A case study on Openshift

OPENSHIFT

Red Hat® OpenShift® is a hybrid cloud, enterprise Kubernetes
application platform, trusted by 2,000+ organizations.

Automate life-cycle management to increase security, tailored operations solutions, easy-to-manage cluster operations, and application portability.

HISTORY

OpenShift originally came from Red Hat’s acquisition of Makar 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 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 Buildah as the container build tool, thus breaking the exclusive dependency on Docker

OKD

(The Community Distribution of Kubernetes that powers Redhat Openshift)

Built around a core of OCI container packaging and Kubernetes container cluster management, OKD is also augmented by application lifecycle management functionality and DevOps tooling. OKD provides a complete open-source container application platform.

OKD embeds Kubernetes and extends it with security and other integrated concepts. OKD is also referred to as Origin in Github and in the documentation.

Features

• A fully automated distribution of Kubernetes on all major clouds and bare metal, OpenStack, and other virtualization providers
• Easily build applications with integrated service discovery and persistent storage.
• Quickly and easily scale applications to handle periods of increased demand.
• Support for automatic high availability, load balancing, health checking, and failover.
• Access to the Operator Hub for extending Kubernetes with new, automated lifecycle capabilities
• Developer centric tooling and console for building containerized applications on Kubernetes
• Push source code to your Git repository and automatically deploy containerized applications.
• The web console and command-line client for building and monitoring applications.
• Centralized administration and management of an entire stack, team, or organization.
• Create reusable templates for components of your system, and iteratively deploy them over time.
• Roll out modifications to software stacks to your entire organization in a controlled fashion.
• Integration with your existing authentication mechanisms, including LDAP, Active Directory, and public OAuth providers such as GitHub.
• Multi-tenancy support, including team and user isolation of containers, builds, and network communication.
• Allow developers to run containers securely with fine-grained controls in production.
• Limit, track, and manage the developers and teams on the platform.
• Integrated container image registry, automatic edge load balancing, and full spectrum monitoring with Prometheus.

Industries: Use Cases

1. OPITZ

Opitz helps customers innovate faster with Red Hat OpenShift. Digital services provider Opitz Consulting (Opitz) needed a technology partner to help it offer an enterprise-level Kubernetes solution. Opitz customers considering Red Hat OpenShift wanted a certified Red Hat partner to support their business. The Red Hat partnership provides Opitz with training and early access to change notifications along with essential networking opportunities. Thanks to its partnership with Red Hat, Opitz is well positioned to grow.

Opitz Consulting Founded in 1990 under the name TRIGON Society for Organization and Project Management GmbH, digital services provider Opitz Consulting helps organizations across Germany master the challenges of digitization. More than 500 consultants based in ten locations in Germany and Poland combine their technical expertise with experience in holistic strategies, change, and agility to develop the best solutions for their customers. “Historically, we had a strong partnership with a leading integration architecture provider,” said Stefan Kühnlein, Senior Solutions Architect at Opitz. “But that partner halted its on-premise integration platform, and our customers were moving to the cloud. That meant a significant change for our business, so we began looking for other partnerships that would align with our evolving business.

An enterprise-level Kubernetes solution Many of Opitz’s customers, including customers in highly regulated industries, we’re already satisfied with Red Hat customers. “Our customers were running Red Hat Enterprise Linux®,” said Richard Attermeyer, Solution Architect at Opitz. “And many were thinking about running Kubernetes clusters. If they wanted to run it on-premises rather than as a managed service, it was quite natural to look at Red Hat offerings.” As Opitz’s customers changed their strategy to Red Hat OpenShift they wanted to work with a certified Red Hat partner. Opitz became a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner in 2018. The two companies work closely together to help customers architect and develop microservices solutions built and deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. “We decided to become a Red Hat partner to help our customers migrate their monolithic applications into microservices in the cloud,” said Attermeyer. “We wanted to offer them professional enterprise-level support for their Kubernetes clusters and their Red Hat OpenShift implementations.” While some Opitz customers have an on-premises or a hybrid Kubernetes solution, others have a public cloud one, either in Azure or in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

2. AIRBUS

Airbus builds DevOps skills with Red Hat Open Innovation Labs

Airbus designs, manufactures, and delivers industry-leading commercial aircraft, helicopters, military transports, satellites, and launch vehicles, as well as providing data services, navigation, secure communications, urban mobility, and other solutions for customers on a global scale. Challenge Airbus is undergoing a transformation to offer services on any type of platform and provide on-demand access to software-defined infrastructure. The organization chose to create a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), using Red Hat OpenShift and other Red Hat technology but sought to improve in-house skills and internal integration for faster, more efficient development of cloud-native applications. Path to innovation To build a path to faster application delivery with DevOps practices, Airbus participated in a Red Hat Open Innovation Labs engagement. During the 6-week residency, Airbus’s teams worked closely with Red Hat consultants to learn about building cloud-native applications following DevOps practices. The project used Open Practice Library foundational approaches to collaborative, iterative strategy and development to envision, plan, and begin building an initial prototype platform. Weekly review meetings helped participants hone the project roadmap and stay informed of progress. Business outcomes

• Built and demonstrated an initial unified PaaS and reusable components for supporting key business capabilities
• Gained hands-on skills and experience for in-house creation of cloud-native applications following DevOps and cloud-native design practices
• Established foundation for significantly faster delivery of new services and ongoing expansion of the platform.

Overview

HCA Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare service providers in the United States, uses data and technology to support modern healthcare. A cross-functional team of clinicians, data scientists, and technology professionals at HCA Healthcare used Red Hat solutions to create a real-time predictive analytics product system to more accurately and rapidly detect sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition.

CHALLENGE

3. HCA Healthcare

Use data insights to save lives

HCA Healthcare wanted to use its data to find new, innovative solutions to healthcare challenges. HCA Healthcare’s leadership identified sepsis rates as a key challenge that data could help solve. Sepsis, a condition where the body’s immune system has an overwhelming response to infection, is responsible for 270,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone.1 The group sought to use predictive data analysis to establish a standardized, digital approach to sepsis detection.

SOLUTION

Build a scalable foundation for innovative patient care

HCA Healthcare created the Sepsis Prediction and Optimization of Therapy (SPOT) platform to collect and analyze clinical data and signal caregivers in real-time to initiate early sepsis care. HCA Healthcare used Red Hat open-source software to create a scalable, container-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) foundation for SPOT. The group also used Red Hat automation, management, and analytics software to support real-time data collection, analysis, and proactive notification processes.

4. Lenovo

OVERVIEW

Lenovo, a multinational technology manufacturer, wanted to transform digitally to meet business demand and gain a competitive advantage. The company needed agile and cloud capabilities to launch applications more efficiently. Using a Red Hat® Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution, Lenovo decreased system deployment time and improved productivity through greater automation and increased support for collaborative DevOps work.

Challenge: Accelerate change to transform digitally

Lenovo wanted to achieve a rapid digital transformation to improve its capabilities and meet business demands faster. However, this transformation required frequent updates and changes to the company’s entire IT environment, and some legacy systems could not keep up. As a result, the team faced major challenges in quickly developing and delivering resources. Lenovo needed a comprehensive solution that could support agile application delivery, increase productivity, and improve internal support for DevOps.

Solution:

Move to cloud computing with a PaaS solution

To meet its requirements, Lenovo decided to implement cloud computing with a PaaS solution. “We chose PaaS as the preferred solution to gain efficient and agile support for our business team,” said Zhenyu Yao, executive director, Integrated Technology Service at Lenovo. Building on its strong relationship with Red Hat, Lenovo chose the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as its PaaS solution.

Results:

Increase automation and DevOps collaboration for greater productivity

With its new solution, Lenovo has fully automated its development and production processes, helping developers become more efficient and productive. Its unified PaaS environment lets developers and operations staff collaborate, leading to faster deployment time and increased competitive advantage. IT staff can now build a new IT infrastructure in minutes instead of a week. “With a PaaS built on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, along with our automated management tools, we can provide efficient and agile cloud services internally and externally,” said Yao.