Red Hat has announced the initial availability of the next generation of OpenShift Online, the PaaS cloud application platform. This next edition is re-engineered to be built on top of OpenShift container platform, powered by open source tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
OpenShift online is a multi-tenant cloud application platform, which allows developers to develop and run container based applications. It aims to reduce operational overhead by providing on-demand application stacks, automating building and deployment, and streamlining development processes.
Under the hood, the container runtime and packaging technology powering OpenShift is Docker. It also makes use of a Kubernetes based scheduler for container orchestration, which simplifies operational requirements such as deployment, scaling, service discovery, and health management.
OpenShift makes use of quickstart templates, which allow developers to do one-click deployments of application frameworks. These will contain sets of services, build configurations and deployment configurations needed to build an application. For example, there are web framework application templates which can be used to set up the entire stack of a web application, from the front-end tier to the database tier.
OpenShift online also aims to offer enterprise-grade security. For example, it’s underlying OS is Red Hat Enterprise Linux, thus implementing all of its various security features. Furthermore, enhanced security is offered in other areas, such as:
- Container level network isolation
- Automated container image scanning
- Blocking root access for containers or other means of unsafe execution
- Rolling certificate and automated secret management
For its continuous integration and delivery, OpenShift makes use of Jenkins. It is used for entire pipelines, which means testing, building and then releasing applications as part of a fully-automated workflow. As a popular open source automation server, it is also likely to have a low barrier of entry due to familiarity from existing developers.
Deployment environments are also offered as a feature, allowing applications and their pipelines to exist within a particular space, such as within a cluster, within a project, or via labels within a project.
OpenShift also uses source-to-image (S2I), a tool which can produce a Docker image directly from source code. Essentially, it injects application source into a pre-built container image and then produces a new application image from them. This can mean developers don’t have to produce their own Docker images, as the process now automates their creation from source.
OpenShift online is now open for registration, with an initial free tier available with 1GB ram and 1GB of storage per user. The source code for OpenShift is also available on GitHub.