Differences between OpenShift and Kubernetes

Question

What's the difference between OpenShift and Kubernetes and when should you use each? I understand that OpenShift is running Kubernetes under the hood but am looking to determine when running OpenShift would be better than Kubernetes and when OpenShift may be overkill.

Lastly

Answer 1

In addition to the additional API entities, as mentioned by @SteveS, Openshift also has advanced security concepts.

This can be very helpful when running in an Enterprise context with specific requirements regarding security. As much as this can be a strength for real-world applications in production, it can be a source of much frustration in the beginning. One notable example is the fact that, by default, containers run as root in Kubernetes, but run under an arbitrary user with a high ID (e.g. 1000090000) in Openshift. This means that many containers from DockerHub do not work as expected. For some popular applications, The Red Hat Container Catalog supplies images with this feature/limitation in mind. However, this catalog contains only a subset of popular containers.

To get an idea of the system, I strongly suggest starting out with Kubernetes. Minikube is an excellent way to quickly setup a local, one-node Kubernetes cluster to play with. When you are familiar with the basic concepts, you will better understand the implications of the Openshift features and design decisions.

Crossways

Answer 2

OpenShift includes a distribution of Kubernetes, so if you don't need any of those added features of OpenShift you can choice to ignore them such as: Web Console, Builds, advanced deployment models and much, much more.

Here's a summary of items available on the OpenShift website.

Gut

Answer 3

• Kubernetes comes with Ingress Rules but Openshift comes with Routes
• Kubernetes has IngressController but Openshift has Router as HAProxy
• To swtich namespace in cli for openshift is very easy but in kubernetes you need to create contex and switch between context
• Openshift UI has more interactive and informative then Kubernetes
• To bake docker image inside Openshift has BuildConfig but kubernetes don't has any thing you need to build image and push to registry
• Openshift has Pipeline where u don't need any jenkins to deploy any app but Kubernetes don't has.

Weyermann

Answer 4

The easiest way to differentiate between them is to understand that while vanilla K8S is community project, OpenShift is more focused towards making it a enterprise ready product. Resources like Imagestreams, BC, Builds, DC, Routes etc along with leveraging functionalities like S2I, Router etc make it easier for Developers and admin alike to use OCP for development, deployment and lifecycle management. You can refer to the URL https://cloud.redhat.com/learn/topics/kubernetes/ for getting more information on key differences between them.

OCP makes your life much easier by giving easy actions using CLI command OC and fine grained webconsole. You can try OCP and get first hand experience of the features using https://developers.redhat.com/developer-sandbox where you can quick get access to sandboxed environment in a shared cluster.

Justinejustinian