Red Hat OpenShift Update Simplifies Network Edge Deployments
Red Hat today made generally available an update to its OpenShift platform that includes a technology preview of an Appliance Builder that makes it simpler to install clusters at the network edge, using a tool that leverages an image update capability, that Red Hat has added to enable IT teams to construct clusters in a pre-production environment.
In addition, Red Hat is launching Red Hat Device Edge, a platform that combines Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ansible Automation Platform, and an instance of MicroShift, a lightweight instance of Kubernetes that Red Hat previously developed that now includes an agent to automate installation using a GitOps workflow.
At the same time, Red Hat is making generally available Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security Cloud Service, a fully managed Kubernetes service via which Red Hat will manage multiple distributions of Kubernetes, including Red Hat OpenShift, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Chuck Dubuque, head of product marketing for Red Hat OpenShift, said collectively these offerings are part of an effort to embed tools and capabilities into Red Hat platforms that make it simpler for more organizations to embrace best DevOps practices to manage infrastructure capable of running either microservices-based or monolithic applications. If, for example, there is an issue deploying Red Hat OpenShift clusters at the network edge they can be seamlessly rolled back to their previous state.
Other capabilities added to Red Hat OpenShift 4.16 include an ability to declaratively add additional virtual CPU resources to virtual machines running on Kubernetes clusters without having to reboot and a disaster recovery capability for virtual machines that make use of storage deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation that is managed via Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management software.
Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management now also provides the ability to monitor virtual machines running on Red Hat OpenShift clusters.
Red Hat makes use of Kubevirt, open-source software to encapsulate kernel-based virtual machines in a way that allows them to be deployed on a Kubernetes cluster. In addition, Red Hat provides tools and consulting services to enable organizations to migrate monolithic applications deployed on virtual machines to KVM virtual machines.
Red Hat has seen a significant spike of interest in those capabilities and services following the recent acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, said Dubuque.
It’s not clear how many organizations are reducing their dependency on VMware. Migrating existing applications to a new platform requires a significant amount of time and effort that could wind up being more expensive than the additional licensing costs that Broadcom is now imposing. However, converging the management of monolithic and microservices-based applications on the same modern Kubernetes platform ultimately streamlines management processes in a way that reduces the total cost of IT.
Regardless of the approach to legacy applications, the one clear thing is most new applications are being constructed using containers and microservices that are designed to optimally run on Kubernetes clusters. The only thing left to determine is to what degree legacy applications will be refactored to run alongside them.
