Red Hat ramps up container and hybrid cloud support at Summit event

Red Hat enhances container support in OpenShift application platform and expands hybrid cloud management tools

Linux and cloud specialist Red Hat has used the Red Hat Summit to detail expanding support for cloud computing and containers for operating enterprise applications and services, as well as an expansion into new sectors such as telecoms.

Containers were the dominant topic at the Red Hat Summit in San Francisco as the firm explained how it is expanding container support in the OpenShift platform-as-a-service for application development, which gets native storage support through integration with Red Hat Gluster storage, for example.

Meanwhile, Red Hat detailed a new version of the CloudForms management tool that unifies container and cloud management, including new support for managing workloads running on Google's cloud.

The firm also announced a partnership with Lenovo to jointly develop next-generation software-defined solutions for the telecoms industry, using Lenovo hardware and Red Hat's software stack.

OpenShift is Red Hat's platform for developing and operating applications, designed to run on public and private cloud infrastructure. The latter version, now renamed as OpenShift Container Platform from OpenShift Enterprise, has had support for Docker and Kubernetes to enable users to build and run applications in containers for several versions, but the latest release integrates Red Hat's Gluster Storage 3.1.3 distributed file system.

This enables customers to provide persistent native storage for containers, deployed in standard containers itself, orchestrated by Kubernetes and managed just like any other application service running on OpenShift, the firm said.

Another new feature is a container scanning interface designed to enable security tools from third-party vendors to easily plug into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, scan their contents for malware and see whether the latest security updates have been applied.

Red Hat also added containers support to the Red Hat Insights prescriptive analytics tool, providing oversight of the configuration in a container image in addition to the infrastructure, plus tuning and configuration of container storage for optimal performance.

"Today, Red Hat has introduced the industry's broadest portfolio of enterprise-grade Linux container products, backed by our award-winning support and vast partner ecosystem," said Red Hat president for product and technologies Paul Cormier.

"Red Hat's new container portfolio addresses needs across IT organisations, providing developers with tools to build cloud-native and containerised enterprise applications, enabling operations teams to manage new cloud-scale container infrastructure, and helping businesses to transform their data centres to fully embrace the benefits of Linux containers."

On the management side, CloudForms 4.1 provides customers with greater choice and flexibility in hybrid cloud situations by adding support for managing workloads on the Google Cloud Platform.

CloudForms already enables users to manage workloads on multiple platforms, including VMware, AWS, OpenStack and Microsoft Azure.

In addition, Red Hat CloudForms 4.1 expands its management capabilities to include software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities in AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and OpenStack's Neutron network module. This has been developed in partnership with SDN specialist Nuage Networks, Red Hat said.

Also on the networking side, Lenovo announced a partnership with Red Hat to develop integrated solutions for the telecoms industry. The initiative, dubbed Open Platform@Lenovo will be powered by Red Hat's software stack for network function virtualisation running on Lenovo infrastructure compliant with Open Compute Platform specifications.

"We understand how important open standards and integrated operability will be for data centres to support 5G and IoT," said Lenovo global telco vice president Philippe Davy.

"Our telco customers are on the cutting edge of this major industry disruption, and Lenovo is committed to delivering Open Platform@Lenovo and working with industry-leading partners to provide the foundation for next-generation data centres."