How CISCO used the Openshift?
What is Openshift?
OpenShift is a cloud development Platform as a Service (PaaS) hosted by Red Hat. It’s an open source cloud-based user-friendly platform used to create, test, and run applications, and finally deploy them on cloud.
OpenShift is capable of managing applications written in different languages, such as Node.js, Ruby, Python, Perl, and Java. One of the key features of OpenShift is it is extensible, which helps the users support the application written in other languages.
OpenShift comes with various concepts of virtualization as its abstraction layer. The underlying concept behind OpenShift is based on virtualization.
OpenShift
OpenShift is a cloud-enabled application Platform as a Service (PaaS). It’s an open source technology which helps organizations move their traditional application infrastructure and platform from physical, virtual mediums to the cloud.
OpenShift supports a very large variety of applications, which can be easily developed and deployed on OpenShift cloud platform. OpenShift basically supports three kinds of platforms for the developers and users.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
In this format, the service provider provides hardware level virtual machines with some pre-defined virtual hardware configuration. There are multiple competitors in this space starting from AWS Google cloud, Rackspace, and many more.
The main drawback of having IaaS after a long procedure of setup and investment is that, one is still responsible for installing and maintaining the operating system and server packages, managing the network of infrastructure, and taking care of the basic system administration.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
With SaaS, one has the least worry about the underlying infrastructure. It is as simple as plug and play, wherein the user just has to sign up for the services and start using it. The main drawback with this setup is, one can only perform minimal amount of customization, which is allowed by the service provider. One of the most common example of SaaS is Gmail, where the user just needs to login and start using it. The user can also make some minor modifications to his account. However, it is not very useful from the developer’s point of view.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
It can be considered as a middle layer between SaaS and IaaS. The primary target of PaaS evaluation is for developers in which the development environment can be spin up with a few commands. These environments are designed in such a way that they can satisfy all the development needs, right from having a web application server with a database. To do this, you just require a single command and the service provider does the stuff for you.
About Kubernetes
Although container images and the containers that run from them are the primary building blocks for modern application development, to run them at scale requires a reliable and flexible distribution system. Kubernetes is the defacto standard for orchestrating containers.
Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration engine for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. The general concept of Kubernetes is fairly simple:
- Start with one or more worker nodes to run the container workloads.
- Manage the deployment of those workloads from one or more master nodes.
- Wrap containers in a deployment unit called a pod. Using pods provides extra metadata with the container and offers the ability to group several containers in a single deployment entity.
- Create special kinds of assets. For example, services are represented by a set of pods and a policy that defines how they are accessed. This policy allows containers to connect to the services that they need even if they do not have the specific IP addresses for the services. Replication controllers are another special asset that indicates how many pod replicas are required to run at a time. You can use this capability to automatically scale your application to adapt to its current demand.
In only a few years, Kubernetes has seen massive cloud and on-premise adoption. The open source development model allows many people to extend Kubernetes by implementing different technologies for components such as networking, storage, and authentication.
The benefits of containerized applications
Using containerized applications offers many advantages over using traditional deployment methods. Where applications were once expected to be installed on operating systems that included all their dependencies, containers let an application carry their dependencies with them. Creating containerized applications offers many benefits.
Operating system benefits
Containers use small, dedicated Linux operating systems without a kernel. Their file system, networking, cgroups, process tables, and namespaces are separate from the host Linux system, but the containers can integrate with the hosts seamlessly when necessary. Being based on Linux allows containers to use all the advantages that come with the open source development model of rapid innovation.
Because each container uses a dedicated operating system, you can deploy applications that require conflicting software dependencies on the same host. Each container carries its own dependent software and manages its own interfaces, such as networking and file systems, so applications never need to compete for those assets.
Deployment and scaling benefits
If you employ rolling upgrades between major releases of your application, you can continuously improve your applications without downtime and still maintain compatibility with the current release.
You can also deploy and test a new version of an application alongside the existing version. Deploy the new application version in addition to the current version. If the container passes your tests, simply deploy more new containers and remove the old ones.
Since all the software dependencies for an application are resolved within the container itself, you can use a standardized operating system on each host in your data center. You do not need to configure a specific operating system for each application host. When your data center needs more capacity, you can deploy another generic host system.
Similarly, scaling containerized applications is simple. OpenShift Container Platform offers a simple, standard way of scaling any containerized service. For example, if you build applications as a set of microservices rather than large, monolithic applications, you can scale the individual microservices individually to meet demand. This capability allows you to scale only the required services instead of the entire application, which can allow you to meet application demands while using minimal resources.
OpenShift Container Platform overview
OpenShift Container Platform provides enterprise-ready enhancements to Kubernetes, including the following enhancements:
- Hybrid cloud deployments. You can deploy OpenShift Container Platform clusters to variety of public cloud platforms or in your data center.
- Integrated Red Hat technology. Major components in OpenShift Container Platform come from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and related Red Hat technologies. OpenShift Container Platform benefits from the intense testing and certification initiatives for Red Hat’s enterprise quality software.
- Open source development model. Development is completed in the open, and the source code is available from public software repositories. This open collaboration fosters rapid innovation and development.
Although Kubernetes excels at managing your applications, it does not specify or manage platform-level requirements or deployment processes. Powerful and flexible platform management tools and processes are important benefits that OpenShift Container Platform 4.6 offers. The following sections describe some unique features and benefits of OpenShift Container Platform.
Custom operating system
OpenShift Container Platform uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS), a container-oriented operating system that combines some of the best features and functions of the CoreOS and Red Hat Atomic Host operating systems. RHCOS is specifically designed for running containerized applications from OpenShift Container Platform and works with new tools to provide fast installation, Operator-based management, and simplified upgrades.
RHCOS includes:
- Ignition, which OpenShift Container Platform uses as a firstboot system configuration for initially bringing up and configuring machines.
- CRI-O, a Kubernetes native container runtime implementation that integrates closely with the operating system to deliver an efficient and optimized Kubernetes experience. CRI-O provides facilities for running, stopping, and restarting containers. It fully replaces the Docker Container Engine, which was used in OpenShift Container Platform
- Kubelet, the primary node agent for Kubernetes that is responsible for launching and monitoring containers.
In OpenShift Container Platform 4.6, you must use RHCOS for all control plane machines, but you can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the operating system for compute machines, which are also known as worker machines. If you choose to use RHEL workers, you must perform more system maintenance than if you use RHCOS for all of the cluster machines.
Simplified installation and update process
With OpenShift Container Platform 4.6, if you have an account with the right permissions, you can deploy a production cluster in supported clouds by running a single command and providing a few values. You can also customize your cloud installation or install your cluster in your data center if you use a supported platform.
For clusters that use RHCOS for all machines, updating, or upgrading, OpenShift Container Platform is a simple, highly-automated process. Because OpenShift Container Platform completely controls the systems and services that run on each machine, including the operating system itself, from a central control plane, upgrades are designed to become automatic events. If your cluster contains RHEL worker machines, the control plane benefits from the streamlined update process, but you must perform more tasks to upgrade the RHEL machines.
Other key features
Operators are both the fundamental unit of the OpenShift Container Platform 4.6 code base and a convenient way to deploy applications and software components for your applications to use. In OpenShift Container Platform, Operators serve as the platform foundation and remove the need for manual upgrades of operating systems and control plane applications. OpenShift Container Platform Operators such as the Cluster Version Operator and Machine Config Operator allow simplified, cluster-wide management of those critical components.
Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) and the OperatorHub provide facilities for storing and distributing Operators to people developing and deploying applications.
The Red Hat Quay Container Registry is a Quay.io container registry that serves most of the container images and Operators to OpenShift Container Platform clusters. Quay.io is a public registry version of Red Hat Quay that stores millions of images and tags.
Other enhancements to Kubernetes in OpenShift Container Platform include improvements in software defined networking (SDN), authentication, log aggregation, monitoring, and routing. OpenShift Container Platform also offers a comprehensive web console and the custom OpenShift CLI (oc) interface.
OpenShift Container Platform lifecycle
The following figure illustrates the basic OpenShift Container Platform lifecycle:
- Creating an OpenShift Container Platform cluster
- Managing the cluster
- Developing and deploying applications
- Scaling up applications
CISCO
OVERVIEW
To keep pace with customer demand, Cisco, a leading provider of networking solutions, must quickly deliver new IT products and solutions. The challenge is to keep its IT team engaged and productive to fuel innovation. With help from Red Hat, Cisco built its Lightweight Application Environment (LAE), which runs on Red Hat? OpenShift Container Platform, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology formerly known as OpenShift Enterprise by Red Hat. Now provisioning times have gone from months to minutes, and the Cisco IT team can focus on strategic initiatives.
Architecture
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is managed by the Kubernetes container orchestrator, which manages containerized applications across a cluster of systems running the Docker container runtime. The physical configuration of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is based on the Kubernetes cluster architecture. OpenShift is a layered system designed to expose underlying Docker-formatted container image and Kubernetes concepts as accurately as possible, with a focus on easy composition of applications by a developer. For example, install Ruby, push code, and add MySQL. The concept of an application as a separate object is removed in favor of more flexible composition of "services", allowing two web containers to reuse a database or expose a database directly to the edge of the network.
This Red Hat OpenShift RA contains five types of nodes: bastion, master, infrastructure, storage, and application.
· Bastion Node:
This is a dedicated node that serves as the main deployment and management server for the Red Hat OpenShift cluster. It is used as the logon node for the cluster administrators to perform the system deployment and management operations, such as running the Ansible OpenShift deployment Playbooks and performing scale-out operations. Also, Bastion node runs DNS services for the OpenShift Cluster nodes. The bastion node runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5.
· OpenShift Master Nodes:
The OpenShift Container Platform master is a server that performs control functions for the whole cluster environment. It is responsible for the creation, scheduling, and management of all objects specific to Red Hat OpenShift. It includes API, controller manager, and scheduler capabilities in one OpenShift binary. It is also a common practice to install an etcd key-value store on OpenShift masters to achieve a low-latency link between etcd and OpenShift masters. It is recommended that you run both Red Hat OpenShift masters and etcd in highly available environments. This can be achieved by running multiple OpenShift masters in conjunction with an external active-passive load balancer and the clustering functions of etcd. The OpenShift master node runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.5.
· OpenShift Infrastructure Nodes:
The OpenShift infrastructure node runs infrastructure specific services: Docker Registry*, HAProxy router, and Heketi. Docker Registry stores application images in the form of containers. The HAProxy router provides routing functions for Red Hat OpenShift applications. It currently supports HTTP(S) traffic and TLS-enabled traffic via Server Name Indication (SNI). Heketi provides management API for configuring GlusterFS persistent storage. Additional applications and services can be deployed on OpenShift infrastructure nodes. The OpenShift infrastructure node runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.5.
· OpenShift Application Nodes:
The OpenShift application nodes run containerized applications created and deployed by developers. An OpenShift application node contains the OpenShift node components combined into a single binary, which can be used by OpenShift masters to schedule and control containers. A Red Hat OpenShift application node runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.5.
· OpenShift Storage Nodes:
The OpenShift storage nodes run containerized GlusterFS services which configure persistent volumes for application containers that require data persistence. Persistent volumes may be created manually by a cluster administrator or automatically by storage class objects. An OpenShift storage node is also capable of running containerized applications. A Red Hat OpenShift storage node runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.5.
Challenge: Improve productivity and speed to market
To keep pace with customer demand, Cisco, a leading provider of networking solutions, must quickly deliver new IT products and solutions. The challenge is to keep its IT team engaged and productive to fuel innovation. With help from Red Hat, Cisco built its Lightweight Application Environment (LAE), which runs on Red Hat? OpenShift Container Platform, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology formerly known as OpenShift Enterprise by Red Hat. Now provisioning times have gone from months to minutes, and the Cisco IT team can focus on strategic initiatives.
Solution: Build a 1-stop shopping catalog
Cisco turned to Red Hat to design and build its LAE, a PaaS deployment that supports hundreds of apps that power a variety of business functions. The solution gives developers a self-service portal they can use to order the IT resources they need to develop apps, eliminating manual provisioning. “It’s a 1-stop shopping catalog … making the ordering process seamless and easier for developers to use,” said Sudha Agrahara, IT manager at Cisco.
Results: Move from months to minutes for faster innovation
Cisco developers used to wait as long as 3 months for projects to be provisioned. “[Now] the developers push a button and the service is delivered within a matter of … minutes,” said Agrahara. More productivity means customers get innovative products and services faster. The solution reduces demands on limited IT resources and gives developers more time to focus on creative projects, increasing employee satisfaction. “Having a strategic, forward-thinking partner like Red Hat that aligns with all of our priorities is a key part of Cisco’s success,” said Michael White, IT architect at Cisco.
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