Microsoft, Red Hat Partner on OpenShift
Cloud infrastructure providers targeting the booming hybrid cloud market continue to coalesce around the Kubernetes cluster orchestrator that serves as a bridge between datacenters and public clouds for applications such as databases.
For example, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT)
expanded their collaboration to bring the OpenShift container platform to the Azure cloud as the partners seek to provide and “on-ramp” to hybrid cloud computing supported by the beefed-up enterprise version of the Kubernetes.
Database vendors also said this week they would connect with OpenShift.
The partners announced general availability of the Azure version of Red Hat OpenShift this week. They stressed that the combination would provide OpenShift container access in datacenters that could be used to extend workloads to the public cloud where they could be scaled using Azure services.
OpenShift on Azure “enables IT leaders to innovate with a platform that offers a common fabric for both app developers and operations,” Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s president of products and technologies, noted in announced the deal during the company’s annual summit in Boston.
Microsoft said the Azure Red Hat OpenShift service cloud be used by its current cloud customers to manage clusters, including master, infrastructure and application nodes. The integrated services would be folded into Azure users’ existing bill
The OpenShift-Azure deal extends collaboration between Microsoft and Red Hat that includes the addition of Microsoft SQL server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The deal signaled Microsoft’s embrace of OpenShift application container management.
The expanded partnership also gives OpenShift users access to public cloud services such as Azure Cosmos and SQL databases along with cloud-based machine learning models aimed at development of cloud-native enterprise applications.
OpenShift on Azure would “simplify container management on Kubernetes and help customers innovate on their cloud journeys,” added Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Group.
Azure Red Hat OpenShift is available now on Microsoft Azure.
Meanwhile, other database vendors also announced deals this week to connect with OpenShift via Kubernetes. MemSQL, the operational analytics and cloud-native applications specialist, introduced a new tool for orchestrating its database with Kubernetes. The “operator” links MemSQL software with OpenShift and other Kubernetes distributions to help deploy, manage and upgrade the relational database.
Along with the release of the latest version of its OpenShift Kubernetes platform, Red Hat also this week released the latest update to its flagship enterprise Linux operating system aimed at hybrid cloud deployments.
