OpenShift Vs. OpenStack: Which is Better?

OpenShift and OpenStack are Linux-based cloud technologies and open-source. Both technologies are created and managed by Red Hat Corporation. Openstack and Openshift are both extremely strong tools that are used by a variety of enterprises, although both focus on different aspects.

While selecting an open-source platform for your organisation, you must be aware of its capabilities and possibilities. OpenStack offers multiple components for various services while OpenShift focuses on several features.

OpenStack is an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform that enables you to shift your existing servers to the cloud. OpenShift is a Paas (Platform as a Service) that runs on top of AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and other cloud services. As a result, OpenShift can be utilised on OpenStack as a cloud-based service because both technologies are self-contained, so this is achievable. As a result, OpenStack may be used for server infrastructure and OpenShift can be used as a third-party API service.

What is OpenStack?

OpenStack is a set of open-source software modules and tools that serve as a foundation for building and managing both public and private cloud infrastructure and users can access virtual servers and other resources. The software platform is made of interconnected components that operate a data centre's heterogeneous, multi-vendor hardware pools of processing, storage, and networking resources. It can be controlled by a web-based dashboard, command-line tools or RESTful web services.

There are five OpenStack components, which are Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Horizon, and Keystone. Nova is used to managing resource provisioning for bare metals and virtual machines. Neutron is required for network provisioning and network connectivity. Cinder is a storage resource that allows devices to be mounted. Horizon is a dashboard that lets customers manage all of their OpenStack components. Keystone provides authorisation and authentication.

What is OpenShift?

OpenShift is a platform-as-a-service for Kubernetes deployments developed by RedHat in 2011. It is a Kubernetes platform user for deploying applications. OpenShift is designed in such a way that we can work with both traditional and cloud-native apps. You can use OpenShift to execute containerised applications and workloads that can be powered by Kubernetes.

OpenShift offers both CLI (command line interface) and web-based dashboards to assist developers in writing application code and operations teams in controlling and monitoring the Kubernetes cluster.

Because OpenShift is a Paas (Platform as a Service), it can be used in the same way as its competitors, such as Google Compute platform, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and so on. It also helps developers by making the application development and testing workflows considerably easier by ensuring that developers do not have to worry about switching between real and virtual servers. As a result, it contributes to increased productivity and efficiency of the existing application workflow while lowering maintenance expenses.

In a single customer application workflow, OpenShift and OpenStack can function together. Because OpenShift is a PaaS (Platform as a Service), it may be used on top of an existing IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) cloud service running on the OpenStack platform. It also reduces the setup cost, and the efficiency and productivity of the existing application's workflow are also improved. This also ensures the scalability of the existing application workflow because both technologies are integrated into the cloud platform and can be used separately.

OpenStack Vs OpenShift

The key differences between OpenStack and OpenShift are given below:

OpenStack is one of the cloud operating systems that manage computations, networking, and storage resources across a data centre via a dashboard that offers administrators control while allowing users to provision resources via a web interface.

OpenShift is a free Platform as a Service from Red Hat that allows you to host different programming applications. Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service product is called OpenShift. OpenShift is a cloud-based application platform that allows developers and teams to create, test, deploy, and execute their applications.

Red Hat OpenShift is under the "Platform as a Service" area of the tech stack, while OpenStack falls under the "Open Source Cloud" category.

OpenStack provides the following features:

• Compute
• Storage
• Networking

Red Hat OpenShift, on the other hand, includes the following major features:

OpenShift is extendable with a customizable cartridge functionality that allows developers to add any other language they choose. It comes with built-in support for Node.js, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, and Java (the norm in today's Enterprise). On OpenShift, we've seen everything from Clojure to Cobol.

OpenShift supports a variety of frameworks, including Spring, Rails, and Play.

Cloud Service Model

The cloud service model is the most significant difference between OpenStack and OpenShift. OpenStack is infrastructure-based because it is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). OpenShift, on the other hand, is used as a Platform as a Service (PaaS).

In OpenStack, organisations manage their servers and services on their private data centres due to cost and security concerns. While in OpenShift, you do not have to think about their configuration with the server, all you need is a platform.

Usage of Containers

In OpenStack, support for containers is minimal; however, it is barely used. It focuses on hypervisors or virtual machines, such as VMWare, KVM, and XEN.

OpenShift uses containers very extensively and its use is not optional. It uses concepts that define the DevOps platform, such as Kubernetes, to make it simple for end-users to develop and test their applications on the cloud platform. Docker is one of the most widely used container-based technologies.

Distributed Environment

OpenStack is a single-point platform that controls distributed data centres. It provides support for distributed storage using third-party storage components such as Ceph.

OpenShift is a distributed system that is very similar to Kubernetes. It consists of the master-slave architecture where the controller node is the master node and worker nodes are the slave nodes. A network layer has been encapsulated to make communication between master and slave nodes easier.

Hybrid Cloud-Based Platform

The use of OpenStack and OpenShift can potentially complement one another. OpenShift comes in handy if an application needs to be separated from other interacting services. It ensures that customer data is placed in a secure cloud environment. This is accomplished by allowing OpenStack to operate data storage-related pods on private nodal data. Because the other data may be handled on a public cloud, it also ensures load balancing. As a result, both of the technologies mentioned above are scalable and simple to use.

OpenShift and OpenStack are open-source and run on the Linux platform, and they are used by a large number of customers around the world. Other cloud-based platforms, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud platforms, face stiff competition from both of them. The private cloud services, for example, can be developed on OpenStack, and the public cloud services can run on many cloud providers using OpenShift.