We're revisiting the most popular articles published on Red Hat Developer in 2024, this time taking a look back at the best of Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift.
In June 2014, the first Kubernetes commit was pushed to GitHub; ten years later, the open source platform has become a cornerstone for developers building, scaling, and managing containerized applications.
Red Hat OpenShift, which is built on top of Kubernetes, provides an application platform that helps reduce the complexity of creating and modernizing cloud-native applications. Like Kubernetes, OpenShift continues to evolve rapidly to meet new use cases, including support for real-time analytics, virtualized workloads, and AI/ML solutions.
Learn more: What's new for developers in OpenShift 4.17
The 10 most popular Kubernetes and OpenShift articles of 2024
The articles that captured reader interest this year covered various aspects of ensuring reliable, scalable, and efficient application deployment on OpenShift and Kubernetes, from single-node OpenShift deployments to performance testing and scaling. Resources introducing Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to VMware vSphere administrators were also in high demand.
#10: Canary deployment strategy with Argo Rollouts
This article explains how to implement a canary deployment strategy using Argo Rollouts. Argo Rollouts is a Kubernetes controller and set of custom resource definitions (CRDs) that provide advanced deployment capabilities such as blue-green, canary, canary analysis, experimentation, and progressive delivery features to Kubernetes.
You'll walk through an example that demonstrates how to install, deploy, and manage the life cycle of cloud-native applications using canary capabilities.
Read it here: Canary deployment strategy with Argo Rollouts
#9: Supercharge your Red Hat OpenShift Local environment with Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed
Red Hat OpenShift Local is a development environment in which OpenShift applications run on a local machine. It provides a sandbox environment for building, testing, and iterating on applications without requiring access to a full-scale cloud infrastructure.
Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed is a generative AI virtual chat assistant that exists to improve productivity and accessibility for OpenShift users of all skill levels, from novice to expert.
This article explains how to install and use Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed on Red Hat OpenShift Local for troubleshooting, navigating the interface, and investigating cluster resources.
Read it here: Supercharge your Red Hat OpenShift Local environment with Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed
#8: How to install single node OpenShift on AWS
By Diego Alvarez Ponce and Kaitlyn Abdo
In environments where resources are limited, you can use single node OpenShift as a data center for model processing and training. It can run on both cloud and bare metal nodes.
The first of a 6-part series about computer vision at the edge, this article provides a step-by-step guide to installing and configuring a single node OpenShift environment on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Read it here: How to install single node OpenShift on AWS
#7: OpenShift Virtualization for VMware vSphere admins: Disaster and site recovery
By Alan Cowles
Nobody likes to think about disasters. Often the mantra is to hope for the best and plan for the worst. In today’s IT world, downtime, no matter how small, can have a disastrous effect on a business’ ability to compete in the marketplace.
This article illustrates how Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization can protect mission critical workloads in a Metro DR configuration by automatically restarting virtual machines at a secondary location if the primary OpenShift cluster becomes unavailable. This is done in a similar manner to the feature set provided by VMware Site Recovery Manager. This solution makes use of several of the components included in OpenShift Platform Plus as well as Red Hat Ceph Storage to protect virtual machines and assist with a return to normal operations very quickly in the event of a disaster scenario.
Read it here: OpenShift Virtualization for VMware vSphere admins: Disaster and site recovery
#6: Test Kubernetes performance and scale with kube-burner
By Sai Sindhur Malleni, Vishnu Challa, and Raul Sevilla Canavate
kube-burner is a flexible open source Kubernetes performance and scale testing tool. It is capable of creating, deleting, and updating Kubernetes resources as per user defined requirements, obtaining platform performance metrics, and indexing performance results along with those metrics into a desired long term storage solution.
Explore new kube-burner features and usability improvements that help solve unique challenges in performing and analyzing results from performance and scale tests on Kubernetes and OpenShift.
Read it here: Test Kubernetes performance and scale with kube-burner
#5: OpenShift Virtualization for vSphere admins: A change in the traditional storage paradigm
By Alan Cowles
A containerized virtualization solution presents an entirely new storage paradigm compared to what traditional virtualization administrators are used to. This article dives into how storage works with OpenShift Virtualization.
Even though the storage paradigm available in OpenShift Virtualization is very different from what VMware vSphere users might be used to, there are still parts of it that can seem very familiar. It also allows OpenShift Virtualization to perform many of the common virtual guest actions that are expected in enterprise hypervisor environments. By understanding these common use cases and how the storage provided for OpenShift Virtualization is consumed to support them, an admin can feel a sense of relative comfort when exposed to the new environment for the first time.
Read it here: OpenShift Virtualization for vSphere admins: A change in the traditional storage paradigm
#4: How to install single node OpenShift on bare metal
By Diego Alvarez Ponce and Kaitlyn Abdo
Learn how to deploy single node OpenShift on a physical bare metal node using the OpenShift Assisted Installer, which simplifies the setup process for OpenShift clusters.
The article includes a video demo to guide you through the process of installing single node OpenShift on a physical bare metal machine using the Assisted Installer.
Read it here: How to install single node OpenShift on bare metal
#3: Blue/green deployment strategy with Argo Rollouts
A companion to Canary deployment strategy with Argo Rollouts, this article explains how you can install, deploy, and manage the life cycle of cloud-native applications using a blue/green deployment strategy with Argo Rollouts. Blue/green deployment is an application release model that transfers user traffic from a previous version of an app or microservice to a nearly identical new release, both running in production.
Read it here: Blue/green deployment strategy with Argo Rollouts
#2: The developer's guide to Kubernetes Operators
Ready to start developing Kubernetes Operators? This guide breaks down all the essential components you'll need to get started developing operators using the Operator Framework, from APIs to health probes to Helm.
Read it here: The developer's guide to Kubernetes Operators
#1: DevOps with OpenShift Pipelines and OpenShift GitOps
By Gerald Nunn
Our most popular article this year provided an introduction to Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines and Red Hat OpenShift GitOps. These powerful tools are included in Red Hat OpenShift and can be used by DevOps practitioners to provide continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery/deployment (CD) capabilities.
Based on the Tekton project, OpenShift Pipelines is responsible for providing the continuous integration (CI) portion of the DevOps methodology. OpenShift GitOps, based on Argo CD, covers the continuous delivery (CD) aspect. This article demonstrates how you can use these components independently or together as a unit to provide a complete DevOps solution.
Read it here: DevOps with OpenShift Pipelines and OpenShift GitOps
Learn Kubernetes and OpenShift
Gain the knowledge and hands-on experience you need to manage complex Kubernetes environments.
Explore interactive hands-on labs and learning paths:
- Foundations of OpenShift
- Get started with your Developer Sandbox for Red Hat OpenShift
- Learn Kubernetes using Developer Sandbox for Red Hat OpenShift
- How to deploy an application using Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS
- Using OpenShift
- Create an OpenShift Serverless function
- DevOps on OpenShift
- Replace deprecated DeploymentConfigs with deployments
- Build and populate a database using Kubernetes init containers
- Developing applications on OpenShift
Download e-books and cheat sheets for tech practitioners:
- Kubernetes Operators
- Kubernetes Patterns
- Operating OpenShift: An SRE Approach to Managing Infrastructure
- Getting GitOps: A practical platform with OpenShift, Argo CD, and Tekton
- The Path to GitOps
- GitOps Cookbook: Kubernetes Automation in Practice
- 5 ways developers benefit from Red Hat OpenShift
- Red Hat OpenShift cheat sheet
- Red Hat Insights Cost Management cheat sheet
Get started with Red Hat OpenShift 4.17
- Try OpenShift in the Developer Sandbox.
- Explore resources for getting started with OpenShift.
- Visit the Red Hat OpenShift product page to discover more ways to try OpenShift.
The rest of the best
We'll be back with more content for tech practitioners in 2025. In the meantime, don't miss the rest of our 2024 year in review:
