The Next Generation of OpenShift Online is Here

OpenShift 3 is the first enterprise-ready, web-scale container application platform based on Docker format Linux containers, Kubernetes orchestration and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, providing full support from the operating system to application runtimes. Red Hat launched OpenShift Enterprise 3 based on this platform in June 2015, and introduced OpenShift Dedicated, our managed container application platform in December 2015. Today, we are excited to announce a developer preview of OpenShift Online Next Gen, our public cloud application development and hosting platform based on OpenShift 3. The next generation of OpenShift Online is one of the first multi-tenant Docker-based container application platforms that is also powered by Kubernetes. 

Now, developers can run their applications across a multi-tenant public cloud service (OpenShift Online), multi-cloud managed service (OpenShift Dedicated), on-premise (OpenShift Enterprise) or hybrid cloud applications – without needing to re-architect applications. These updates offer developers a preview of the industry’s first Docker and Kubernetes-based, multi-tenant container application platform by an enterprise software company.

OpenShift Online Next Gen offers a superior developer experience

The new version of OpenShift Online offers more of what developers are looking for so they can focus on their applications instead of day-to-day management and upkeep. OpenShift Online is managed by Red Hat’s OpenShift operations team, and quickstart templates enable developers to push code with one click, helping to avoid the intricacies of application provisioning. OpenShift already supports a wide variety of developer languages, frameworks, databases, and middleware services, and now we’ve added even more powerful developer capabilities to OpenShift Online Next Gen, including:

• Source-to-image (S2I) build for containers to help eliminate dockerfile creation and management;
• One-click deployment to OpenShift through git hooks so developers can focus on their own projects instead of system administration and pushing source code;
• Automatic scaling to account for traffic increases through natively-integrated Kubernetes orchestration;
• IDE integration, making Red Hat OpenShift the only container application platform that includes Eclipse tooling embedded directly inside the IDE using the latest JBoss Tools.

It’s not just about importing and running containers – but building and deploying them automatically.

OpenShift Online builds containers automatically, eliminating the need to build containers outside to run them on the service. Built-in operations management enhances the developer experience since the developer is now only responsible for maintaining and building their code. The next generation of OpenShift Online also provides network isolation at the container level, scale-out orchestration based on Kubernetes to offer increased security, and web-scale features for individual developers and small and medium business users. And, because OpenShift Online is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it inherits the enterprise-grade security features the world’s leading Linux platform is known for.

OpenShift Online helped contribute Kubernetes updates

Red Hat contributed several features to the Kubernetes project that helped make OpenShift Online possible, and which are also available to other Kubernetes users, including:

• New service accounts, enabling developers to grant application components permission to interact with other components;

• Introduced groups for team support;

• Policy Engine, tracking per user/group capabilities individuals possess versus the class of resources available; and

• Kubernetes NameSpaces, providing a mechanism to scope resources in a cluster, and a unique scope for:

• Named resources to avoid basic naming collisions.
• Delegated management authority to trusted users.
• The ability to limit community resource consumption.

Red Hat continues to support OpenShift Online 2, and users can learn more about account changes and upgrades to OpenShift Online Next Gen in the Developer FAQ. We invite you to visit Red Hat booth at DockerCon next week and Red Hat Summit the following week to see a preview of OpenShift Online Next Gen and the new container innovations in action.
Or, request an OpenShift Online Next Gen developer preview account, read more about the OpenShift Online Next Gen Dev Preview, or check out a video on what’s new in the OpenShift Online Next Gen developer preview.