Kubernetes Vs. OpenShift: Which Is Best for You?

Kubernetes burst onto the scene in 2014 as the ‘DevOps spine’, revolutionizing application deployment, scaling, and management. Here, it’s six years later, and OpenShift, based on Kubernetes, has appeared, and everyone’s asking, “Why do we need another platform?” The answer is the difference between the two; this is what we’re here to point out.

What is Kubernetes? 

Kubernetes, friendly named k8s, is a very powerful open-source container orchestration system that does automation for application deployment and management.

Pros of Kubernetes: 

• Automated Scaling: This takes care of the continuous, seamless application of containerization by dynamically scaling applications according to the resource demand without bothering you with any resource wastage headaches.
• Extreme Flexibility: No need to overhaul infrastructure! It can be deployed on any platform or infrastructure flexibly without needing more third-party services.

Cons of Kubernetes: 

• Separate Team & Resources: It requires dedicated engineering teams and resources for its proper implementation and management, which can be quite a financial burden for smaller companies. 
• Security at Risk: Improperly managed, the complexity of Kubernetes can expose your system to security risks similar to the infamous Tesla crypto-jacking attack.

What is OpenShift? 

OpenShift provides the developer an intuitive/paradise-friendly toolkit with multi-language and integrated development environment, making development tasks a minimum.

Pros of OpenShift: 

• Enhanced Developer Experience: OpenShift provides the ease of highly friendly tools for developers, support for multiple languages, and development on one integrated platform.
• Security: Elevate your security game! OpenShift offers role-based access control, advanced networking, and an embedded scanner in the enterprise registry.

Cons of OpenShift: 

• Limited Community: With a minor community principally comprising Red Hat engineers, tracking down arrangements in OpenShift can at times be somewhat troublesome.
• Isolated Ecosystem: OpenShift's environment is to some degree shut, restricting utilization to a select arrangement of working frameworks.

Differences Between Kubernetes vs. OpenShift

Kubernetes is a free container orchestration tool. OpenShift by Red Hat is a version of Kubernetes with extra tools for developers, more safety options, and help for businesses, making it an offered as a viewed and joined solution.

Kubernetes is a system of orchestration containers, and it is open-source. OpenShift is a hybrid cloud platform that builds on top of Kubernetes.

• Deployment Flexibility:
  Kubernetes may be implemented on any platform or infrastructure, whereas OpenShift requires an operating system from the family of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, or Red Hat CoreOS.

• Installation Flexibility:
  Kubernetes provides greater installation liberty and works with the majority of operating systems. OpenShift requires RHEL or Red Hat Atomic for version 3, RHEL CoreOS (for version 4, as well as optionally RHEL), and RHEL or CentOS for OKD.

• Deployment Process:
  The setup of Kubernetes is manual — one has to pull code from Git, manually configure containers set up a CI/CD pipeline themselves. OpenShift eases this through built-in automated pipelines and pod-based automation.

• Security:
  Kubernetes is known for security, but requires skill to handle. OpenShift stops more things, like not letting containers run as root or use random images.

• User Interface:
  Kubernetes needs more setup for its dashboard and a token for authentication. OpenShift gives a simple web view with one login page.

• Support:
  It depends on the community for help, and there is no official support since it is offered at zero cost. While using OpenShift would be paying for the platform and receiving dedicated enterprise support in handling the system.

• Community Size:
  Much larger and more active open-source community. Much smaller and primarily consisting of Red Hat developers.

• Ecosystem:
  Kubernetes is highly flexible and supports almost all infrastructures.OpenShift works in a relatively closed ecosystem mostly associated with particular Red Hat environments.

• Cost:
  Kubernetes is an open-source, free platform. OpenShift needs a subscription, and costs go up when clusters get bigger.

Real-Life Use Cases: Kubernetes vs. OpenShift

Kubernetes: 

Bose, a famous sound gear company, used Kubernetes for its large IoT Platform-as-a-Service on AWS. Started in 2017, the platform handled an impressive 3 million linked items.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) dealt with big data loads before major meetings. They chose Kubernetes on public clouds to manage peak times, offering full control over automation and cutting cluster setup time from 3 hours to only 15 minutes.

OpenShift: 

Cisco, a leading provider of network solutions, wanted to increase developer productivity. Using OpenShift, they created the Lightweight Application Environment (LAE). Results were literally provisioned in minutes, which took up to 3 months previously.

BMW used OpenShift to cut down on development steps and make developers more productive. With the automation of repeat tasks and self-service setup, OpenShift helped BMW handle 230 Petabytes of usable storage and take care of as much as 240 million kilometers of test data. These real-world examples show the big effect that Kubernetes and OpenShift have in changing businesses and speeding up development processes.

In Conclusion

The choice between Kubernetes and OpenShift should be based on what exactly you need and the resources available to you. If you do not have deep expertise with Kubernetes, then you will probably appreciate how relatively easy OpenShift is to use, but be aware of the costs. For mature engineering teams, though, Kubernetes is almost always the best choice because nothing else comes close to offering that level of flexibility at such a low cost. 

As the demand for Kubernetes and other DevOps automation tools increases, remember to increase your demand for great DevOps engineers, too. Connect with experts at Clarion Technologies who can assist you in finding the right tools and hiring first-class engineers who will lead your projects to triumphant success!