Amazon and Red Hat partner on bringing OpenShift to AWS

AWS and Red Hat have jointly launched a managed service that allows customers of both companies to manage containerised applications through the cloud.

With Red Hat OpenShift Service for AWS (ROSA), Red Hat customers can create cloud-based Kubernetes clusters, as well as build and scale their containerised applications, without needing to manage any underlying infrastructure.

ROSA allows businesses to more smoothly move on-prem Red Hat OpenShift workloads to AWS, with this managed service available alongside tighter integrations with a suite of AWS services.

Existing AWS customers can also take advantage of the partnership by deploying container clusters without needing to go through Red Hat. Billing, as well as technical support, is handled directly through AWS, with no up-front investments, and customers charged only for the container clusters and nodes they use.

“Increasingly, customers are turning to containers to improve application velocity and portability, and they’re growing to rely on technologies like Red Hat OpenShift and AWS that make it easier to deploy containerised applications,” said AWS’ GM Kubernetes, Bob Wise.

“ROSA gives these customers the ability to seamlessly run containers on AWS using familiar Red Hat OpenShift APIs and tooling, and integrates the full breadth and depth of AWS services to build, scale, and manage their workloads.”

Red Hat’s OpenShift platform is a family of containerised software products. The flagship Container Platform serves as an on-premises platform as a service (PaaS) system built around Docker containers and managed by Kubernetes.

Many OpenShift customers have in the past been required to manage OpenShift clusters on top of AWS deployments by themselves, with much more work required to make it happen, including maintaining two vendor relationships. Using ROSA will allow them to create Kubernetes clusters using OpenShift APIs and tools while being able to access a variety of AWS services from within the AWS console.

With ROSA, AWS claims Red Hat customers can access the breadth of its compute, database, analytics, machine learning, networking, and mobile services in order to build secure and scalable applications much faster.

Each ROSA cluster comes with a fully-managed control plane and application nodes. Installation, management, maintenance, and upgrades are monitored by Red Hat’s site reliability engineering (SRE) division with joint Red Hat and Amazon support. Cluster services, such as logging, metrics, monitoring, are also available.

Customers can acquire the service directly from the AWS console on their own. As with other AWS services, such as elastic compute cloud (EC2), organisations spin up OpenShift clusters and will be charged based on consumption. Customers can also contact their Red Hat or AWS representative to purchase ROSA clusters.

“Red Hat OpenShift provides a common, open and enterprise-grade Kubernetes platform to span hybrid infrastructure, from a customer’s physical datacenter to their operations in AWS,” said Red Hat’s VP for Hosted Platforms, Sathish Balakrishnan.

“ROSA provides a streamlined process for organizations that want to extend the power of Red Hat OpenShift in AWS without having to manage separate technology streams, enabling IT teams to focus on delivering value and not managing underlying infrastructure.”