Kubernetes platform from Red Hat gets updated

Red Hat Inc., has announced Red Hat OpenShift 4.2, the latest version of Red Hat's trusted enterprise Kubernetes platform designed to deliver a more powerful developer experience. Red Hat OpenShift 4.2 extends Red Hat's commitment to simplifying and automating enterprise-grade services across the hybrid cloud while empowering developers to innovate and enhance business value through cloud-native applications.

Red Hat OpenShift 4.2 aims to make cloud-native technologies easier to use and more accessible for developers via capabilities that automate the set-up and management of Kubernetes environments. This enables developers to focus on building the next-generation of enterprise applications without requiring deep Kubernetes expertise.

The latest version of OpenShift also adds ready-to-use developer services that address needs around service mesh, serverless execution and cloud-native continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, all of which are designed to help fuel developer productivity around Kubernetes-based applications:

·  Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, based on the Istio, Kiali, and Jaeger projects and enhanced via Kubernetes Operators, is designed to simplify the development, deployment, and management of microservices-based applications on OpenShift. 

·  Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, based on Knative and available as a Technology Preview, helps to lower costs by running applications that can scale down to zero while remaining responsive to user requests and then scaling up on-demand. 

·  Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, in Developer Preview and available as a Kubernetes Operator, runs each step of the CI/CD pipeline in its container, allowing each step to scale independently to meet changing demands.

This release brings OpenShift closer to developers with Red Hat CodeReady Containers, which enables developers to install a pre-built OpenShift environment on a laptop for local development. This provides a framework that ties together container development tools with a local cluster, making it easier to build cloud-native applications locally and, when ready, deploy to a full OpenShift environment.

Cloud simplicity, wherever OpenShift runs

Enterprise IT has never been a homogenous, static series of deployments, and modern computing is not an exception. Hybrid deployments using components of on-premise infrastructure and cloud-based services are frequently being pursued by IT decision-makers and, to help ease the transition to the hybrid cloud, Red Hat OpenShift 4.2 is designed to deliver a more consistent, unified experience across disparate IT estates, adding:

·  Simplified, automated and faster installations of OpenShift Container Platform across public clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and private clouds like OpenStack, backed by a consistent enterprise experience.

·  Migration tooling to help customers upgrade from OpenShift 3 to 4, offering a simpler, faster and more automated way to copy workloads from one OpenShift cluster to another. 

·  Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers that provide a more consistent way for third party storage providers to plug into the Kubernetes ecosystem. This release also supports OpenShift Container Storage 4, currently in beta.

The industry's most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform

As organizations look to use enterprise Kubernetes to drive digital transformation, roadblocks can appear due to stringent internal and regulatory security standards. These requirements often limit the connectivity of sensitive data and workloads, requiring “air gaps” or being disconnected from the broader enterprise network. While good for security, it makes migrating and updating the applications and services used by these systems a challenging, manual process with dozens of steps. 

To help improve the OpenShift experience across heterogeneous deployments and systems, including those that handle sensitive information, Red Hat OpenShift 4.2 adds installer enhancements across environments, including support for disconnected installs. This enables customers to more easily deploy the latest version of the industry's most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform in environments that are not accessible via the Internet or those that are connected but maintain strict image testing policies.

Red Hat OpenShift 4.2 will be available in the coming weeks.

Supporting Quotes

"More and more organizations across industries and around the world trust Red Hat OpenShift to run their most critical business applications. We continue to prioritize making the next generation of enterprise open source technologies like Kubernetes even more accessible to developers while also keeping administrator priorities in balance. With these goals in mind, OpenShift 4.2 delivers on features to help customers accelerate application development and delivery," said Ashesh Badani, senior vice president, Cloud Platforms, Red Hat.

"As Kubernetes-based container platforms for microservices evolve, new end-to-end toolchains are needed that can deliver code quickly and with fewer errors. The latest suite of OpenShift developer tools, especially OpenShift Pipelines, enables end-to-end CI/CD that automates code delivery to Kubernetes container platforms," said Tom Petrocelli, research fellow, Amalgam Insights.

"At Google Cloud, we are committed to providing customers with the flexibility to deploy all types of enterprise workloads on GCP. Google and Red Hat share a long-standing collaboration across Kubernetes, support for the open-source community, and a mutual belief that open standards and open innovation are good for customers. We look forward to helping OpenShift customers leverage the power of Google Cloud through this partnership," said Rayn Veerubhotla, director, partnerships at Google Cloud.

"We are excited to see the 4.2 release bringing new tooling and local development experiences to OpenShift users. Azure offers a range of OpenShift solutions including Azure Red Hat OpenShift, a fully managed OpenShift service jointly operated by Red Hat and Microsoft. With Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 now generally available on Azure, enterprises can create hybrid cloud environments that can meet their current needs and also evolve to handle future requirements," said Gabe Monroy, director of program management for the Azure Application Platform, Microsoft.

"As a company transitioning to containers and Kubernetes, we wanted to work with Red Hat given their deep expertise in Kubernetes for enterprises. In adopting Red Hat OpenShift 4, we can focus on our business of IT cybersecurity -- our developers get to focus on code, while administrators can work with a trusted platform that can be easier to manage thanks to automated updates," said Sean Muller, enterprise architect & technology leader, LiquidIT.

"We use Red Hat OpenShift as our Kubernetes solution, running a number of our critical systems in our private cloud environment. Using the automation in Red Hat OpenShift, we can continually deliver better functionality for our customers from our teams with short time-to-market and low risk," said Alv Skjellet, head of IT platforms, Norsk Tipping.

"With our focus on the commercial transportation industry, we have been working with Red Hat given their expertise in cloud-native technology to power our fleet management solutions for transportation and logistics companies. Red Hat OpenShift 4 is already helping us to unify our work on this trusted enterprise Kubernetes platform across our hybrid cloud environment. Each cluster can be deployed using a single command. Kubernetes Operators help to enable “one-click” upgrades and lifecycle management. Operators provide automation for our application teams to move easily to an as-a-service model. We look forward to maximizing our use of the tools that are especially powerful for our developers so they can focus on innovations on our applications," said Justin Newcom, vice president of Global Information Technology, Omnitracs.