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Amazon EC2 vs OpenShift: What are the differences?

Introduction

Amazon EC2 and OpenShift are both cloud computing platforms that offer a range of features and services. However, there are some key differences between the two:

  1. Scalability: Amazon EC2 provides scalability by allowing users to easily add or remove instances as needed. It offers auto-scaling features that can automatically adjust the number of instances based on demand. On the other hand, OpenShift allows for scaling of applications, rather than individual instances. It utilizes containerization technology, such as Docker, to enable horizontal scaling of applications.

  2. Vendor Lock-In: Amazon EC2 is a service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which means it is tied to the AWS ecosystem. This can result in vendor lock-in, where users may find it challenging to move their infrastructure to another cloud provider. OpenShift, on the other hand, is an open-source platform that can be deployed on various cloud providers, offering more flexibility and preventing vendor lock-in.

  3. Pricing: Amazon EC2 has a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where users pay for the resources they consume. The pricing structure includes factors such as instance type, storage, and data transfer. OpenShift, on the other hand, offers multiple pricing options. It can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, and the pricing can vary depending on the deployment option chosen.

  4. Managed vs Self-managed: Amazon EC2 is a managed service, where AWS takes care of the underlying infrastructure, including hardware maintenance, security, and updates. Users are responsible for managing their applications and data. OpenShift, on the other hand, can be self-managed or fully managed. Users can choose to deploy and manage OpenShift themselves or opt for a managed OpenShift service offered by certain cloud providers.

  5. Containerization Technology: Amazon EC2 utilizes virtual machine (VM) technology to provide virtualized instances. Users can choose from a range of instance types with different specifications. OpenShift, on the other hand, uses containerization technology, such as Docker and Kubernetes, to provide a platform for deploying and managing applications. Containers offer lightweight and isolated environments, enabling faster deployment and scalability.

  6. Application Deployment Model: Amazon EC2 allows users to deploy a wide range of applications, including both traditional monolithic applications and modern microservices-based applications. OpenShift, on the other hand, is specifically designed for containerized applications. It offers support for microservices architectures and provides features such as service discovery, load balancing, and container orchestration.

In Summary, Amazon EC2 and OpenShift differ in terms of scalability, vendor lock-in, pricing, management, containerization technology, and application deployment model.

Decisions about Amazon EC2 and Red Hat OpenShift
Jerome/Zen Quah
Shared insights
on
Amazon EC2Amazon EC2DigitalOceanDigitalOcean

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

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Craig Finch
Principal Consultant at Rootwork InfoTech · | 6 upvotes · 191.8K views

We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.

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Stephen Fox
Artificial Intelligence Fellow · | 2 upvotes · 194.8K views

GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.

  • In both cases, the instance much be shut down.

There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.

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Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.

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Pros of Amazon EC2
Pros of Red Hat OpenShift
  • 647
    Quick and reliable cloud servers
  • 515
    Scalability
  • 393
    Easy management
  • 277
    Low cost
  • 271
    Auto-scaling
  • 89
    Market leader
  • 80
    Backed by amazon
  • 79
    Reliable
  • 67
    Free tier
  • 58
    Easy management, scalability
  • 13
    Flexible
  • 10
    Easy to Start
  • 9
    Widely used
  • 9
    Web-scale
  • 9
    Elastic
  • 7
    Node.js API
  • 5
    Industry Standard
  • 4
    Lots of configuration options
  • 2
    GPU instances
  • 1
    Simpler to understand and learn
  • 1
    Extremely simple to use
  • 1
    Amazing for individuals
  • 1
    All the Open Source CLI tools you could want.
  • 99
    Good free plan
  • 63
    Open Source
  • 47
    Easy setup
  • 43
    Nodejs support
  • 42
    Well documented
  • 32
    Custom domains
  • 28
    Mongodb support
  • 27
    Clean and simple architecture
  • 25
    PHP support
  • 21
    Customizable environments
  • 11
    Ability to run CRON jobs
  • 9
    Easier than Heroku for a WordPress blog
  • 8
    Easy deployment
  • 7
    PostgreSQL support
  • 7
    Autoscaling
  • 7
    Good balance between Heroku and AWS for flexibility
  • 5
    Free, Easy Setup, Lot of Gear or D.I.Y Gear
  • 4
    Shell access to gears
  • 3
    Great Support
  • 3
    High Security
  • 3
    Logging & Metrics
  • 2
    Cloud Agnostic
  • 2
    Runs Anywhere - AWS, GCP, Azure
  • 2
    No credit card needed
  • 2
    Because it is easy to manage
  • 2
    Secure
  • 2
    Meteor support
  • 2
    Overly complicated and over engineered in majority of e
  • 2
    Golang support
  • 2
    Its free and offer custom domain usage
  • 1
    Autoscaling at a good price point
  • 1
    Easy setup and great customer support
  • 1
    MultiCloud
  • 1
    Great free plan with excellent support
  • 1
    This is the only free one among the three as of today

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Cons of Amazon EC2
Cons of Red Hat OpenShift
  • 13
    Ui could use a lot of work
  • 6
    High learning curve when compared to PaaS
  • 3
    Extremely poor CPU performance
  • 2
    Decisions are made for you, limiting your options
  • 2
    License cost
  • 1
    Behind, sometimes severely, the upstreams

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What is Amazon EC2?

It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

What is Red Hat OpenShift?

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

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What companies use Amazon EC2?
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What are some alternatives to Amazon EC2 and Red Hat OpenShift?
Amazon LightSail
Everything you need to jumpstart your project on AWS—compute, storage, and networking—for a low, predictable price. Launch a virtual private server with just a few clicks.
Amazon S3
Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web
Amazon EC2 Container Service
Amazon EC2 Container Service lets you launch and stop container-enabled applications with simple API calls, allows you to query the state of your cluster from a centralized service, and gives you access to many familiar Amazon EC2 features like security groups, EBS volumes and IAM roles.
Beanstalk
A single process to commit code, review with the team, and deploy the final result to your customers.
NGINX
nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.
See all alternatives