Rancher vs Red Hat OpenShift

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Rancher

942
1.5K
+ 1
644
Red Hat OpenShift

1.5K
1.4K
+ 1
517
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Rancher vs Red Hat OpenShift: What are the differences?

Introduction

Rancher and Red Hat OpenShift are both popular container management platforms. While they share some similarities, there are key differences that set them apart.

  1. Architecture: Rancher follows a lightweight and modular architecture design, allowing it to work seamlessly with different container runtimes, such as Docker and Kubernetes. On the other hand, Red Hat OpenShift is built on top of Kubernetes, offering a more integrated and opinionated platform for containerized applications.

  2. Ease of Use: Rancher provides a user-friendly web-based GUI for managing and orchestrating containers. It offers a simplified user experience with intuitive workflows and visualizations. In contrast, Red Hat OpenShift embraces a more developer-centric approach, focusing on CLI tools and command-driven interactions for greater flexibility and control.

  3. Platform Maturity: Rancher has been in the market for a longer period of time and has gained a reputation for stability and reliability. Its users appreciate its robustness and battle-tested features. Red Hat OpenShift, being backed by a renowned enterprise software company, brings enterprise-grade support and additional security features to the table.

  4. Commercial Support: Rancher offers commercial support plans, but it is primarily an open-source platform with a vibrant community. Red Hat OpenShift, on the other hand, is a commercial product that includes enterprise support from Red Hat. This support includes technical assistance, security updates, and access to training resources.

  5. Scalability and Extensibility: Rancher is known for its scalability, allowing users to manage large-scale container deployments across multiple clusters and environments. It also offers a wide range of built-in integrations and plugins to extend its functionality. Red Hat OpenShift focuses on providing a comprehensive platform for building, deploying, and managing applications in a multi-cloud environment, with additional ecosystem tools and services.

  6. Licensing: Rancher is an open-source project licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. This means users can freely modify and distribute the software. Red Hat OpenShift, however, is based on the Kubernetes open-source project but includes additional proprietary components. It follows a subscription-based licensing model.

In summary, Rancher offers a lightweight, modular, and user-friendly container management platform with strong community support. Red Hat OpenShift, backed by a renowned enterprise software company, provides a more integrated and mature platform with enterprise-grade support and additional security features for building, deploying, and managing containerized applications in a multi-cloud environment.

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Pros of Rancher
Pros of Red Hat OpenShift
  • 103
    Easy to use
  • 79
    Open source and totally free
  • 63
    Multi-host docker-compose support
  • 58
    Load balancing and health check included
  • 58
    Simple
  • 44
    Rolling upgrades, green/blue upgrades feature
  • 42
    Dns and service discovery out-of-the-box
  • 37
    Only requires docker
  • 34
    Multitenant and permission management
  • 29
    Easy to use and feature rich
  • 11
    Cross cloud compatible
  • 11
    Does everything needed for a docker infrastructure
  • 8
    Simple and powerful
  • 8
    Next-gen platform
  • 7
    Very Docker-friendly
  • 6
    Support Kubernetes and Swarm
  • 6
    Application catalogs with stack templates (wizards)
  • 6
    Supports Apache Mesos, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes
  • 6
    Rolling and blue/green upgrades deployments
  • 6
    High Availability service: keeps your app up 24/7
  • 5
    Easy to use service catalog
  • 4
    Very intuitive UI
  • 4
    IaaS-vendor independent, supports hybrid/multi-cloud
  • 4
    Awesome support
  • 3
    Scalable
  • 2
    Requires less infrastructure requirements
  • 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 Rancher
Cons of Red Hat OpenShift
  • 10
    Hosting Rancher can be complicated
  • 2
    Decisions are made for you, limiting your options
  • 2
    License cost
  • 1
    Behind, sometimes severely, the upstreams

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What is Rancher?

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

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 Rancher?
What companies use Red Hat OpenShift?
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What tools integrate with Rancher?
What tools integrate with Red Hat OpenShift?

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What are some alternatives to Rancher and Red Hat OpenShift?
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
DC/OS
Unlike traditional operating systems, DC/OS spans multiple machines within a network, aggregating their resources to maximize utilization by distributed applications.
Portainer
It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.
Docker
The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
Helm
Helm is the best way to find, share, and use software built for Kubernetes.
See all alternatives