Separate (virtual) servers for each application? With the arrival of containers, that idea is gradually becoming outdated. Yet while the number of containers at companies is soaring rapidly, the need for efficient management is essential. And that's exactly where Red Hat OpenShift comes in.
Containers allow applications to be isolated with a minimal footprint. By way of comparison, virtualization also allows applications to be isolated, but each application requires a separate virtual server. Containers have much smaller overheads – not only do they start faster, but they're also easier to monitor and maintain. Another advantage is that containers also offer significant scalability, meaning containers offer the ideal solution for applications that need to have dynamic scalability.
All these reasons make containers ideal for modern application development. By using containers, it's possible to work quickly and in a flexible manner, with each function being accommodated in a separate container. Even suppliers who have offered complete software packages in the past are increasingly switching to a range of containerized functions, while anyone developing software in-house is increasingly opting for containers. One large application therefore creates room for a solution consisting of a collection of containers. And this poses a new challenge. After all, the volume to be managed can increase from tens to hundreds, and sometimes even to thousands of containers in no time.
Efficient
To keep the management of all these containers under control, tools are available for container orchestration. Kubernetes is the best known of these, while Red Hat OpenShift is one of the more well-known enterprise-ready Kubernetes container platforms.
With OpenShift, application developers have a platform they can use to easily put applications into production. In the traditional approach to IT, the infrastructure department always needs to be involved to provide a new (virtual) server for a new application. The combination of containers and OpenShift makes such an intermediate step a thing of the past. OpenShift also monitors the containers.
OpenShift is based on the open-source products Kubernetes and Docker, with a typical feature of the open-source world being that the development of solutions progresses at speed. After all, many experts around the world contribute to the products. At the same time, however, there's often no real point of contact for those who want to use the applications in a professional environment. This often appears to be a stumbling block for open-source solutions, especially when it comes to potentially business-critical applications. Red Hat OpenShift allows you to deploy open-source developments without sacrificing support, as they provide full support for their platform.
On-premise or in the cloud
Realdolmen offers an answer to this problem. We help companies with a range of services that support the implementation and use of Red Hat OpenShift, and do so in any environment. Red Hat OpenShift is available in the public cloud via Microsoft Azure, Google and Amazon, and the solution can also be used on-premise. Companies that manage a lot of confidential and personal data often prefer an on-premise implementation, combining the security of their own infrastructure with the benefits offered by containers.
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