Case Study on OpenShift

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.

What features does it pack?

OpenShift is a cloud development Platform as a Service (PaaS) hosted by Red Hat. It’s an open source cloud-based user-friendly platform used to create, test, and run applications, and finally deploy them on cloud.

OpenShift is capable of managing applications written in different languages, such as Node.js, Ruby, Python, Perl, and Java. One of the key features of OpenShift is it is extensible, which helps the users support the application written in other languages.

OpenShift comes with various concepts of virtualization as its abstraction layer. The underlying concept behind OpenShift is based on virtualization.

What is the difference between OpenShift and Kubernetes then?

The features that distinguish OpenShift from Kubernetes include:

• OpenShift has stronger security policies than Kubernetes. The security policies of OpenShift restrict you from running simple container images as well as many official images. OpenShift requires specific privileges to maintain a minimum security level.
• The authentication and authorization processes are also different. The setup and configuration of Kubernetes authentications require a lot of effort. OpenShift, on the other hand, offers an integrated server for better authentication.
• Web-based User Interface (UI) is important for effective cluster administration. You have to install the Kubernetes dashboard separately and use the kube-proxy to forward a port of your local machine to the cluster’s admin server. OpenShift’s web console has a login page. You can easily access the console and create or change most resources through a form. You can also visualize servers, projects, and cluster roles.
• Kubernetes deployment is done with deployment objects. You can internally implement deployment objects by controllers and use them for updating pods. OpenShift deployment is done with the DeploymentConfig command. You cannot implement DeploymentConfig with controllers; you have to use dedicated pod logics.
• Kubernetes enables you to set up your own Docker registry, but you don’t get an integrated image registry. OpenShift provides an integrated image registry that you can use with Red Hat or Docker Hub.

Case Study: Ford

Ford Motor Company is a global company based in Dearborn, Michigan. The company designs, manufactures, markets and services a full line of Ford cars, trucks, SUVs, electrified vehicles and Lincoln luxury vehicles, provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company and is pursuing leadership positions in electrification; mobility solutions, including self-driving services; and connected services. Ford employs approximately 190,000 people worldwide.

Challenge

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.

But this engagement across hundreds of thousands of employees and thousands of internal applications and sites created complexity that Ford’s traditional IT environment and development approaches could not accommodate. Even with hypervisors and virtual machines, the company struggled with inefficient resource use and high staffing costs to maintain this environment.

Solution

Ford migrated to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, a solution that enhanced the strengths of CoreOS’s offering with new automation and security capabilities. 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.

The company also implemented Red Hat Quay to create a centralized container registry to host and secure all of its container images while offering protected, API-based access to partners and other third parties. 

Benefits

• 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. OpenShift’s automation capabilities help Ford deploy new clusters more rapidly. 
• These improvements extend to Ford’s IT hosting, where the company has seen a significant productivity improvement for CaaS support. Dealers and plant operators gain access to new features, fixes, and updates faster through Ford’s multitenant OpenShift environment.
• 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. 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.
• 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.