OpenShift vs. Ku­ber­netes

Working with con­tain­ers has been a normal part of software de­vel­op­ment and other areas in IT for quite some time. Various providers have entered the market with their own or­ches­tra­tion tools. Two of the best-known are Ku­ber­netes and OpenShift. Although both solutions offer extensive container platforms, they differ in a number of aspects. De­vel­op­ers should think carefully about which product best suits their needs.

Ku­ber­netes (also known as K8s) is probably the best-known container or­ches­tra­tion tool available right now. That’s partly because of the strong support the project has gained among Google employees. Moreover, Ku­ber­netes offers sub­stan­tial func­tion­al scope and can be adapted to almost any project. This is because the software is open source; a wide range of dis­tri­b­u­tions can be found online. The large community behind Ku­ber­netes is also very pro­fi­cient. In case of questions or issues, it’s usually rel­a­tive­ly easy to find someone who can help.

However, the flex­i­bil­i­ty of Ku­ber­netes means there is no out-of-the-box solution. In many instances, it’s necessary to adjust many of its settings for container man­age­ment to work. But this also allows Ku­ber­netes to be used with any operating system.

Much like Ku­ber­netes, OpenShift is available in countless im­ple­men­ta­tions. Red Hat, the maker behind OpenShift, provides various products. That’s one important dif­fer­ence to Ku­ber­netes: OpenShift is a paid product. However, that means once purchased, you can expect pro­fes­sion­al support. While you need to rely on the voluntary help of experts from the community with Ku­ber­netes, Red Hat offers guar­an­teed support.

Being a finished product, OpenShift not only offers ease of use but also a great degree of security. Since the system is self-contained and con­fig­ured by the experts at Red Hat, you can count on high-security standards. By contrast, when you configure Ku­ber­netes, you’re re­spon­si­ble for in­stalling your own security measures.

Nonethe­less, Red Hat also provides a free, open-source solution called OpenShift Origin. Its products are available as a Platform-as-a-Service. The packages offered by Red Hat may differ in detail, but they generally concern hosted versions. In other words, the company provides the necessary hardware and software con­fig­u­ra­tion. You can then access a secure test en­vi­ron­ment with container tech­nol­o­gy via the internet. Running your own server is not necessary.

What all its products have in common is that they expand on Ku­ber­netes. With OpenShift, you, therefore, get a Ku­ber­netes dis­tri­b­u­tion with ad­di­tion­al service. So, instead of having to configure K8s yourself, OpenShift is a finished en­vi­ron­ment that can im­me­di­ate­ly be used for de­vel­op­ment, testing and de­ploy­ment.

Since OpenShift is based on Ku­ber­netes, the two tools have much in common. But the solutions do vary in certain aspects.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, both options are equally good. Although they differ in the details, they are certainly com­pa­ra­ble. To make a decision, you should ask yourself whether you want to pay for the con­ve­nience of OpenShift or enjoy the maximum flex­i­bil­i­ty of Ku­ber­netes. The latter will involve investing a lot of time (and possibly resources) in setting up the software.

If you tend to rely on the help from man­u­fac­tur­ers, OpenShift may be more advisable. With OpenShift, every­thing is already con­fig­ured and you can also utilize the pro­fes­sion­al support of Red Hat. However, the Ku­ber­netes community is not to be dis­par­aged: you’ll find plenty of experts across the online community who can help with any problem.