OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise-ready Kubernetes container platform with full-stack automated operations. In 2025, OpenShift Virtualization (running VMs side-by-side with containers) is a key feature.

When to Use

• Hybrid Cloud: Consistent experience across On-Prem and Cloud.
• Enterprise Requirements: Built-in strict security (SCC), registry, monitoring, and CI/CD.
• VM Migration: Lift-and-shift VMs into K8s using OpenShift Virtualization (KubeVirt).

Quick Start (OC CLI)

# Login
oc login -u developer -p developer https://api.crc.testing:6443

# Create Project (Namespace)
oc new-project my-app

# Deploy from Source (Source-to-Image)
oc new-app nodejs~https://github.com/sclorg/nodejs-ex.git

Core Concepts

Source-to-Image (S2I)

Build container images directly from source code without writing a Dockerfile. OpenShift detects the language (Node/Java/Python) and builds it.

Routes

OpenShift's native ingress controller. Used long before K8s Ingress/Gateway API.

Operators

First-class citizens. Everything in OpenShift is managed by an Operator.

Best Practices (2025)

Do:

• Use OpenShift GitOps: ArgoCD is fully integrated.
• Use oc: It is a superset of kubectl. You rarely need kubectl on OpenShift.
• Leverage Virtualization: Run legacy Windows/Linux VMs as Pods to decommission old VMWare clusters.

Don't:

• Don't run as root: OpenShift forbids this by default. Don't disable SCCs (Security Context Constraints) just to make a bad image work. Fix the image.

References

• OpenShift Documentation