Openshift Cloud Next-Gen Application Development Made Easy

Openshift Cloud makes next-gen application development a breeze. With its intuitive interface, you can create and deploy applications in a matter of minutes.

Developers can leverage a wide range of tools and frameworks to build applications, including Node.js, Python, and Java. This versatility allows for seamless integration with existing infrastructure.

The cloud-based platform provides a scalable and secure environment for applications to run in. This means you can focus on writing code, not worrying about infrastructure.

By automating many of the manual tasks associated with application development, Openshift Cloud frees up time for more strategic work.

With Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on Alibaba Cloud, you can deploy clusters with just one click. This means you can get started with your application development right away.

The platform combines the power of enterprise Kubernetes with Alibaba Cloud's robust cloud services, giving you a restriction-free environment to innovate. You can leverage the convenience and security advantages of Alibaba Cloud, including seamless integration with other cloud services.

One invoice from Alibaba Cloud covers the flexible pricing model, making it easy to manage your costs. This means you don't have to worry about multiple bills or complicated pricing structures.

Red Hat OpenShift enables innovation without limitation, accelerating application development and management with its developer platform services. This includes CI/CD pipeline and log management, making it easier to build and deploy applications.

The integrated development environment (IDE) and developer command-line interface (CLI) reduce technical restrictions for developers, allowing them to choose their coding languages and deployment strategies. This provides the building blocks for next-generation application development based on AI and machine learning technologies.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform offers two subscription options: Container Platform and Platform Plus. The Container Platform provides a trusted Kubernetes application platform for every application and environment.

You can directly procure Red Hat OpenShift from Alibaba Cloud Marketplace. To do this, you'll need to contact Alibaba Cloud to determine the scale of the OpenShift cluster and the specifications of ECS instances to be used.

The specifications of the ECS instances will determine the price of the OpenShift Container Platform subscription, which Alibaba Cloud will use to create a dedicated marketplace offer for you.

You'll need to pay for this dedicated marketplace offer, and then open the required cloud services, including ECS, SLB, NAT Gateway, EIP, and Privatezone, with the guidance of Alibaba Cloud.

Here are the key differences between the two subscription options:

Both subscription options require you to contact Alibaba Cloud to determine the scale of the cluster and the specifications of ECS instances to be used.

Red Hat OpenShift is a leading choice for thousands of customers worldwide who want a more secure, supported Kubernetes platform guided by deep expertise.

You can power the long-term innovation of your business with more efficient and streamlined technologies from Red Hat OpenShift.

Red Hat OpenShift offers a full-stack application development and delivery platform where you can build, test, deploy, and run applications with consistency, agility, and productivity.

Here are some key benefits of using Red Hat OpenShift:

Red Hat OpenShift supports organizations across the hybrid cloud regardless of their technical makeup, empowering your teams with a foundation to develop, deploy, and manage applications with consistency and productivity.

Red Hat OpenShift offers a full-stack application development and delivery platform that lets you build, test, deploy, and run applications with consistency, agility, and productivity.

You can manage traditional monolithic applications as well as cloud-native services and applications on this platform, giving developers and operations teams commonality in how applications are packaged, deployed, and managed.

Self-service access to developer tools and a broad selection of coding languages are also part of the package, making it easier for developers to work with the tools and languages they prefer.

Here's a breakdown of the key benefits of using Red Hat OpenShift for building next-generation applications:

Red Hat OpenShift supports a wide range of coding languages, giving developers the freedom to choose the language they prefer for building their applications.

By using Red Hat OpenShift, you can gain complete control of all components of your applications, VMs, and containers on a consistent and enterprise-hardened platform.

In-cluster metric data is the focus of metering, which relies on Prometheus as the default source of information. This enables users to do reporting on namespaces and pods.

With metering, you can generate reports on Kubernetes resources, including pods and namespaces. This is made possible by periodic ETL jobs that use SQL queries.

Metering allows for the extraction, transformation, and loading of data, making it a powerful tool for reporting and analysis.

Red Hat OpenShift offers a full-stack application development and delivery platform where you can build, test, deploy, and run applications with consistency, agility, and productivity.

Developers have self-service access to a broad selection of coding languages and a common abstraction layer across any infrastructure, giving them and operations teams commonality in how applications are packaged, deployed, and managed.

This platform supports organizations across the hybrid cloud, eradicating the restrictions of a single architecture or cloud environment and empowering teams to develop, deploy, and manage applications with consistency and productivity.

Red Hat OpenShift accelerates application development and management by providing developer platform services, such as CI/CD pipeline and log management, which reduces technical restrictions for developers.

The default mode of operation for running OpenShift is to use an admin level cloud credential, which is stored in the kube-system namespace and then used by the cloud credential operator to create new users with fine-grained permissions.

This best practice is recommended by the creators of OpenShift, who want to ensure that users have the right level of access to the platform.

The admin credential is used to process CredentialRequests in the cluster and create new users with specific permissions, which helps to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive areas of the platform.

This approach also allows for greater flexibility and customization, as users can be assigned different levels of access and permissions based on their needs and roles within the organization.

In addition to this default mode of operation, developers can also use Docker build image builds, which allows them to define their own Dockerfile-based image builds using their existing Docker containerization knowledge.

This approach gives developers more control over the build process and allows them to use their existing skills and expertise to create and deploy images on OpenShift.

In Passthrough Mode, a user installs OpenShift with a single credential that's not an admin and can't mint additional credentials, but has enough permissions to perform the installation and all operations needed by the cluster.

This credential will need to be manually maintained if the cluster is upgraded, so it's essential to check its permissions prior to every upgrade.

You can use the default permissions required only for installation, but it's also possible to reduce the permissions on your credential after install to just what's needed to run the cluster, as defined by the CredentialsRequests in the current release image.

Passthrough Mode is supported on various clouds, including AWS, GCP, Azure, VMWare, OpenStack, oVirt, and KubeVirt.

Openshift Cloud offers a scalable and secure platform for deploying containerized applications.

It supports multiple container runtimes, including Docker and CRI-O.

With built-in support for Kubernetes, Openshift Cloud provides automated deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

You can easily integrate Openshift Cloud with your existing infrastructure and tools, thanks to its support for popular platforms like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and VMware.

Openshift Cloud provides a robust security framework that includes features like network policies, secret management, and role-based access control.

It also offers advanced monitoring and logging capabilities, making it easier to troubleshoot and optimize your applications.

Security is a top priority in OpenShift Cloud. With robust access controls and identity management, you can rest assured that your applications and data are protected.

OpenShift Cloud provides a robust set of security features, including network policies, secret management, and identity and access management.

To ensure the security of your applications, OpenShift Cloud allows you to create network policies that control traffic flow between pods and services. This helps prevent unauthorized access and ensures that only approved traffic reaches your applications.

Credentials Formats are crucial for secure access to cloud resources. Each cloud provider utilizes a credentials root secret in the kube-system namespace.

The format for the secret varies by cloud, and is also used for each CredentialsRequest Secret. This means you'll need to understand the specific format required for your chosen cloud provider.

Here's a breakdown of the formats used by different cloud providers:

Note: The specific formats for each cloud provider are not listed here, as they are not provided in the article section facts. However, you can find this information by examining the Credentials Root Secret Formats section in the documentation.

In summary, the credentials root secret format is essential for secure access to cloud resources, and varies by cloud provider.

In Mint Mode with Admin Credential Rotation, the admin credential is removed from the cluster after installation, but the cloud credential operator can still request a read-only credential to verify permissions.

This mode requires admin credentials to be reinstated prior to upgrading the cluster, and if not present, upgrade may be blocked.

Admin credentials are not stored in the cluster permanently in this mode, but they are still required for brief periods of time.

Here's a summary of the benefits and drawbacks of Mint Mode with Admin Credential Rotation:

This mode requires manual intervention to reduce permissions after installation and to update credential permissions before upgrades.

Credentials management is a crucial aspect of OpenShift security. The cloud credential operator is a controller that syncs on CredentialsRequest custom resources, allowing cluster components to request fine-grained credentials for a particular cloud provider.

There are several modes of operation for the cloud credential operator, including Mint Mode, Passthrough Mode, and Short Lived Tokens. In Mint Mode, the admin credential is not stored in the cluster permanently, but still requires manual reinstatement for each upgrade.

In Passthrough Mode, a single credential is used for installation and operations, which needs to be manually maintained if CredentialsRequests change over time. This mode is supported for clouds like AWS, GCP, Azure, and more.

Short Lived Tokens provide a secure way to rotate credentials for each cluster component periodically. This mode requires additional cloud infrastructure setup and may not work with push-button upgrades.

Here's a summary of the different modes of operation:

In all modes, CredentialsRequests allow cluster components to request fine-grained credentials for a particular cloud provider. A CredentialRequest spec consists of a secretRef and a providerSpec, which are used to provision credentials in the cloud.