✍🏻Industry use cases of Openshift

4 min readSep 26, 2021

In this blog, we are going to see how the industry uses Openshift as a tool.

Introduction of Openshift :

OpenShift is a cloud development Platform as a Service (PaaS) developed by Red Hat. It is an open-source development platform, which enables developers to develop and deploy their applications on cloud infrastructure. It is very helpful in developing cloud-enabled services. This tutorial will help you understand OpenShift and how it can be used in the existing infrastructure. All the examples and code snippets used in this tutorial are tested and working code, which can be simply used in any OpenShift setup by changing the current defined names and variables.

History of OpenShift

OpenShift originally came from Red Hat’s acquisition of Makara- a company with a proprietary PaaS solution based on Linux containers. Even though OpenShift was announced in May 2011, it was proprietary technology and did not become open-source until May of 2012. Up until v3, container technology and container orchestration technology used custom-developed technologies. This changed in v3 with the adoption of Docker as the container technology, and Kubernetes as the container orchestration technology. The v4 product has many other architectural changes — a prominent one being a shift to using CRI-O as the container runtime (and Podman for interacting with pods and containers), and Bulidah as the container build tool, thus breaking the exclusive dependency on docker.

Red Hat OpenShift is available in four models:

OpenShift Container Platform
OpenShift Online
OpenShift Dedicated
OpenShift.io

Though the implementations and locations on which they run and the pricing models differ, the actual underlying OpenShift code and functionality are identical.

OpenShift Container Platform

It is known as OpenShift Enterprise until a June 2016 name change, OpenShift Container Platform is a private platform as a service (PaaS) for organizations that deploy and manage OpenShift on their own on-premises hardware or on the infrastructure of a certified cloud provider.

OpenShift Container Platform is implemented as an assemblage of Docker-based application containers managed via Kubernetes orchestration, all running on an operating system foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

OpenShift Online

Introduced in 2011, OpenShift Online is for individual developers or teams that access OpenShift as a public cloud service. OpenShift Online is implemented as an on-demand consumption model hosted on public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS). The latest version of OpenShift Online, released in May 2017, provides a container-based platform that developers can access from any web browser, IDE, and command line. It also provides support for local development, enabling programmers to deploy a functional OpenShift cluster on their local workstations, and it supports port forwarding, which enables developers to use remote services as if they were running locally. OpenShift Online was built with the same code as the OpenShift Container Platform, and it is the deployment platform for OpenShift.io.

OpenShift Dedicated

OpenShift Dedicated offers organizations the ability to run a single-tenant OpenShift environment on a public cloud managed by Red Hat while incorporating Docker and Kubernetes orchestration technologies. At the time of its launch in December 2015, OpenShift Dedicated ran only on AWS. Support for Google Cloud Platform was added in December 2016. As of July 2017, support for Microsoft Azure is not offered.

OpenShift.io

Announced in May 2017, OpenShift.io is a free, open-source supplement to OpenShift Online. Together, they offer an integrated approach to DevOps that incorporates tools for development teams to create and deploy microservices-based applications. OpenShift.io also provides a Linux container environment and a machine learning system that assists developers with design decisions. OpenShift.io encompasses several open source development technologies, including fabric8, Eclipse Chef, Jenkins, OpenJDK, Performance Co-Pilot, WildFly Swarm, Eclipse Vert. x, and Spring Boot.

Features of OpenShift

There are numerous features maintained by OpenShift. A few of them are: –

Multiple Database Support
Extensible Cartridge System
Source Code Version Management
One-Click Deployment
Multi Environment Support
Standardized Developers’ workflow
Dependency and Build Management
Responsive Web Console
Rich Command-line Toolset
Rest API Support
Self-service On-Demand Application Stack
Built-in Database Services
Continuous Integration and Release Management

➽ USE CASES OF Openshift ➽

Volkswagen Group

Overview

The Volkswagen (VW) Group’s Electric Development department tests and enhances the technologies that support intelligent, connected vehicles. To improve testing speeds, scalability, and consistency, the VW Group used Red Hat technology to create a mixed-mode testing environment that combines virtual and real-life testing. With this new environment and architecture created with Red Hat Open Innovation Labs, the VW Group improved component integrations, introduced self-service provisioning, and reduced costs for system tests by 50%.

CHALLENGE: Simplify and automate component testing

SOLUTION: Adopt a virtual environment with expert support

After sketching the vision and trying different technical ideas, the group turned to Red Hat, a trusted vendor. The project started with a 12-week hands-on residency with Red Hat Open Innovation Labs to develop and test the core of the VW Group’s future software integration platform. This platform supports early integration testing of software functions at scale using Red Hat OpenShift, an enterprise Kubernetes container platform. The VW Group also benefited from Red Hat training and technical support.

Thanks for Reading !! 🙌🏻📃, see you in the next blog.