OpenShift 3: Platform as a Service

Pain-Free Support

Most cloud providers try to attract customers with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), for which they receive access to configurable virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud. Because almost every application is able to operate in an IaaS environment, it offers the greatest flexibility across all services – accompanied, however, by high administrative effort. Platform as a Service (PaaS), on the other hand, appeals to developers who need a suitable environment to build and test an application but are not in the least interested in setting it up themselves.

IaaS, then, cannot be accomplished on the fly, and certainly not without in-depth knowledge of system administration. The customer is not merely free to configure it – they must. Because the basic images used in clouds are mostly minimal versions of the various distributions, the entire overhead of setting up the system rests on the admin. Developers, however, only need to know whether their programs function, and the admin just wants to be in position to manage the VM. The concept of PaaS brings admins and developers together as a helpful building block for DevOps. Red Hat presents OpenShift as a platform, providing PaaS as a finished product for businesses; however, does it deliver what the red-hatted ones promise?

The PaaS Alternative

A pre-made PaaS environment allows you to start new development environments at lightning speed with all the important tools (e.g., Git and Jenkins). Continuous integration is the goal: Virtual systems, in which the testing application is available and executable, immediately arise from the source code repositories used by developers to enter their modifications. This principle does require suitable tools and processes that work together.

The final step of the process is rolling out the application into productive operation. PaaS considerably reduces the effort required for the admin because, for a

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