OpenShift Benefits: Faster Development, Simple Networking
Key Points
- OpenShift adds developer‑focused features that vanilla Kubernetes lacks, speeding up cloud‑native app creation and simplifying operations.
- Its Source‑to‑Image (S2I) pipeline automatically detects the code language, selects the appropriate base image, builds a container image, and pushes it to a registry, eliminating the need for developers to write Dockerfiles.
- OpenShift’s built‑in routing gives each service a readable URL and abstracts the complex Kubernetes networking model, making exposure of applications easier.
- The platform also handles integration with external load balancers, further reducing networking configuration effort for both new and experienced developers.
Full Transcript
# OpenShift Benefits: Faster Development, Simple Networking **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsOR8RkAOwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsOR8RkAOwI) **Duration:** 00:09:18 ## Summary - OpenShift adds developer‑focused features that vanilla Kubernetes lacks, speeding up cloud‑native app creation and simplifying operations. - Its Source‑to‑Image (S2I) pipeline automatically detects the code language, selects the appropriate base image, builds a container image, and pushes it to a registry, eliminating the need for developers to write Dockerfiles. - OpenShift’s built‑in routing gives each service a readable URL and abstracts the complex Kubernetes networking model, making exposure of applications easier. - The platform also handles integration with external load balancers, further reducing networking configuration effort for both new and experienced developers. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsOR8RkAOwI&t=0s) **OpenShift’s Source‑to‑Image Benefit** - The speaker highlights how OpenShift speeds up developer workflows by automatically detecting a project's language from a Git repository, choosing the right base image, building a container image, and pushing it to a registry via the Source‑to‑Image feature—an advantage over plain Kubernetes. ## Full Transcript
so a question we're often asked is why
openshift over vanilla kubernetes well
today we're going to look at the
benefits of openshift both for
developers and for it operations
so let's start with Developers
one of the key features that openshift
is going to give us is speed of
development particularly with the steps
of creating and building the cloud
native application which is you know
manifested as containers and the feature
in openshift that makes that possible is
called source to image
so let's look at how sourced the image
works first your developer is going to
write some code
and they're going to put it in a git
Repository
and this is where sourced image is going
to take over
sourced image is going to be able to
look at the code that was placed in the
repository and it's going to be able to
determine did you write Java code did
you write python code and it's going to
be able to recognize what type of code
you wrote
and since you wrote some code it's now
smart enough to know what type of Base
image that you need to pick and it's
going to go pull that
from an image catalog
so now what source damage is going to do
it's going to take the code that you
wrote it's going to combine it with the
base image that was appropriate for
whether you wrote python or whether you
wrote Java and it's going to build a new
image
and it's going to put that new image in
a registry
it's going to push your new image to a
registry and then when it's ready to
deploy it's gonna
push that image
to deploy to deployment
so what happened here why was this such
a great feature well a lot of these
steps here uh the selecting of an image
and merging that image with code and
building a new image
typically you have to write a container
script building files sometimes called
Docker files to do all those steps and
if you're someone like myself who's been
writing these types of container
building files for years those steps
aren't too hard
but if you have a lot of new Developers
you know Java developers python
developers who've been developing for
years but aren't very familiar with
Cloud native applications and how to do
container type activities building
containers and picking an image and
putting it and merging it with the image
with the code that they wrote and then
pushing it to a registry having
openshift automate all of that for you
is is a huge help
so that's a key feature for new
developers that openshift provides and
another feature that openshift provides
is easy networking
through the use of routes
so in vanilla kubernetes the networking
piece is really complicated and can be
very hard to do and what's really nice
about openshift is it takes care of the
networking piece for you so what it'll
give you is it'll give you an easy to
read URL that maps to your deployed
application and then the other aspect
that the openshift will provide you
networking wise is integration with
external load balancers so it allow
it'll take care of that integration with
the external load balancer and even give
you different load balancing options and
if you had to figure all that out in
vanilla kubernetes you'd have to be
really strong in kubernetes networking
to be able to perform those activities
so now let's move on and talk about what
does openshift do for you from an IT
operations perspective and we're going
to talk about that under the context of
day two operations
and so the key piece that openshift
gives you for your day two operations is
automation
so what does openshift automate for you
well the first thing it automates for
you are installs
and then the next big piece that it
provides automation for are updates
and the updates aren't simple updates so
when it doesn't update
it worries about updating the platform
which is openshift
and it also updates the underlying
operating system which is Rel now why
it's important to update both of these
together is openshift will always make
sure that the version of openshift is
compatible with the version of the
operating system that's being used
you'll never run into incompatibility
issues because the wrong OS version was
picked further for the particular
version of openshift so it's a key
feature in the automated updates that
openshift provides
another place where openshift provides
automation is in cluster size
so in vanilla kubernetes if your cluster
is not big enough it's really hard to
increase the size of the cluster but in
openshift it's able to do this
automatically for you so it's a huge
benefit if you're running out of you
know you have scalability issues and you
don't have enough nodes in your cluster
having this taken care of by openshift
is going to be a huge help to your it
operations folks
the next feature that openshift provides
you is multi-cloud management
so when you start running in production
the odds are you're going to be running
lots of clusters and you're probably
going to be running them on different
clouds maybe different types of clouds
public clouds private clouds and try to
manage all those clusters running on all
those different Cloud environments and
vanilla kubernetes is really difficult
but openshift has built-in tools for
multi-cloud management that make running
across multiple clouds very very easy
it's all built into the tool
now the last piece where open shift
really shines is insecurity
and the aspects of security that
openshift really shines is in two pieces
one is in guard rails
and what do we mean by guard rails so
openshift essentially prevents you from
running with Scissors so if you have new
developers new folks that are deploying
to production
there are some things that vanilla
kubernetes will let you do that you
really should never do in production so
one example of this is running a
privileged container a container that
runs as root you never want to run those
in production uh you know if you're
worried about security because there's a
big surface area that can be attacked
with vulnerabilities if you're running
as root so what openshift will do is it
will prevent you from running that type
of container it'll request that the
container be non-privileged another
example of of a particular vulnerability
that openshift gives you guard rails for
is if you use a default namespace again
using a default namespace can have
security vulnerabilities and openshift
is going to make sure that whenever you
deploy your container that you are using
non-default namespace
now the last aspect of security that
openshift takes care of is the notion of
profiles
so in vanilla kubernetes there's a large
number of knobs that you have to turn to
get security right so and there's not a
lot of people that are very comfortable
with turning all those knobs correctly
to make sure there's no security
vulnerabilities
in openshift you don't have to modify
the individual knobs instead what you do
is you pick a particular security
context constraint profile and the
profile that you pick will give you the
level of security and the level of
access that your container needs but
it's also going to take care of turning
all those knobs the right way so you
never have to personally turn those
knobs and you can feel more comfortable
that you just picked a profile and that
profile is proven to be secure
so what have we seen today we've seen
that openshift provides us great
benefits for day two operations and it
also provides us great benefits to
developers and speeds up their
development and this is why we feel
openshift provides a lot of value Beyond
vanilla kubernetes
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