications are packed up in their own space and are independent from the OS, this makes applications incredibly portable and hyper scalable.
This means that your team spends less time in the weeds and keeping the lights on, and more time being innovative and productive. OpenShift is more than a PaaS, it’s a robust distributed application system that increases operational efficiency while still being able to handle the external load created by your customers.
Security
The data of your organization is one of your most valuable assets so why trust that with just anyone? In fact, 100% of U.S. government executive departments (DOD, DHS, DOT, etc.) use Red Hat solutions. We know how valuable data is and we understand the importance of protecting it from harm. OpenShift is built on those same principles and applications running on OpenShift have their own “container”allowing for the code and data to separated from each other by default.
Openshift CI/CD Pipeline
Openshift CI/CD Pipeline
With Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, you can create a customized CI/CD solution to build, test, and deploy your application.
To create a full-fledged, self-serving CI/CD Pipeline for an application, you must perform the following tasks:
- Create custom Tasks, or install existing reusable Tasks.
- Create and define the delivery Pipeline for your application.
- Create a PersistentVolumeClaim attached to the Workspace to provide the volume or filesystem for Pipeline execution.
- Create a PipelineRun to instantiate and invoke the Pipeline.
- Add Triggers to capture any events in the source repository.
CASE STUDY:
Ford Motor Company adopts Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift
Automotive
190,000 employees
Software and services
- Red Hat OpenShift
Container Platform - Red Hat Quay
- Red Hat Consulting
Partner
#Sysdig
Kubernetes and OpenShift have really forced us to think differently about our problems, because we can’t solve new business challenges with traditional approaches… We’re now well-situated for future success.”
“With OpenShift, we have a common framework that can be reused for deploying an application or service, because every major cloud provider has Kubernetes compatibility. We can now deliver features in a more secure, reliable manner.”
Jason Presnell CaaS Product Service Owner, Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company seeks to provide mobility solutions at accessible prices to its customers, including dealerships and parts distributors who sell to a variety of retail and commercial consumers.
To speed delivery and simplify maintenance, the company sought to create a container-based application platform to modernize its legacy stateful applications and optimize its hardware use.
With this platform, based on Red Hat OpenShift and supported by Red Hat and Sysdig technology, Ford has improved developer productivity, enhanced its security and compliance approach, and optimized its hardware use to improve operating costs.
Benefits
- Improved productivity with standardized development environment and self-service provisioning
- Enhanced security with enterprise technology from Red Hat and continuous monitoring provided by Sysdig
- Significantly reduced hardware costs by running OpenShift on bare metal
Automotive innovation requires modern platform to enhance legacy applications
Ford Motor Company is a leader in creating reliable, technologically advanced vehicles worldwide. Its mission is to provide mobility solutions at accessible prices to its customers, including dealerships and parts distributors who sell to a variety of retail and commercial consumers.
Each of Ford’s business units hosts a robust, engaged development community that is focused on building products and services that take advantage of the latest technological innovations, from machine learning for crash analysis and autonomous driving to high-performance computing (HPC) for prototype creation and testing.
“We needed faster delivery for our stateful applications,” said Satish Puranam, Technical Specialist, Cloud Platforms, at Ford Motor Company. “Pivotal Cloud Foundry worked fine for newer, stateless applications that were built for portability, but we’re a hundred-year-old company with a lot of stateful, data-heavy, legacy applications.
For things like inventory systems, dealer-facing applications, and CI/CD [continuous integration and delivery] that needed data persistence, getting the right infrastructure could take as long as 6 months.”
Ford sought to use Kubernetes container technology, application programming interfaces (APIs), and automation within its datacenters to give its legacy stateful applications the benefits of public cloud: faster delivery, easier maintenance, and automated scalability. Consolidating its hardware and software environments with container orchestration would also help the company use its resources more effectively.
New container-based application platform uses enterprise and community open source technology
openshift is open source
After running tests and proofs of concept (POCs) of container technology, Ford began looking for an enterprise partner offering commercially supported open source solutions to help run containers in production and support innovative experimentation.
“We have several open source technologies in our IT environment and products. We want to move toward being able to use and contribute to open source more — to help somebody else in the community take what we’ve done and improve on it,” said Presnell. “But we needed a container platform that had an enterprise offering, one that was well-known in the industry and was well-engineered.”
Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux®, OpenShift Container Platform offers a scalable, centralized Kubernetes application platform to help teams quickly and more reliably develop, deploy, and manage container applications across cloud infrastructure.
“Red Hat is one of the top engineering-focused Linux companies in the world and produces one of the most significant Linux distributions,” said Presnell. “They are the second biggest contributor to the Kubernetes community. Red Hat is really focused on providing enterprise-quality service alongside engineering excellence.”
Ford has also adopted several open source technologies that Red Hat contributes to, from Open Data Hub — a data and artificial intelligence (AI) platform for hybrid cloud — to Dex, an OpenID-based identity authentication service.
Performance and security improvements help Ford deliver services and work with partners more efficiently
Significantly increased developer productivity
#openshift increases productivity
Using OpenShift Container Platform, Ford has accelerated time to market by centralizing and standardizing its application development environment and compliance analysis for a consistent multicloud experience. For example, OpenShift’s automation capabilities help Ford deploy new clusters more rapidly.
These improvements are enhanced by the company’s shift from a traditional, waterfall approach to iterative DevOps processes and a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) workflow.
“With OpenShift, we have a common framework that can be reused for deploying applications or services within our datacenter or to any major cloud provider,” said Presnell. “We can now deliver features in a more secure, reliable manner.”
Enhanced security and compliance with enterprise container and monitoring technology
#openshift #security
Companies in the automotive industry must comply with various security standards and regulations, such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and personal data protection standards. When creating its new container platform, Ford sought to balance providing access to partners and developers with ensuring vulnerabilities and updates were addressed and working toward future adoption of a DevSecOps approach.
“In a container environment, moving applications and code continuously, security needs to be automated and built in from when a container is created,” said Payal Chakravarty, Vice President, Products, Sysdig. “Sysdig provides real-time vulnerability management in CI/CD pipelines. Security checks are in place to analyze code and identify issues before production.”
To support this approach, Ford standardized on Red Hat container images and registries using Red Hat Quay. OpenShift provides a unified management interface across Ford’s entire infrastructure, as well as built-in Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) capabilities.
Significantly reduced hardware costs
*openshift reduces hardware cost
Shifting to a container-based approach requires less initial hardware investment — and ongoing savings as Ford continues to modernize and migrate its legacy applications. The company has improved the efficiency of its hardware footprint by running OpenShift on bare metal and using its existing hardware more effectively.
“We were able to initially run OpenShift on a fleet of hardware that had literally been pulled out of our datacenter to be scrapped. We put that hardware back and are successfully running production OpenShift on it today,” said Puranam.
By establishing an approach for controlling costs and increasing profit margins, Ford can reallocate resources to higher-value projects to address new business opportunities faster.
Successful adoption of OpenShift and DevOps creates foundation for new opportunities to innovate
Ford is already experiencing significant growth in demand for its OpenShift-based applications and services. It aims to achieve migration of most of its on-premise, legacy deployments within the next few years.
Conclusion
Red Hat solutions involving the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform provide an excellent foundation for building a production ready environment which simplifies the deployment process, provides the latest best practices, and ensures stability by running applications in a highly available environment.
