OpenShift by Red Hat

https://openshift.redhat.com/app/

by kragniz • 14 years ago

329 112 14 years ago

openshift.redhat.com

japhyr• 14 years ago

Has anyone chosen openshift over heroku for django? I didn't see any pricing info; is openshift still in beta?

bpp198• 14 years ago

OpenShift is free.

ralphsaunders• 14 years ago

But what's the catch?

_delirium• 14 years ago

There are hints that it's free only for a preview period. From http://www.redhat.com/products/cloud-computing/openshift/, under the "How To Buy" tab, it calls it a "free developer preview" and says, "OpenShift is currently in developer preview and free to use. Stay tuned—pricing is coming soon."

obtu• 14 years ago

Beta: yes and no. The implementation has existed for some time and was liberated recently. But the pricing beyond a free slot hasn't been published yet: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495

Being entirely open-source, if you outgrow it you can self host or move to an IAAS cloud.

amalag• 14 years ago

I tried openshift a few months ago for Rails. A real pain in the butt. They dont have simple deploy like Heroku. Even heroku can be time consuming in the beginning to get right, openshift was even more complicated. It may work better for Java I don't know, looks like they are right on the bleeding edge with support for Ruby 1.8.7.

jwarzech2• 14 years ago

Thank you for posting your experience trying it with rails, I agree deployment of a non-trivial app to heroku can be a pain the first time but once you get everything working its a breeze for subsequent deployments.

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

Our roadmap has more support for newer versions of Ruby coming soon. We started with the base packages in RHEL but are now working to also bring newer versions as standard cartridges. That said, you can also use a DIY cartridge to get Ruby 1.9.x

sabat2• 14 years ago

Good to know; I just came here to complain. :-)

On the other hand, though, I think you should have probably started with the 1.9.2/1.9.3 series rather than the ancient 1.8.7.

dabeeeenster• 14 years ago

No mention of pricing anywhere on their site. What?

r080• 14 years ago

FAQ has something: "To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com"

rplnt3• 14 years ago

It's in some sort of beta and only limited free tier is available. You can still get it running on your server(s) though.

ique• 14 years ago

How can this be free? If I host a massive application here, will they shut it down or rate limit or how can this work?

tikhonj• 14 years ago

I think they mean free as in speech more than free as in beer.

Of course, it is currently in a developer preview and so also free as in beer, but I think that's incidental--this is Red Hat after all; they actually care about users' freedom and they aren't afraid of offering paid plans and support.

Happily, since it's open source, you can just host it yourself if you aren't happy with Red Hat's potential future pricing.

wnm• 14 years ago

the preview is free and has a limit:

"The developer preview supports up to 3 gears per user. You have a quota of 40,000 files, 1GB of storage, and 512MB Memory per gear. It is free to use and you can run your application indefinitely. If you need to increase this quota, please mailto:openshift@redhat.com with your username, domain and Application URL."

from: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq/how-many-applicat...

noveltyaccount• 14 years ago

https://openshift.redhat.com/community/faq#t2n9495

Where can I get more information on Pricing ?

To get more information on the pricing and timing of a paid version of OpenShift please send an email to openshift@redhat.com

wmf• 14 years ago

The software is free for you to use to build your own cloud. If you're not a cloud provider you're still going to pay (for production at least).

ctrlaltesc• 14 years ago

Interesting that the install instructions for Red Hat Linux distributions is far more complicated than that of other Linux distributions.

But seriously, if they are offering a free platform to anyone with an email address then what sort of precautions are they taking to prevent abuse?

Wickk• 14 years ago

Are we talking content abuse? It's in their ToS if we are. Not entirely sure how effective they're going to be at monitoring malicious content, but it's there.

ijroth• 14 years ago

Here's Matt describing what is done to create security and prevent abuse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y...!

nathell• 14 years ago

I made a mental typo when reading the name and omitted the "f."

claytonc2• 14 years ago

I do that about 3 times a day. I also got rejected for an openshift license plate because of that significant f...

jamesu• 14 years ago

I have yet to find a service as straightforward as Heroku. Cloudfront comes close... but i get the feeling especially when looking at the documentation that Heroku have really put in a lot of effort into making a simple to use application platform.

MatthewPhillips• 14 years ago

Dotcloud does it for me. I'd love to support RedHat though.

jwarzech2• 14 years ago

Never heard of Dotcloud before, anyone have experience hosting a decent size app with them?

andypants• 14 years ago

I didn't really like dotcloud when they released their pricing info. It didn't really encourage apps that use a lot of services.

But their new beta pricing of pay per hour per unit of memory is a lot nicer.

mhicks5• 14 years ago

Don't hesitate to give us feedback - good, bad and ugly. Email openshift@redhat.com or post on the forums and we'll get right on it. Around docs, we're trying to tune the primary landing spot:

https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers

We also love involvement - good, bad and ugly as well ;)

https://openshift.redhat.com/community/get-involved

jballanc2• 14 years ago

If you're not paying, you're the product.

diminish2• 14 years ago

moreover, paying also does not mean you are not the product.

bgilroy263• 14 years ago

It's in developer preview, they're hoping you tell your friends and generate buzz.

jballanc2• 14 years ago

Right. You're the product. In this case, you are the marketing product. It's not always bad to be the product. Cows eat for free, right? Just a good thing to keep in mind.

rplnt3• 14 years ago

Paying for what now? They won't host app for free, that's for sure. But I don't see how having the platform opensourced can hurt you as a customer. Whether you choose Red Hat or someone else.

mhicks5• 14 years ago

Well, we do provide a level of free hosting - trying to keep it meaningful but it's certainly not unlimited. We will offer pricing plans for expansion and we also allow people to move off the platform (with their data) to another environment if they choose (see: rhc app snapshot).

We also wanted to make sure we open sourced the code itself. As you mentioned, that gives you some assurance outside of the service or any specific vendor.

bergie2• 14 years ago

Very interesting, though documentation doesn't seem to be very comprehensive yet.

There is little information about process management, like https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/process-model

Not to mention how to create custom Cartridges, like you can do with Heroku buildpacks: https://gist.github.com/fe7f04abbd9538b656c5

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

We actually do have custom cartridge: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/a-paas-that-run...

diminish2• 14 years ago

Do we have any major computing player remaining without an app cloud offering or plan?

Kudos• 14 years ago

Apple?

pmjordan• 14 years ago

iCloud has developer APIs - all your code just happens to run on the OS X and iOS clients (which are distributed via the App Store, which sits in the cloud).

T-A• 14 years ago

From the ToS ( https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/site_terms ): "you give Red Hat a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the web site"

That makes me a little nervous.

azundo• 14 years ago

Here is the clause from the OpenShift Preview Services ToS (not the site terms): https://openshift.redhat.com/app/legal/services_agreement

3.3. Your License to Red Hat. You hereby grant to Red Hat a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty free license to use Your trademarks, trade names and logos in connection with publicizing the Preview Services and communicating with analysts, customers or the press about the Preview Services. Your further grant to Red Hat, and any third party service provider on whose services Red Hat may depend to provide the Preview Services, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to make, use, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display Content for the purpose of providing the Preview Services. Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement.

vsarathy• 14 years ago

Thanks for posting the entire clause. Let me just comment as a Red Hat/OpenShift employee with some insight into the business intent behind the legal language.

As you can see from the complete clause that includes "...for the purpose of providing the Preview Services", the license to your content that you grant to Red Hat is really to allow Red Hat to provide the Service. Also the last sentence i.e. "Except as set forth in this Section, Red Hat obtains no rights in Content under this Agreement." should make it clear that there is no other interest in the users content.

eli2• 14 years ago

Oy, not this again. I agree that could be written better, but it's not all that different from Heroku: "...you give Heroku a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such Application for the sole purpose of enabling Heroku to provide you with the Heroku Services."

bergie2• 14 years ago

That "for the sole purpose of enabling Heroku to provide you with the Heroku Services" makes quite a difference.

pja• 14 years ago

Those are the terms of use for the website, not the OpenShift service aren't they?

brown9-2• 14 years ago

Isn't this standard boilerplate for ToS for these types of services? They need a "license" from you that covers deploying your software to as many servers as necessary, wherever in the world they host the platform.

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

you got it - that is why we have these terms - nothing more nefarious than that

Ryan_Shmotkin• 14 years ago

Tsk tsk.. ruby 1.8.7 by default

dagw• 14 years ago

and python 2.6 and PostgreSQL 8.4 and Perl 5.10. They definitely don't seem to be aiming for the "cutting edge" crowd.

286c8cb04bda• 14 years ago

Redhat stopped targeting the "cutting edge" demographic about 10 years ago. They enlist them as QA for their real customers now.

mhurron2• 14 years ago

It is obviously running RHEL 6.2 default packages. Probably a better idea than a full OS upgrade every 6 months.

mhicks5• 14 years ago

Yeah, defaults are always tough to choose and we tend to default to what is in RHEL. That said, Ruby comes up a lot and we are actively working on a slick 1.9.x experience out of the box. In the meantime (I know it's a hassle) but we've built the underlying foundation to let you do what you want. For example:

http://bit.ly/HHp9aR

Also... if you wouldn't mind helping vote it up, that would help:

https://openshift.redhat.com/community/content/support-for-r...

lhm• 14 years ago

FWIW, here is a description how different ruby versions are handled with rbenv by 37signals:

https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv/issues/101#issuecomment...

bobsy• 14 years ago

I don't like this "Free" business.

It doesn't make sense and the complete lack of pricing info really puts me off.

So I play around with this, like it and choose to stick with it. They then introduce uncompetitive pricing.. I just wasted my time. They do not need to give exact pricing - they might not know at the moment - but they should at least give an overview of what they plan to do.

> We will keep this free plan for the foreseeable future. The free plan allows...

> This free plan will exist while we develop and test the service. As the service becomes stable we will be introducing paid plans and you will be asked to upgrade.

These 2 statements make sense to me. The fact they mention nothing about pricing on their site confuses and annoys me.

sgdesign• 14 years ago

The problem with free stuff is the lack of support. If I mess something up and my site crashes after hitting the HN front page, I want someone to throw money at until things work again.

prplhaz4• 14 years ago

That is likely where the introduction of pricing plans comes in. Redhat is still in business (ie, making money) because they support the enterprise usage of their products, and do it well.

thefotios• 14 years ago

While OpenShift doesn't have a paid support model per say, there is a very active community (which includes developers constantly monitoring forums, IRC, and Bugzilla, as well as Twitter). Chances are, if you hit a problem, you'll have a bunch of people jumping on it very quickly.

There forums are here: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/ as well as a very active IRC channel (#openshift on FreeNode)

sabat2• 14 years ago

I want someone to throw money at until things work

In that case, although you can certainly pay for support (as others have pointed out)—but you're probably not the intended audience for this service.

jamesgeck0• 14 years ago

They might be holding off on announcing pricing until they see get enough real-world usage to determine what it'll cost to provide the service. Even Google underestimated with App Engine, and came out of beta with an unpopular price jump for some people.

rplnt3• 14 years ago

> So I play around with this, like it and choose to stick with it. They then introduce uncompetitive pricing.. I just wasted my time.

No, this is not Google AppEngine. The platform is opensourced. You can host this "cloud" on your own servers or rely on some 3rd party provider.

fabianofranz• 14 years ago

Also, take the Java platform for example: it's good old (okay, not old) Java EE 6. Just take your app and deploy it wherever you want (JBoss, Glassfish, Websphere, etc). On AppEngine, you have a blacklisted Java API, proprietary API for common tasks like threads, etc.

salimmadjd• 14 years ago

I'm still paying for the mistake of deploying on the App Engine. BTW, I spoke with open shift folks and they are going to provide a way to migrate your app to openshift

adestefan• 14 years ago

I have a feeling Red Hat is going to try to make money off the private cloud businesses. Pitch OpenShift + support as an offering for companies to use internally. The free hosting that they're currently offering is just a way to get beta testers. Anything they make off of future plans would be icing on the cake.

mhicks5• 14 years ago

Not sure where the second statement came from but if you can let me know the source, I can correct it.

I can represent OpenShift fairly well. We will always have a free level of service and we are trying very hard to keep what is free today, free forever. We have tweaked a couple of things based on user feedback but the goal is to have a meaningful free offering.

At the same time, we are getting constant feedback that users want more than just the free offering. We also know that with pricing, they will want stability and predictability in pricing so we've spent a lot of time to get users involved and a lot of feedback in the pricing before we launch it. We want that pricing to be sustainable as well as valuable to users.

Hope this helps

gcr• 14 years ago

Thank you for the clarifacation. The service sounds interesting.

How are you keeping the free plan going now though? Who's paying for it? RedHat doesn't exactly strike me as the kind of company that's wallowing in spare cash.

ryancutter• 14 years ago

I wrote a Python web app on OpenShift (Tornado not Django) and really liked it. While I don't have experience with Heroku, I was really impressed with OpenShift.

However, be aware that not everything is enabled yet. I ran into problems when I discovered the multiprocessing package doesn't work (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=814991).

Kilimanjaro• 14 years ago

I tried the service a couple of months ago and it is really easy to use. Got a blog up and running in no time just to test the waters using bottle, jinja and mongo. No sweat.

http://blog-georgenava.rhcloud.com

0xbadcafebee• 14 years ago

If you don't like the idea of relying on RedHat to play with this tech, remember that it is Open Source. Download it, use it, heck make a business that builds on it.

  https://github.com/openshift/crankcase
  https://github.com/openshift/os-client-tools
  https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/build-your-own

(I will say though: they make it extremely easy to get started and I really like using OpenShift so far. I've never used Heroku, but if it's this user friendly i'd definitely have used it before... Why don't they have a free offering for people to test out the service?)

jvanenk• 14 years ago

last I checked, Heroku does have a free offering.

scottostler• 14 years ago

FWIW, heroku does. The first heroku slice for a project is free, with the caveat that it'll be spun down during periods of inactivity.

I imagine that most hobby users of heroku (say for a weekend hackathon) aren't paying anything.

peterwwillis• 14 years ago

Ah, I hadn't seen that. Thanks!

petercooper• 14 years ago

I know of people who deployed prototypes and even production work for clients to Heroku (I did once too ;-)). Quite a few people run Jekyll blogs on there long term for free as well. It's pretty amazing what you can get out of a single dyno for something that's not high traffic (i.e. most apps).

jefe78• 14 years ago

I wish they'd list pricing in the event you grow beyond the free plan. Reluctant to even bother trying without knowing that type of information.

will_work4tears2• 14 years ago

Couldn't get their client software to work on Ubuntu. Even followed a few tutorials. I think I'm missing something, but haven't a bunch of time to invest.

nduong• 14 years ago

I like these instructions: http://www.stylesen.org/openshift_client_tools_installation_...

will_work4tears2• 14 years ago

Looks promising, I'll give it a go the first chance I get some spare time! (new baby in the house, so spare time is in short spurts)

Thanks!

geuis2• 14 years ago

Thats not really a tutorial, just an introduction on how to install the CLI tools. What's missing is a tutorial on how to use them.

robotomir• 14 years ago

How does it compare to CloudFoundry? Aside from having official PHP support, that is.

michael37• 14 years ago

For Java folks: JBoss.

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

And official Python support and having a custom cartridge system

jvoorhis• 14 years ago

CloudFoundry's PHP support is also official. While it's not yet available through cloudfoundry.com, you can use it now with AppFog (http://appfog.com).

Disclaimer: I work at AppFog and contributed to the initial version of PHP support for the CloudFoundry open source project at https://github.com/cloudfoundry.

mythz3• 14 years ago

I'm generally a fan of RedHat, but not having details on the most important point of OpenShift that will decide whether it will fail or succeed in the market (i.e. the price) is a scummy play - that I only expected from enterprises. I hope these "enterprise marketing" tactics aren't a trend for RedHat.

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

This is not a bait and switch. We are trying to make sure we get the pricing right. That said - we plan to make the current free tier free even when we announce pricing. We are also committed to being competitive in terms of pricing. We will be announcing pricing this summer.

mythz3• 14 years ago

But you've "announced" your cloud platform, yet I can't justify any time learning or becoming familiar with it since there is no idea on price - it's frustrating.

nosh• 14 years ago

If you're interested in checking out how to get mongo running on openshift, here are some things to get started

- Good list of resources: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/developers/mongodb

- Lots of goodies in here: https://github.com/openshift

- Part 1 of a 4-part series on building mobile apps with titanium, mongodb and openshift: http://blog.10gen.com/post/23089705899/mobilize-your-mongodb...

- Upcoming webinar on node.js and mongodb with OpenShift: http://www.10gen.com/events/building-web-services

Disclaimer: I work at 10gen

edtechdev• 14 years ago

Yeah I'm excited about it and it's getting me to finally take the step from traditional web app development (vps, php, etc.) to more easily scalable app development - and it's all open source, no vendor lock-in, and hopefully affordable pricing in the future.

Look forward to seeing more tutorials & code samples online and on their site. For example has anyone tried out meteor (w/node.js & mongodb) with it yet. Also, hopefully it will integrate with some of the browser-based IDEs out there like cloud9.

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

Did you ask for integration with cloud9? Funny you should mention that: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/blogs/look-ma-no-hand...

gary4gar• 14 years ago

the rubyist in me is happy to report that openshift is written largely in ruby. so all ruby programmers should try running openshift in their own machinea

nivertech• 14 years ago

Why all PaaS providers (Heroku, CF, OpenShift) building their CLI tools using Ruby? Are they copying Heroku? Maybe because Python used for OS itself? What dotCloud uses?

shykes2• 14 years ago

dotCloud's cli is written in Python. In the long run I don't think it matters which language it's written in - as long as it's easy to install on every computer.

geuis2• 14 years ago

The documentation is frankly awful. For example, when getting the status:

rhc domain status -l <myemailhere> I get an error about ~/.ssh/config not existing. I added my ssh key via the web interface and have no idea what's going on here.

In looking at the User Guide, I find it gets me no where. http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/OpenShift/2.0/html/User_Gu...

The relevant message here is:

"If your system fails any of the tests, make a note of the error message and consult the relevant section of the OpenShift User Guide for further information."

Nothing like a circular reference that leads to nowhere.

TheSteve09• 14 years ago

You probably created your domain and application through the web interface. This is an issue we are working through now - sorry we haven't gotten to it yet - it will be fixed in the next couple of sprints. The problem is that your SSH env has not been set up to work with the RHC tools yet. They expect a configure file in the .ssh directory to specify which key talks to the *.rhcloud.com domain. This KB article may help you get started: https://openshift.redhat.com/community/kb/kb-e1034-ssh-facts... Again, my apologies and we are actively working on that story right now.

thomasfl• 14 years ago

This is cool!

twqqis• 14 years ago

just a quick compliment to RH; loving how the employees are giving constructive feedback on the comments here :)

OpenShift by Red Hat

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