Navigating Container Management with OpenShift: 6 Gotchas

Why Containers and Kubernetes?

Benefits of Containers and Kubernetes:

● Consistent Environment ● Run it anywhere● Increase speed to market● Kubernetes is the orchestrator of choice● Supported by other technologies

Can you risk a fault start? Read on to learn about 6 container management gotchas you can’t ignore, and how OpenShift can help you overcome these gotchas..

Gotcha #1. All the Extra Infrastructure

Containers require a lot of extra infrastructure. Can you answer these questions?

● Where are you getting your images from?● Who is going to build them?● Where are you going to put them?● Are you going to automate your builds?● Code Repository, Binary Repo, Orchestration?

OpenShift solves

Gotcha #2. Application Logs

Containers don’t store data. This changes everything. When moving to containers, consider the following questions:

● Where are the logs written to?● How do I get them off the node?● Are the logs useful if I don’t have the context of the node they were running on?● Node context for containers doesn’t really exist so are your logs writing what information

you need?

OpenShift solves this gotcha by….

Logging Driver

Application Container

stdout stderr

json file syslog awslogs splunk fluentd

Gotcha #3. Container Security

Security is no longer updating the operating system patches once a quarter now I need to care about:

● Where did this image come from?● Is it allowed to be executed in this environment?● What is inside this image?● Do we have a process for scanning images?● What do we do about secrets?● How do I manage access for particular services?● How often should I update my images?

OpenShift...

Gotcha #4. Architecture Paradigms

Not all applications need to use microservices architect. For example, Google’s main codebase is a monolith application over 1 billion files and 35 million commit.

Ask yourself these questions before you consider rearchitecting applications for microservices.

● How much of my app can I federate w/o rewriting it?● Is microservices really what I want to do?● Am I prepared to run a distributed application?

OpenShift...

Microservices Monolith

User Interface

Business Layer

Data Interface

Gotcha #5. Monitoring

What is really going on inside the container? You no longer have the context of a specific node. Monitoring now means I need a holistic view of everything from individual application calls to the performance of the underlying storage

Consider these questions:

● What if I need to debug my app?● Can you do distributed tracing?

OpenShift...

Gotcha #6: Complimentary Tooling

There are thousands of products trying to fill specific roles in the new container landscape.

Be careful not to fall into the trap of tool evaluation. Remember to think about your specific problem, then evaluate the technologies to see which tool might be able to help.

OpenShift…

Final Thoughts

● Old concepts with new implementations● Make sure your processes are worked out● Logs need context● Involve security early and often● Make sure your application is going to benefit from a change in architecture● Monitoring distributed applications is different● OpenShift’s container platform includes additional features, security, and tooling to support

you on your container journey. ● Contact Shadow-Soft engineers to learn how OpenShift can help your organization save

100’s of hours and 1000’s of dollars.

OpenShift Container Platform

Red Hat OpenShift includes everything needed for hybrid cloud, enterprise container and Kubernetes development and deployments. It includes an enterprise-grade Linux® operating system, container runtime, networking, monitoring, container registry, authentication, and authorization solutions.

Red Hat OpenShift helps you build with speed, agility, confidence, and choice so that developers can get back to doing work that matters. It provides:

● Automated workflows including source-to-image (S2I) process to get source code into ready-to run container images.

● Streamlined developer perspective that abstracts away the need for familiarity with Kubernetes concepts

● A connection to services from public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)

OpenShift Container Platform

Container Management Solutions

Ready to learn how container management solutions can help your organization save 100’s of hours and 1000’s of dollars?

Contact Shadow-Soft’s experienced and certified engineers for:

● An assessment to review common gotchas that might jeopardize your objectives● A container management platform review● Help with OpenShift enablement and implementation● Guidance on defining a container and Kubernetes strategy

Visit shadow-soft.com or email contact@shadow-soft.com